No Less a Talking Sheep 

We are talking less these days. The noise generated by AI slop may be on the rise, but we humans are speaking less to each other, our conversations replaced by digital technology. One psychology professor wonders whether it does not bode ill for our flourishing that we, who are social animals, are now less verbal, less social, than ever before. 

In C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, Aslan the Lion touches his nose to the noses of some animals in the newly created land of Narnia. Those who receive this touch from Aslan become Talking Beasts, separated from the rest of the beasts. One is reminded of the account in the book of Genesis, of how the Lord God breathed into man’s nostrils the breath of life. There is something wonderful in how Lewis depicted what it means to be made in the very image and likeness of God.  

The word logos means reason, speech. God is the Logos, and we humans are made in His image. The psalmist says that “we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.” Talking sheep à la Narnia would not be far off. Reasoning animals we are, animals endowed with speech.  

If reason and speech are thus connected and constitutive of who we are, it would not be surprising that less talking with one another, less of this activity with its intrinsic variegated and rich human connections, would have to do with the dumbing down of ourselves, even a diminished humanity. There would be less conversation, less connection with others. We’d sharpen each other less, navigate difficult settings less, reflect less. We’d find it harder to know how to build and repair friendships, not having practiced the art as much. Conversing less, we’d be less versed in each other’s needs, our complexities. We’d celebrate and encourage each other less—love less. This is a more impoverished life, a lonely one, loveless. 

To be sure, there are famous moments in which talking less, even silence, takes over—consonant with how, in the fallen world, sin is not lacking in the multitude of words. Cordelia in King Lear, refusing to play the game of ostentatious love through speech for vulgar transactional ends, says to herself, “What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.” There was also silence ordered for the children of Israel as they marched around the city of Jericho, as well as silence imposed on the priest Zacharias upon receiving the news that he and his wife, old and barren, would conceive a child, who was to be John the Baptist.  

One could read these as discipline—self-imposed in the case of Cordelia, whose name means heart and who actually loves her father the king best out of all her siblings, refusing to cheapen that love by acquiescing in his game. Or in the case of the children of Israel and Zacharias, discipline imposed from without, by Joshua as leader of the Israelites and by the Angel Gabriel who had borne the news to Zacharias, lest the blessing awaiting each recipient be marred by murmuring or lack of trust. In these instances, then, the observation of the wisest man, Solomon, rings true: “He who restrains his lips is wise.” But in none of these cases was silence a default, a degenerative state, acedia for our times. It was a discipline so that one could stand up straighter and truer at the end. 

Neither is the state of being dumbed and dumbed down the same as the state of being dumbfounded, or perhaps better stated, awestruck in glory. Upon hearing God answer his questions through much suffering, Job says, “I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.” The Preacher teaches, “For God is in heaven, and you on earth; therefore let your words be few.”  

G. K. Chesterton recounts St. Thomas Aquinas’s encountering something, while celebrating Mass one day, “the nature of which will never be known among mortal men.” St. Thomas had a trusted friend, a friar named Reginald. Reginald asked him to write again, which he had apparently stopped doing—St. Thomas of all people, he, the most prolific and contemplative Doctor of the Church. St. Thomas replied, “I can write no more.” A silence seemed to have occurred, when Reginald then asked him the same thing. Here Chesterton tells us, “Thomas answered him with even greater vigor, ‘I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw.’”

St. Paul writes of how he was “caught up into Paradise and heard inexpressible words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” Is this what St. Peter tells us about, “joy inexpressible and full of glory”? Is it a glimpse of glory, so wonderfully splendid, that it transcends words? If so, what a gift, fit for those who have exercised and answered faithfully the call to contemplation. 

That is certainly not the same as the state of talking and conversing less with each other that has befallen us of late, or that we have let befall us. It is rather as far as the twain could be. While one is contemplation and seeking after Truth, the order and the Logos, becoming more fully human all the while, the other is like atrophied muscle: atrophied relationships, atrophied capacity, atrophied self—atrophied, diminished humanity. 

Where to go from here? If atrophy is one honest manifestation of it, if it is among other things capacity we’re talking about, something we can discipline ourselves to exercise, what if we set out to do the deeply human things with words and relationships? As beings of the logos, it would be good for us to read and speak words. So then it would be good to read books and talk about them with friends and family, to move away from sitting and scrolling, watching videos on sundry lit devices, flickering figures endlessly moving on the walls of the cave. It would be good to read to our children, asking them questions and conversing along the way, inviting their questions, wonder, and contemplation. It would be good to have friends and the friendless alike to break bread together at our homes in hospitality, making room for conversation and reflection, space for new and deeper friendships. And if it’s true that we ought to read words and books, we certainly ought to read the Word, the Book of books. Perhaps we might even slow down and chant the psalms with believers across time and space, take the time to savor each word, lilt, and syllable. Let us sing with the psalmist, “My tongue is the pen of a ready writer.” 

Abraham entertained strangers, and by so doing he unwittingly entertained the Lord Himself. If we are dumbed that we know less how to relate to each other, there is relatedly the danger that we know less how to wonder, contemplate, and render due thanks and praise to God, as we ought to, proper to our nature.  

After Aslan makes the Talking Beasts, he says to them, “Creatures, I give you yourselves. … I give you the stars and I give you myself. …. Treat [the Dumb Beasts] gently and cherish them but do not go back to their ways lest you cease to be Talking Beasts. For out of them you were taken and into them you can return. Do not so.” We are now in danger of becoming less of ourselves, reasoning animals, endowed with speech. May we turn from our ways and rather say, “O Lord, open Thou our lips, and our mouth shall show forth Thy praise.” 

Image licensed via Adobe Stock.