It’s difficult to be in a place wherein the majority if not all of the people around you are speaking another language – one that you don’t understand.  I remember distinctly some experiences I had in Germany while I was on a graduate exchange program.  Although I had studied the language, I had not mastered hearing much less speaking the language in an understandable way.  Many times I ended up ordering something to eat which I had not intended and also saying some things that apparently were quite rude based upon the response I had from those with whom I was speaking.  There was frustration on both ends of these interactions.  Many times, though, I found that words sometimes can get in the way.  Sometimes I could sense exactly what someone was communicating without any words at all.  This is a way of listening that involves your body, mind, and heart.  Fully engaged in this way, it seems that much more can be expressed than what mere words can convey.

This full engagement experience occurred during my visit to Nicaragua a couple of years ago.  Although I could understand some of the Spanish that was being spoken, I found that I “understood” much more from simply looking into the faces of those I was around.  There was a common “space” of mutual honesty and desire to share that carried us into a deeper place beyond the realm of words.  This common place was the vulnerability that we recognized and affirmed in each other in an interaction without pretensions, without agendas, without the felt need to impress each other.  This is the space of solidarity that “speaks” from a shared heritage of humanity with all its struggles, challenges, dreams and joys.  This is the deep place of Listening, where the “self” or ego gets out of the way.

In yet another story from the book of Genesis (GN 11: 1-9) this week, today we hear about the Tower of Babel, wherein the people of the earth, all speaking the “same language” of as the Scripture says “making a name for ourselves,” begin building a great tower into the sky:

‘Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the sky,
and so make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth.”’

As the story goes, God’s response to this display of self-interest and arrogance was to confound this people of all the same language by preventing them from understanding what each was saying.  The one language they had shared, which as the text tells us, was self-preoccupied, now became fragmented and resulted in the scattering of the people over all the earth.

“That is why it was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the speech of all the world.
It was from that place that he scattered them all over the earth”

More than a story that “accounts” for the creation of different languages and the scattering of the ancient people all over the earth, I wonder if this story is not saying something about a “false unity” in which we sometimes engage.  It’s not too hard to look around at our world to see how easily people can come together against something or someone.  If something or someone is perceived as a threat, the bandwagon quickly fills up and there is a sense of “unity,” that betrays itself in the language of scapegoating and negative behavior towards what is perceived as a common “enemy.”  How many towers of Babel have we attempted to build throughout the history of humankind, speaking the same “language” of self-interest, disregard for others, and striving to make a “name” for ourselves?  How often have we striven to inflate ourselves and worlds thinking this would bring us fullness of life?

It’s almost as if God is using diversity to confound this “false unity” that comes along with identifying and striving against a “common enemy” like obscurity and the sense of having to compete for attention and worth. It appears that the recognition of diversity in our lives can unhinge our false perceptions and transform our attitudes of self-interest and “making a name for ourselves” into attitudes based not on climbing scales of identification through successes but rather into ones that actually move in the opposite direction, seemingly scattering the false promise of celebrity and climbing to the top of that confounded tower!

Jesus scathingly makes this point in today’s Gospel (MK 8: 34 – 9:1):

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.

 

This “life” that must be lost or “scattered” seems to precisely be the “life” that we mistake for fullness and peace, which actually ends up being the opposite.  We are somehow lured into the idea that “building up” things like wealth and fame will bring us a “fullness” of life that will grant us security and protection.  Jesus is saying something radically different about life.  The fullness of life is paradoxically found within the loss of life, precisely the loss or “scattering” of this “life” that speaks only the language of self-preoccupation and success.  It comes down to the question, ”what language our life is speaking?”

The scriptures might be telling us that we will not gain life by focusing all our energies on “building ourselves up,” but that it is the scattering of this energy focus that will reveal the truth of life.  Might this be the meaning when Jesus talks about “denial” and “taking up the cross?”  Don’t misunderstand.  Jesus is not saying that the pursuit of well-being in our physical lives, e.g., a home and food and even entertainment, are bad things.  But, I believe he is saying that if this “comfort” is sought at all cost to everything and everyone else, the result will be the unravelling of our world, ultimately isolating or “scattering” us from ourselves and each other.  Seeking a life of false “fullness” will in fact result in the worst kind of scattering emptiness that precludes authentic communication and communion.

So, how can this loss of the language of self-preoccupation spoken by the ego result in “saving” us?  I believe it has to do with that shared vulnerable space where the only language we “speak” is actually that of listening.  We learn to listen to each other, really listen, without an agenda of reactions, but instead with an honest response that fully engages the body, mind and heart.  This is when we can hear a “different” language in its own tongue without judgment and indeed respond with our own language without feeling overpowered, ridiculed or stripped of dignity because we are honoring the speaker and the listener.  This is the unity of the Body of Christ.

Jesus’ vulnerability has nothing to do with weakness, but in fact is the most stringent of projects, because all we have to do is listen and receive.  When we can do this, our response will come in a moment of communion where the sharing of our diverse lives happens within a common Life of giving BY receiving.  This is a way of taking up our cross.  We are crossing our “selves” in Christ when we scatter the empty babel of the ego’s self-projects and find our lives “lost” and “saved” simultaneously in each other through Christ.

Peace

Thomas

The soul is the delicate yet durable cloth  woven and laced together in loving pattern  by the merciful strokes of God’s Passings…
And the sheen of our soul is the ever-glowing  awareness we have of this sacred-stitched fabric.