This week, there were two speakers at the Centre where I am the director—full houses for both of them. The topics were from decidedly different realms— The first, delivered by a Catholic theologian and Assistant professor at the Atlantic School of Theology, was on J.D. Vance, his brand of Catholicism, and the New Right. The second, a book launch and talk from someone who had worked as a chaplain in the local hospital for over twenty years and who left because of his moral distress over MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying).

The two talks would seem to have been addressing different things—and they were—on the surface. But the more I consider them, the deeper my pondering takes me and the more intertwined the two become.

From the journal…David Maginley speaks of dying and death so…fluidly? Respectfully. Both factually/scientifically and with reverence/awe. He is a beautiful example of someone who can speak Word in a variety of languages…those of science, faith, silence, presence…All of those being different languages through which one might communicate and hear Word…that which touches deepest within, foundations, points of groundedness, and springboards into Mystery…the Deeper Down that lives and moves and has being at the confluence of mind, heart/body, and spirit.

Seems like a similar thing to a recent conversation about the ‘lenses’ we each need in order to see clearly what is around us—to know that trees are in fact people, or people, trees. (Jesus and the blind man from the Gospel of the other day). What are the languages we already know? What are the languages we are each called to learn…to be communicators of, conduits for, revealers of Word? What language in a given situation allows the greatest transparency so that it is Word that flourishes? And the thing is that we listen in a language too, which I find as fascinating as it is plain as day. What that means to me is that the more fluent I become through experience, exposure, practice, the greater the chance not only that I am closer, I hope, to that transparency, but also, the more I am able to understand, receive, take in, the Word being spoken around me, the Word offered me, in the stories told, the joys and frustrations, the questions, the loves. And the bigger a sense of the whole, or at least a fuller sense of it, of God, manifest in the wondrous, sometimes challenging, diversity of creation.

Which brings me to David Deane’s talk on JD Vance and the critique of modern liberalism. How often any political dialogue turns into a scramble for a toehold while climbing to a plateau of Right over a stumble into loose stones rolling into the valley below…We are only able to listen, to communicate effectively, if each side of a dialogue knows or has interest in the language of the other. That, and maintaining a faith that at the heart of language is in fact Word…It feels like as a speaker and a listener both, I need that reminder. As soon as we choose to believe that only one language, one lens for viewing the world, reveals everything, makes it all clear and therefore the best, most authentic, most real version of things…then the more people are excluded, the smaller God becomes, and the lonelier our world.