Sound

It was while cobbling together a high voltage power supply for a lab-made nitrogen laser (some time in the 1980s) when I discovered something about sound. I went to our venerable guru, Mr Tecson, for advice about my circuit that was emitting a shrill, high frequency tone the source of which I could not trace. No matter how I tweaked the circuit.

He said, “What sound?” I said, “There, right there, you can’t hear it?”

“Nope.”

Oh no, was I just imagining all this, was I hearing “voices”? Worried about my sanity, and in the spirit of the scientific method, I sought “inter-subjective warrant” (i.e. validation from others). I noticed that my younger colleagues did hear the high-pitched piercing tone, while the older ones did not. I am not an ear specialist but I gathered that the older you get, the deafer you are to high frequency sound. I guess, the greyer you become, the more sluggish the beating of that little drum in your ear pipe, and the harder it is for you to catch the treble highs (such as those that come from tweeter speakers).

Catching sound and making sound seems to be what the Gospel story today is all about. When Jesus heals a deaf and mute person, God seems to be telling us something about hearing and speaking. God is Word after all and if he can come to us in manifold ways, today he comes to us more as word to be spoken and heard, rather than as word to be written or read.

Dwelling then on these two important senses of hearing and speaking, we can reflect on how these faculties are diminished and enhanced.

What contributes to hearing loss or gain? For loss, I can think of loudness and multiplicity, cacophony and high frequency. Our present world is noisier than ever, the decibels and distraction unprecedented. The multiplicity of channels and stimuli leads to numbness and boredom and eventually to loss of listening capacity. Our world is high speed, high volume, high definition. The increasing granularity may be good for data or high res audio, but our human ears (and hearts) can only take so much high frequency. Perhaps at a later stage, our bodies will evolve faster-switching multi-tasking faculties, but until then, our slow selves can only catch so much high frequency and high volume.

Hearing is likewise diminished by emotion. We hear what we want to hear. We don’t hear what we refuse to hear. This kind of selective hearing is like filtering tones the way we tweak knobs on the equalizer to modulate sound to our liking. Hearing is diminished by pain inflicted on us by hurtful words. It is lost in the racket of boring chatter. Hearing is distorted in the lust for gossip, the sensational and macabre, never mind if truth and dignity are mangled in the process.

On the other hand, hearing is enhanced by silence. We hear well with the right volume, the proper cadence, the respectful placement of words and silences.

There is hearing gain when there is intentionality. A hearing aid does not have intentionality; it cannot sift the various frequencies that assail the senses. The human heart, however, is shaped by love’s intentionality. It is love that moves us from hearing to listening, from catching sound to finding meaning. Love gives direction and patience to our listening.

Hearing is enhanced when there is reverence and truth in the words being heard, when there is depth and resonance in the music being made. Hearing is enriched when there is humility and compassion in the silence being offered.

In speaking, there is loss and gain as well. Speaking is diminished when it comes before listening. Even biology is quite clear about the sequence: impaired hearing leads to impaired speaking. So too in the realm of relationships and encounters: the person who speaks without first listening is empty. The person whose listening is impaired speaks gibberish.

Certain emotions can diminish speaking. Thus can we feel grief that is unspeakable or sense the fear that steals voices from the poor. Like hearing, speaking is weakened by chatter, in the volley of careless and hurtful words.

Speaking, as with naming, is an exercise of power. Speaking diminishes when that power is misused. “Loudership” is a label for a perverse kind of leadership practiced by those who would take power on the strength of the volume of their empty voices.

On the other hand, speaking is enhanced when it comes after listening, after pondering what one has heard. Voice is gained when there is self-possession (which includes self-listening), when the one who speaks has learned to open up and listen to the listener.

Speaking is enriched by words that have the power to create and heal and liberate. It deepens further when it gives voice to sacred things that have been silenced, such as truth, beauty, justice, and love. Speaking gains strength when it moves us and gives us back our voices.

In the gospel today, Jesus speaks only one word, “Ephphatha!” which means, “Be opened!” It was likely his own word and, according to Pope Benedict XVI, the one word that "sums up Christ’s entire mission. He became man so that man, made inwardly deaf and dumb by sin, would become able to hear the voice of God, the voice of love speaking to his heart, and learn to speak in the language of love…”

So here, right where we are, God speaks to us as love speaks to our heart. Love speaking this way is not hurried or high frequency. Love speaks in whispers. Listen. The sound it makes is the sound that awakens us to our meaning.

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Fr. Jose Ramon T Villarin SJ is President of the Ateneo de Manila University.  For feedback on this column, email [email protected].