Listening In Tongues

Listening in Tongues

"Whoever has ears ought to hear." - Matthew 13:9

Have you ever noticed that the harder you try to make somebody understand something, the less they actually do?

On my evening walk, I listened to an interview with Meredith Monk, a singer and composer who writes songs for the human voice that contain few, if any, words. She thinks of the voice as "the original instrument." So her songs are really strange (and I mean that in a good way) - moans, cries, shouts, lovely abstract spirals of choirs singing without trying to "say" anything with words. It's like jazz scat singing, but with less rhythm and more drama.

http://www.onbeing.org/program/meredith-monks-voice/1398

In many ways, Monk's music is like the Pentecostal practice of speaking in tongues. It's the ancient method described in the Bible (1 Corinthians 12:10 among others) of ecstatic speaking and singing without words. It's also found in the practices of Sufi Islam and Tibetan Buddhism. The belief is that the speaker has come so close to God that the experience is beyond words, is mystical and transcendent, yet must be expressed.

Presbyterians, historically, have been pretty suspicious of tongue-speakers. We come from the flavor of Christians that want everything explained in the depth of points and sub-points, using as many ten-dollar words as possible. We think of ourselves as scholarly, so we're dismissive of anything that can't be described and resolved. It works. Sometimes. But sometimes not.

And that's the problem.

When someone tries to carefully explain something that I don't have time to hear, they may be saying real words, but it's like I'm listening in tongues. Their lips are moving, words are coming out, but all I hear is, "Blah, blah, yip, screech, urggh, skippity-bop-boo."

Jesus knew this. He didn't speak in tongues, but he knew that people listen in them. He was notorious for not explaining what he meant. Maybe that's because he knew the more you try to explain God, the less attractive it sounds. So, when Jesus closed his lessons (often just parables with no clear point), he would say something like, "Whoever has ears ought to hear."

Well, yes, we should hear, and we would hear, if we weren't so likely to be listening in tongues.

Speaking in tongues expresses how close a person is to God. Listening in tongues shows how disconnected we are.

Listening, hearing, really sitting still and being present with someone - is hard. Listening to God, who doesn't always speak in words, who doesn't always draw neat conclusions for us - that's hard, too. Really hard.

So often, it's not that we need to "learn God's language," it's that we need to stop listening in tongues.

"Whoever has ears ought to hear."