The Tower of Babel

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1563)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

It is always and only words that confound and divide one from another. Without words, wars could not start and towers would not be brought down.The Tower of Babel left the whole world babbling.

For it is in the description, of one’s beliefs, thoughts, loves, dislikes, that the upsets come. It is in the insistence that my words describe the truth, that the Truth is lost.

Each one can sense the breeze from the west, but argue the origin of the sweet scent it carries. Each one can feel the warmth of the sun on bare skin, but one insists the rays are blue, another orange. Each can feel the welling up of abundant love on a child’s wedding day, but a father insists on calling it pride and everyone wonders what he could be so proud of.

It is in the description, only in the words, where division is created. We each have experience with feeling Love, and undeserved Peace, but it is when I insist on putting words onto Who or What that is, where It came from and what It means, that my experience reduces into small mindedness, distrust and discord.

Words are but symbols of concepts and form. When I insist on assigning a name to a flower, I have cut off the true essence of flowering. I have limited its meaning, and restricted its abilities. The magic of its petals cannot carry me to salvation anymore.