Babel
poem
Babel1
(Genesis 11:1-9, Acts 2, Revelation 7:9)
plan dispersion
scatter vowels like rain
confuse consonants
heavy snow
thick in the throat
honey tongued yearning
for ice dreams
baked clay
cracked earth
seedlings slender
slips of movement
turn centrifugal
forced on head
upside down laughter
fling constellations
from throats starry
aphorisms climb
into heaven's lap
wait until map
stretches tight
pulled at each corner
drying skin
crinkled parchment
unrolled river
billows over scroll
bubbling voices
mingle dances
flow faster
reunite eternityI give the credit for this post to Em Tyler of Grow + Go Believers and her note about how the same word in Hebrew for the languages being confused at Babel was the same word used at Pentecost for God bringing clarity. She kindly dialogued with me about how the Hebrew Scriptures were translated into Greek before Jesus’ time and became known as the Septuagint, clearing up my confusion about how the same word could be used in both Acts and Genesis. The poetic symmetry of Scripture’s lexicon often provides clues to the movement of redemption from Old to New Testament. Here we see that where God dispersed, he is bringing back together. As Em says in her note, “The Gospel unites what sin divided.”
I had completely forgotten about this poem I wrote back in 2009 as part of an online collaboration of poets for something called The Genesis Project sponsored by Utmost Christian Writers. This free verse meditation does not follow typical sentence structures. I rarely write with disjointed syntax and lack of punctuation, but here I picture God dispersing language like a cataclysmic weather event that covered the entire earth. Imagine language itself longing to be made whole, waiting to come back together. Our sense of fragmentation here on earth is not imagined. One day we will be complete, and on that day, every tribe and tongue will worship the Word who took on flesh as he unites all people and all their words once again.
For those of you who like the nitty gritty (in Nacho Libre accents please), keep reading for a stanza-by-stanza analysis.
Plan dispersion
Scatter vowels like rain
Confuse consonants
Heavy snow
Thick in the throat
Honey tongued yearning
For ice dreamsThe first stanza imagines God scattering vowels and confusing consonants like rain or snow across the earth, leaving people with tongues that were heavy and thick and unaccustomed to themselves. They longed for unification but no longer knew how to express what they were longing for. Like waking from a dream and forgetting what was dreamed, they were left with a yearning for something they had forgotten. Language shapes our understanding. It is both the window out of which we view the world and the limitation or boundary on the world thus viewed. This linguistic relativity (also known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) argues that the structure of a language determines how its speakers perceive the world. Take the almost cliche example of how many words a culture has for snow. Inuit, Sami, and Scot languages are said to have hundreds of words for the white precipitation most of us simply call snow. The poem nods at this with “honey tongued yearning / for ice dreams.” This intimate knowledge and ability to differentiate between forms gives cultures with nuanced snow vocabulary a different appreciation to discern, notice, and experience snow because of the proliferation of categories. Imagine what was lost at Babel when all the languages were scattered. Perhaps humans once had hundreds of ways to capture emotions and life events we now paint with broad strokes and experience only partially.
baked clay cracked earth seedlings slender slips of movement turn centrifugal forced on head upside down laughter
Adam was shaped from earth, so we are creatures of baked clay, pinned under the relentless sun on the cracked earth that was once whole. Like fragile seedlings, not ready for the brunt of a summer’s day, we grow in fits and spurts. Our slips of movement might seem insignificant, but there’s no such thing as staying still. The earth’s rotation determines that even those who appear most rooted to one spot are flying through space on the circular path of our rotation. Gravity both weighs on us and keep us safely pinned down. Centrifugal force is perceived force, really inertia, but that sense of being pushed is an apt metaphor for the way we use language to try to capture our experiences. The language of centrifugal force is insufficient, but we grapple with words to try to explain the sensation of life on a spinning planet. The laughter is upside down because the child who looks at a picture of our globe and wants to travel to the places where the people get to live upside down is more accurate than adults realize. We are all walking upside down relative to someone else on our sphere. We are tucked safely in this envelope of time in which to grapple with eternity.
fling constellations
from throats starry
aphorisms climb
into heaven's lapWhen I was a child, I loved looking at the stars, but they all blurred together into a dizzying canopy of bright points. I remember when my dad showed me the asterism called the Big Dipper, and suddenly I wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. Since I could anchor myself to the Big Dipper, and the North Star, I could find the Little Dipper, then Ursa Major and Minor. I loved Orion’s belt (vaguely associated in my mind with the Emily books by L.M. Montgomery, but I would need to reread the series to verify this loose connection) and looked forward to the times of year when Orion’s belt and the Big Dipper could be seen in the sky together. It was like two friends visiting at the same time.
Knowledge is dependent on story to be transmittable. Aphorisms (whether pithy truths or scientific principles) stand out amidst the spangled confusion of trying to absorb everything and become anchor points for understanding to web and grow. These aphorisms are dependent on language in order to be conveyed and remembered. In the same way that the night sky sorts itself into recognizable patterns through asterism and constellation, it is through picture and story that our words allow knowledge to be grasped, conveyed, and retained. It is not by accident that when the Word became flesh, a new star appeared in the sky. The night sky has always declared the glory of God, and one day a new heaven and a new earth will perfectly and fully declare the story it is singing even now.
wait until map stretches tight pulled at each corner drying skin crinkled parchment unrolled river billows over scroll
In Revelation 6:14 there is a vision of the heavens receding like a scroll and being rolled up at the end of time. This image is expounded on in the hymn “The Love of God” by Frederick M. Lehman. When I was at the Focus on the Family Institute, we sang this hymn together in a class taught by Del Tackett, and he articulated the holy wonder of what awaited us. The same heavens which declared the arrival of the baby king and which preach a sermon daily on God’s glory and majesty will one day be rolled up like a scroll. The river of God’s presence will then unroll and cover the earth. All who are hidden in Christ will be as safe as those in the ark.
Today we experience God’s presence through the words of Scripture. The five books written by Moses known as the Torah were primarily written on animal parchment: such a fragile vehicle to contain the very words of life. When the Holy Spirit filled believers at Pentecost, he came like a river. Jesus prophesies in John 7:37-39 that those who believed in him would receive rivers of living water, and lest we mistake the meaning John explains, “Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.” What had been reserved for prophets was suddenly poured out unstintingly. Now our fragile vehicles of flesh contain the very words of life. This is our reality as post-Resurrection believers, and it is also a picture of what awaits us when we leave the fragmentation of earth time and enter the eternal. Pentecost is a foreshadowing of heaven, when all believers from every tribe and tongue will be united before the throne of the Living God.
bubbling voices
mingle dances
flow faster
reunite eternityThe voice within each of us longs to be whole. We practice here in the imperfect, fitting words to our feelings and experiences, groping for the right phrase, trying out metaphors, searching for the real. One day we will experience communication that is complete. Our voices will join together and give praise before the river of living water, the fount of many blessings, the finder of lost children, the giver of words and the Word himself.
First published by Utmost Christian Writers for The Genesis Project (2009)
Your analysis is so in depth. I’m impressed!