Communication

“Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.” (Khalil Gibran).

The Tower of Babel (Bruegel the Elder)

It is no easy thing for two humans to communicate with each other.  Sometimes I think that it is one of the most challenging things in the entire world, to communicate with another human being.

I have been reflecting on why this is.

After all children who live with their parents from the moment of conception struggle to make their views and desires clear to their parents even when they are blood of their blood and flesh of their flesh – so to speak.

Husbands and wives who spend decades together in a family struggle to communicate clearly with each other and can still misunderstand each other even after dealing with the same issue time and time again.

The story we are told in the Old Testament, of the Tower of Babel, where the people tried to build a tower to reach Heaven and God reacted by scattering them and confusing the language of the world…

“Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.  They said to each other, ‘Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.’ They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar.  Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.’  But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.  The Lord said, ‘If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.  Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.’  So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city.  That is why it was called Babel – because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.” (Genesis 11:1-9).

Perhaps if it were not for this sin of pride we would be able to understand each other a little better?  Perhaps when God scattered the language, He was really scattering our ability to empathise with each other and understand the plight of another?

I am not really sure about this, but what I am sure about is that the suffering that a soul experiences as a result of the misunderstanding and miscommunication between souls is possibly the most tremendous.

Khalil Gibran, the Lebanese American poet prose writer, wrote, “Between what is said and not meant, and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.”

And I have been reflecting on those words today.  For it seems to me that this is the whole problem with our suffering.  We are losing love when we fail to communicate clearly.  And for that I am truly very very sad…

For with prayer, I stand on Holy Ground where everything is clear. Here. At the Foot of the Cross.