Bringing Down the Towers of Babel

How often it seems that we are surrounded by towers of Babel. Not one, but a multitude: each person, his or her own tower, making not meaning, but noise and static. We despair because there are so many words and so little communication. Although we seem to be speaking the same language, who really listens, who really hears, who really understands, and who really cares?

The art of dialogue, if it ever really existed, has been all but lost. And skill in argument as a reasoned, thoughtful, civil, and enlightening exchange has been replaced by a culture of meanness in which, because winning trumps everything including understanding, we are all diminished.

There is no doubt that the technology with which we communicate has grown exponentially even as our ability to communicate has lost intimacy, imagination, integrity, and impact. In a time long ago, when quill pen dipped in ink, was poised to scratch meaning across the page of a letter, did we pause and consider what we would say and how because we could not easily remove an error or misstatement? Did we pause, knowing that our words had to have a certain depth and luminosity to make sure that they remained alive on the page until they were read by the subject of our attention many days or weeks hence? And in conversation, were we genteel because our words were not a means, but an end because the purpose of the conversation was not to inform, instruct, or declare, but simply to connect, to relate, to share?

How shall we bring down the towers of Babel? How shall we bridge the chasm that separates us each from the other? How shall we overcome this soul-wrenching isolation? Let us undertake a new spiritual discipline. Let us speak as if we mattered. Let us speak as if the person to whom we were speaking mattered. Let our words become benedictions, which simply means “good words:” good words spoken by good hearts. Let our words become meditations in kindness as the purpose of our speaking becomes mutual transformation.

Let us listen not with our ego, but with our heart as we risk being transformed by the words of others. Let our listening become so deep and profound that we hear all that is said as it was intended, and all that remains unsaid. Let our listening become so deep that we abandon judgment in favor of understanding, and seek wisdom over information. Let our listening become so deep that we become multi-lingual, understanding the language of sorrow and joy, of fear and courage, of anger and bliss, of confusion and clarity, knowing that our mastery of the vocabulary of feeling will indeed allow us to listen with empathy and compassion.

May our good words and deep listening replace the towers of Babel with a life-affirming, universal language that gladdens the heart, energizes the spirit, and comforts the soul.