“God speaks, and God is to be heard, not only on Sinai, not only in my own heart, but in the voice of the stranger. That is why the peoples of the Orient, and all primitive peoples in general, make so much of the mystery of hospitality. God must be allowed to speak unpredictably. The Holy Spirit, the very voice of Divine Liberty, must always be like the wind in ‘blowing where he pleases’ (John 3:8).”

Merton, Thomas. “A Letter to Pablo Antonio Cuadra concerning Giants.” (1961) in Selected Essays. Edited with an introduction by Patrick F. O’Connell. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2013 (p. 121).

Someone dear to me regularly reminds us to ‘Pay attention.’ Because you never know, do you, when God will speak to you through another person (stranger or friend), through the call of a bird or the colors of flowers and sunsets, through something you read (particularly even some non-religious thing), through dreams (that happens, at least, in the Scriptures), and so on. It makes sense that God would.

We say God is everywhere, and one thing that must mean is that God can speak to us everywhere. We expect, of course, to hear God in our place of worship, in our private devotional time, in the Scriptures and spiritual classics. But we also should be open to hear God, as Merton writes, “speak unpredictably.” So pay attention.