It’s All About Communication

MY WIFE was casually talking about contracts—the legal document—when it suddenly occurred to me that everything legal, and every agreement, is rooted in communication: agreements between parties. Indeed, relationally, we are worse than nothing without communication, and undeniably there is conflict abounding when we communicate poorly.

But communication is like the Tower of Babel.

We all tend to ‘talk’ different languages to each other; we have different love languages, different languages of apology, and different needs. We think differently and then we imagine the variety of moods we find ourselves experiencing. We don’t always feel just exactly the same as the person we’re communicating with. Actually, it is typically to the contrary.

So when life is all about communication—from the most informal means of relationship to the out-and-out legal—and we cannot escape the need to communicate—we best fashion ourselves in ways simplistic enough to get our communication right, most of the time. And when we get our communication wrong we need to know, immediately, so we can admit it, to ourselves and repent before God and the other, bringing us back into a communicative harmony—as much as it depends on us.

Language of Agreement

We all need bases of agreement in life.

If our worlds within do not agree, we experience anxiety. If we cannot gain agreement with another we also have anxiety because of the conflict.

A lack of agreement is really the base for conflict and we are not designed to endure unnecessary conflict without attempts at reparation.

We were designed with thinking minds and feeling hearts with the capacity to negotiate a conflict and to make disagreements, either within or without, palatable toward agreement for both parties, whether ‘both parties’ are within ourselves, or relationally with others, or with God for that matter.

And at our deepest level we seek agreement within. Our souls want to agree with our external environment. This is how we feel safe. Communication is central.

Communication is the language of agreement. It helps us to determine where we are in our world, and how we are relating within it.

Agreement, in the broadest sense, is a feeling of peace, from which joy comes, from the ability to love. Indeed, the Fruit of the Spirit—and all virtue—all emanate from the outcome of agreement.

Once we have integrated our inner world with our external world we have found Heaven on Earth. We have come to a place that the Lord’s Prayer calls for: “On earth as it is in heaven.”

Communication is how we bring this reality to bear within our worlds.

***

Communication is the sacred wisdom of God for a life of peace, joy, and all other virtue and fruit of the Spirit. We could pour ourselves into being better communicators and we would never ever be anything other than blessed all the more. It’s an investment worthy of all our time.

© 2013 S. J. Wickham.