Book excerpt: ListenTalk: Is Conversation an Act of God? explores the profound mysteries of everyday conversations, uncovering how the mundane and the sublime commingle in the words people exchange in working and playing alongside one another. How people choose to express themselvesto frame their deepest longings and thoughtseither expands or shrinks the deep realities of mind, body, and human community. Kirk Livingston, drawing upon education in philosophy and theology and experience in the commercial world of copywriting, investigates how words exercise power to make things happen in this world and how those emerging conversations connect people to one another and bind them to God. As the title hints, ListenTalk ends chapters with questions crafted to encourage conversation among people who share the journey of reading this work together. Frequent and effective section headings provide ample markers along the way, so that readers may keep themselves oriented to the books presentation. To support deeper reflection, ListenTalk also suggests further reading and offers pertinent documentation and a topical index. If you find yourself awash in conversationtalkand wonder if more may be going on than simply filling silence with sound, then this book promises to address how God uses ordinary conversations. They can become tools to achieve reunion both among people who too often simply pass by one another in the midst of busy days and between people and the God who made them to enter into the divine conversation.