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what I want to talk about this morning

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is remarkable phenomenon that 
the people not only talk to God

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but they learn to experience
God is talking back

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Many many Americans and 
many other people

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are involved, as you may call, 
in a renewalist spirituality -

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a kind of spirituality
which they want to experience God

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intimately, personally and interactive,

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they want to reach out, 
touch the Divine here on earth

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I want to find out how they did that.

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I am anthropologist,
my job is to immerse myself in

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the world I come to study, 
and to keep observing

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so that at some degree, I got a sense of
what it take to

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become a Native in that world.

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Unlike Margret Mead &
Rev. Gregory Bateson

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were pictured here in Papua New Guinea.

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I did this work in America.

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I spent two years 
in the renewalist church in Chicago,

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another two years
in one of the Bay area.

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I went to Sunday Morning services.

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I was a member of House priaire.

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I was in the prayer's circle.

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I hang out with people.

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I prayed with people.

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I really want to know how
their God became real to them.

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So let me begin by asking,

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who is the God in the church like this?

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God is God, God is big, 
God is mighty, and holy and beyond.

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God is also a person among people,

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The Pastor in this kind of church 
want you to experience God

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the way the earliest cycle of experience Jesus,

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They walk with Jesus.

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They eat with Jesus.

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They talk with Jesus,

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He was his friend,

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These pastors will tell you that

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You should put out 
a cup of coffee for God,

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You should have a beer with God

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Go for a walk with God, hang out.

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Do the kind of thing with God

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that you get do with anyone who 
you want to know as a person.

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He cares about all the kinds of stuff 
in your life.

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the little stuff, where you want to go 
in your summer vacation

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what shirt you want to wear 
tomorrow morning.

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you can talk to him about that.

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So I wanted to know how people learn to 
interact with God

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and how they felt God 
speaking back to them.

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I knew they can learn 
the newcomers came to this church,

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and they say things like:

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"God talk to me."

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and six months later they would say :

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"I recognize God's voice the way I 
recognize my mum's voice on the phone . "

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But I thought the church's teach

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and some of thoughts
you really think is yours,

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They are really God's thoughts being given to you

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and your job is to figure out
who is the God.

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and the way people did talk