Communication among people is not as simple as many think, since people do not speak, in reality, the same language. Language is not merely about words, which meanings are to be found in a dictionary. The word is the meaning within you, which is associated with your culture, feelings, belief and education. A dictionary might facilitate conversation, since it is a book of terminologies, and people have agreed about their denotation. However, when words supersede their sensory meaning, they would not have the same delimitation and the same depth for me and you, and they would not hold their connotation from generation to another. In an environment, for example, love would be understood as appropriation, while in another context it would denote giving. A young man might express his love to a young lady, as his feelings are preoccupied by the sense of domination, while she might not be feeling like being drifted by him, rather she might have mixed feelings with the tendency of being dissolved or merged. Words have colors and tunes. They might seem like dancing for some, while not for others. They either reveal or obfuscate. They give life or annihilate. That is why the word has become occasionally a means for division rather than union.
According to the story in Genesis, in the beginning of creation “the whole earth had one language and the same words.” [Gen.11: 1] Then, people wanted to build for themselves “a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens,” [Gen.11: 4] namely, they have boasted in themselves. And God said: “let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” [Gen.11: 7] In reality this is not merely a description of the divergence of the nation, it is rather a symbolic description of the divergence of individuals. Disagreement has emerged among us, so that we became strangers to one another.
This is not limited to the language, since those knowledgeable among us can make their concepts converge, whenever they read the dictionaries proficiently. The problem does not end here. The problem is that you would destroy the Other with his/[her] language. This is why some of the colonists wanted to eliminate the language of the colonized people, since by one’s language one remains him/[her]self and thus continues to defy. Under the Ottoman colonization of the Balkans, the Turks’ elimination of the Greek language was an essential element of the annihilation of the Greek people. And those who were martyred, among the Greeks, were martyred because of their strive to preserve the language. That is why the revival of a language in any country is the revival of the national identity. The one language was the expression of love.
The mere use of the same terminologies does not always lead us to the purpose. What happens, that whenever you compose a statement according to the grammar of the language and the meaning of the terminologies as they are in dictionaries, the Other misunderstands you? Perhaps there is heedlessness or abhorrence toward the one conversing you, which drives you to distort what he/[she] wanted. Perhaps there is an interpretation of what he/[she] said which imposes upon him/[her] a sense he/[she] would not mean. Language is not [a mere] language. It is “wisdom and spirit”. This is similar to the hands of God the Father, as Irenaeus, the bishop of Lion, said; and they are as well the same for the human being. Wisdom, for us, communicates wisdom and the spirit communicates the spirit. And then the articulation becomes either a tool for convergence or divergence. Whenever it serves for convergence unity between you and the Other occurs, with or without the words of the dictionary. Tools might be eliminated, whenever the heart [communicates] the heart.
We cannot penetrate the depth of this reflection unless we accept the words of “Muḥῑṭ al- Muḥῑṭ” [the Arabic dictionary] in explaining the meaning of language, saying: “it is probable that it has derived from the Greek word logos, and it means word.” This is my contention. And if we come back to the introduction of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word”, “and the Word was with God” [John 1: 1]. The Greek original for “with” means “to” or “towards”, and thus the meaning would be that the word is moving or approaching God. And whenever we project this meaning on the “word” in its human sense, we should understand that the human word does not exist other than through its truthfulness, or its movement toward Truth. And since the human word is not always truthful, this gives rise at least to ambiguity, and at most to a conflict. Communication does not occur between the truthful and the deceptive one, and then, words turn into knives.
In a sense, which I think is close to the Greek purport, [when it is said that someone] talked to another means that he/[she] has hearted the other. And the hurt is painful. Thus, remoteness is not possible between the word and the truthfulness of the honest and pure person. There is no aloofness between what you say and what you are. This is the essence of testimony, whether by the tongue or the blood. Whenever you carry the attribute of purity it would be transmitted through you, and you would become either the one spoken with, i.e. the wounded one, or the speaker. You would articulate your utterance with or without words, but always with love. Love, then, transmits and is transmitted, and itself is communication.
And if you wish, love is communion [or communication in love]. We borrow the word from the sensible to the rational, and as men and women are united through being merciful to one another, as the Qur᾿an says, the person communicates another through honesty and humility. Then, there would be no need for a language. The body has been a barrier for the convergence of thoughts, thus the language was made for the purpose of making encounter possible. However, sometimes the language has become [an instrument for] separation and division. Through it the bond has disappeared and the tongues has been confused because of sins, until from above descends that which brings the tongues together.
In relation to the collapse of the tower of Babel and its city, we read in the Book of Acts: “When the day of Pentecost had come (that is the fiftieth day after Easter), they were all together in one place (which is in contrast to the dispersion in Babel). And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages” (2: 1-4).
My reading of this text is that the language each of the disciples has spoken reflects the tongue of fire which has descended upon him. You either speak of fire or you are about nothing, and this requires that you use your tongue, lips, or it does not require any sensible thing, since your heart would utter. Then, communication would become communion [or communication in love].
There is no language in heaven, since those deified ones have been united with God, and God is relation and does not need any tool. The deified ones look at God, as every one of them sees on the Other’s face the manifestation of the Lord.
Here, we can imitate the heavenly ones whenever language becomes a bind that brings us and the Other together. So we love the Other and we let our language carry the light whenever it hears an utterance or it doesn’t.
Maximus the Confessor, who was martyred in the seventh century in the Byzantine Empire and was born in Golan, said that the words of the prophets are incarnations of God. This is of course an image. However, he, the eastern Christian, knew that the perfect prayer, known as the prayer in the name of Jesus can be the prayer of the heart, that is to say the prayer can be raised without words. In our tradition, whenever the ascetics were outside the Sunday Liturgy, as they were leading an ascetic life in the wilderness, they have fulfilled the prayer of the heart, namely they have dispensed with the words of prayers known to them. It has been told, as part of this literature, that once monks have asked their elder to talk to them and he answered them: “If you have not learned from my voice, how would you learn from my words?”
You keep silent in order that God talks in you and you might preserve God’s mind and God might shape you from within. Whenever this truly happens within you, you become a light and Godself becomes your word. This is why I have heard one of our preachers saying in excitement: “whenever you become living gospels, tear up the written Gospel”. Yes, we pursue the Holy Books, in order that we do not deceive ourselves and think that we have reached perfection. Nevertheless, the aim of that preacher, as I perceived it, was that the purpose behind the word is silence. Our Fathers said: The Word (the eternal Son) has come out of the silence of the Father. And the Son gives Himself to you by the Holy Spirit, who makes you either a writing theologian or a saint who does not write. And the saint, according to our monastic narrative, whenever raises his/[her] fingers in front of the believers, they see them as ten candles, and this would be enough for them to learn. This is the culmination of communication.
Translated by Sylvie Avakian-Maamarbashi
Original Text: “التواصل” –An Nahar- 07.11.2009
