BEYOND BABBLING

 Babbling is typically identified with meaningless or incoherent speech. Negatively, babbling represents spiritual fragmentation resulting from human pride as seen in Genesis 11,1-9. And yet, as seen in Acts 2, reversing Genesis’ Babel, Pentecost presents us with people speaking in tongues, often perceived as babbling, but understanding each other through the Spirit. 

James Joyce (Finnegans Wake), underlined by a stream of consciousness, verges on babbling, intentionally mimics Babel’s collapse of language in Genesis as spirituality-charged experience that entails a creative rebirth, providing us with insights into the meaning of our silence.  

Saint Teresa of Avila (The Interior Castle) identifies mystical prayer with a speechless or incoherent experience so that ‘the soul neither sees nor hears… all it knows is that it is rejoicing ’. Hence, it is not surprising that babbling identifies with innocence and truth because ‘through the praise of children and of infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger’ (Psalm 8,2). 

This understanding enlightens Julian of Norwich’s revelation of Divine Love, where in her interpretation of the crucifix, she perceived the need to grow in love (Agape) as the stronghold of our discipleship. 

Her ‘All shall be well’ demands trust: to be open to all things in one’s life without the temptation to confuse life with what is happening beyond oneself, the temptation to favour mirages that justify our conceit: self-focused, evading, God converts into a distancing postscript.  

In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, both Zosima and the monk Alyosha speak in fragmented ways when they experience divine rapture. In this example, awakened by God’s love, babbling indicates an unfiltered lived-out, spiritual response to suffering or grace. 

Our understanding of prayer, therefore, necessitates the awakening of the heart, reminding us of Teresa’s observation, but this is only possible when we can identify it because ‘where your treasure is, your heart will be also’ (Matthew 6,21). God’s committed love is our treasure: that which provides us with restfulness of heart and peace of mind.

And yet, we pray with ambiguous hearts as we learn to cultivate awareness of God, conscious of our fragility. Awakening to God’s love offers us the ability to accept our life as it is: the wholeness encountered in prayer allows us to rise from our servility and embrace God’s freedom.

To cultivate the awareness of love in an awakened heart determines our search for God because God is not an object to comprehend or an excuse to flee our fears; rather, God is a Thou to encounter - His acceptance by accepting ourselves. Not to hide from God because ‘I have not come the righteous but sinners’ (Luke 5,32).  

In this scenario, our words fail us when we encounter ourselves in God because we realise that focusing on our concerns is an illusion. An awakened heart is, therefore, focused on God’s invitation to let go: to accept our fragility as a response to Agape - to take everything as it is and leave it in God’s hands. What underlines this insight is the realisation that we love because God loved us first (1John 4,19).

A spirituality of babbling entails becoming vulnerable to God by exploring the meaning of God’s infinite love, challenging our boundaries to what we mean by love. Beyond our babbling, we encounter the solitude of silence. This is the incomprehensible joy of those who discover in the Magister the compassion to be oneself and grasp in our brokenness his presence. 

       Martin

  


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