Singing in my university’s concert choir was one of my most cherished college memories. I stumbled into the concert choir after mistakenly attending a rehearsal and accidentally discovering my talent for ensemble singing. There are numerous reasons why singing in an ensemble is beneficial for the soul. Perhaps the most crucial moral lesson is blending. One cannot perform well in an ensemble if they aren’t willing to listen to the voices of others and adjust their voice to blend. Choirs are not filled with soloists. Everyone can’t be Beyoncé; even she knew how to blend when she sang in Destiny’s Child. For the music to work, all the voices must harmonize together. Harmony requires humility.
Listening to one another is not just essential for ensemble singing. A community — a group of friends, a family, a campus, a society, or even the world — reaches its full potential only when all the voices work together in harmony. This is not to say that every chord a community strikes is “beautiful” in the same way. The song of a given community may be in a major or minor key with various accidentals, but it should always be together. In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion, he imagines the world’s creation as a song begun by Eru, “the One,” with one note around which a chorus of divine beings, the Ainur, adds their harmonies. Evil is introduced into the world when one of the Ainur, Melkor, decides to add cacophony to the celestial hymn. Melkor thought only of himself, his power, and his vision for the world when he added his music. He didn’t care about the other voices raised around him. He didn’t think they added anything of value to the song.
In his 1961 book, The New Man, Thomas Merton explores the concept of “free speech”—which he calls parrhesia (puh-REE-zee-uh)—as speech that goes beyond mere communication. Free speech, he says, facilitates communion. Parrhesia was speech within the ancient Greek city (or “polis”) that enabled its internal cohesion and proper functioning. This type of speech wasn’t simply speaking at or past one another, but to and with. Like an endless circle, authentic free speech emerges from and establishes connections across perceived and actual differences. As long as the First Amendment has existed, Americans have debated what constitutes “free speech.” These discussions continue in our contemporary society. I am not a legal scholar; my vocation is that of a priest, and my profession is that of chaplain. My primary concern is moral, not legal. Instead of focusing on the boundaries established by laws and statutes that define the minimum acceptable level of discourse, I often wonder what could happen if we aimed for more exceptional speech, speech that seeks to attract, create, build, and inspire. What if, instead of merely striving to ensure our speech is free from hate and prejudice (which is the bare minimum), we aimed to eliminate ego, pretense, and pride from our words? What if we sought speech that transcends the turbulent waters of disunity and soars together towards the majestic peaks of harmony?
This kind of speech demands openness and humility, as Joan Chittister rightly points out:
“We are not the last word, the final answer, the clearest insight into anything. We have one word among many to contribute to the mosaic of life, one answer among many answers, one insight out of multiple perspectives.”
It takes immense humility to acknowledge what Nicolaus Copernicus discovered centuries ago: we are not the center of the universe. We are merely one individual among the over 100 billion people who have ever lived on a small, habitable planet among eight other planets (previously 9), orbiting a mid-sized star among billions of other stars, all situated within a galaxy among billions or trillions of galaxies in the observable universe! Even within a single community, we are surrounded by countless others who bring their own histories, traditions, experiences, and perspectives, enriching the diverse tapestry of our shared existence. We must learn to embrace this diversity by striving for humble speech. Elsewhere, Chittister says, “The humble person cultivates a soul in which everyone is safe.” This is not easy, especially when everything seems so volatile and we all feel on edge. It is not easy, but it is necessary.
In I Never Thought of It That Way, Monica Guzman introduces another word: ken. Originating from a nautical term referring to a sailor’s ability to see to the horizon on the water, the term later evolved to encompass one’s range of vision, both on and off the water. Eventually, it came to denote one’s range of knowledge or understanding. Guzman explains,
“If something is ‘beyond my ken,’ it’s beyond my understanding. I don’t see it, so I can’t know it. It’s beyond my horizon. It’s beyond me.”
We can’t see what we don’t know, we can’t know what we aren’t close to, and we can’t get close if we aren’t willing to cultivate an open and humble heart. If our vision, or ken, is limited, we can only broaden our understanding of the world by seeking out the perspectives of others, by listening to their voices and adjusting ours in response. In my opinion, perhaps if we engaged in this practice more frequently, we would be less likely to find ourselves repeatedly falling into the recurring pitfalls of injustice, violence, and corrosive divisiveness within our various communities.
Try on new perspectives. Bridge divides. Enlarge your ken. Expand your horizon. Listen to your neighbor and adjust accordingly. In my grandmother’s wise words, “God gave us two ears and one mouth so that we can listen and speak in direct proportion.” Then, and only then, can we hope to build communities truly spacious enough to be filled with the diverse beauty and gifts we all bring.
