On Prayer, with Mary Laymon

Just got back (literally, like seconds ago) from a gathering downstairs at the Speckled Bird. It was a Formed gathering. (By the way, I love living in a hyperlinked world. Cuts down on the amount of space I take up explaining things. Go find out what Formed is and then come back.)
Mary Laymon spoke on the month's focus, prayer. She loves talking about prayer, and I love listening to people talking about what they love. Some thoughts, random but may give a taste of the experience of being there:
--Prayer can, and has, saved lives. "Save"--we talked about how "save" can mean "To heal and make whole."
--The voice of God is within all of us.
--It takes time and practice to learn to hear God's voice. He's quiet. But He is also willing to wait until you are willing to listen.
--If you're an extrovert, and you have a chatty sort of personality, God may chat with you right back, but there are other "languages" in which God may speak to you--it may not just be the classic sort of Inner Voice model. God can speak through songs, through images, through relationships, through dreams, through nature.
--How do we distinguish God's voice from our own voice, or the voices of darkness and destruction? a) God's voice will be congruent with Scripture, so it will direct us toward love of neighbor, love of the poor; following it will also produce the fruits of the Spirit: kindness, gentleness, peace. b) There will be an "echo"--God will be persistent, so we may hear the same message, see the same image, experience the same circumstances, over and over again until we stop and pay attention. c) A key way to check--ALWAYS take what you think you're hearing from God and check it out with a trusted "soul friend" who has some practice discerning God's voice. d) Sometimes you'll only know it's God's voice through hindsight--"oh! That's what God was saying! I should have listened!" or "Gosh, I'm glad I listened!"
--We practiced different prayer methods. We prayed using a picture, asking God to use the image to reveal something to us. Then we had a choice of activities: praying by molding clay without having a preconceived notion of what the clay should look like, praying while walking, praying while studying nature, lectio divina (praying using Scripture), etc. etc.
--To pray, you have to be brave. It's scary to be intimate with God--He wants to transform us. We'll see things in ourselves that aren't so lovely.
--God wants to heal us not just for our own sake but so that we can be a blessing to others.
--If you go are willing to trust God enough to go into a scary place, God can take you back out of it.