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Presented May 10, 2004
I will not speak of the language of men - the language they use
to convey their thoughts about the world. I will not
even address the infinite varieties of speech, the
richness of vocabularies, the fullness of expression.
And despite the uniqueness of the language of men - its
privileged state in the choir of voices in our universe
- I will not speak about this kind of communication.
This is not the language I mean.
There is a spiritual state in which all human speech is
transcended. The German language has a word for that
exquisite state: Gewissen (conscience). Gewissen is the
language of the soul, the divine idiom. In Gewissen,
God's voice bypasses human ears and directly enters the
heart. And when men truly praise God or beg for guidance
in a time of trial, Gewissen is the language they use.
All men can learn this language, for it has no words. Yet, it is
not simple to learn. Most men do not want to speak or
hear it. Their prayers of thanksgiving too often express
deliverance from evil and their supplications are pleas
of desperation. Those of us who have learned it can
remember the helplessness we knew, that wretched state
of mind that made us seem so deaf and dumb to the
language of men. But those of us who have learned it
also know that this Voice of Silence, this eternal
expression of our connection to the Divine, is the most
beautiful language in the world.
Too many of us are not merely silent - we are mute. Yes, we speak
the jargon of economic progress, of technological
achievement; but we do not speak the language of the
heart. We are driven by meanness and greed into the
cacophony of base instinct.
The time has come for those of us who have learned both
languages, the human and the divine, to speak freely and
openly about the need for all men to learn about
Gewissen.
Human beings must not remain deaf and dumb to the Heart's
language...and be Gewissenlöse - unscrupulous men. Human
existence depends upon our learning to speak with
conscience. Gewissenhaft.
Buildings rise and fall. Civilizations flower and decay.
Vocabularies drift into oblivion. All is impermanent in
the great flux of the material world. But the Voice of
Conscience expresses an eternal communion, one that
unites us in dignity and gives meaning and purpose to
our lives.
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