“Resonance” based on Genesis 11:1-9 and Acts 2:1-15

I have a lot of questions about Pentecost. I wonder what “divided tongues as of fire” might be trying to explain. I’m curious how a bunch of men from Galilee with the two or three languages they likely spoke could communicate effectively with people who spoke many other languages. I wonder what other names and words they used to try to describe the Spirit, and what the Spirit meant to them them, a number of years before the church created the concept of “Trinity.” Moreso than with most stories, I can’t tell what the kernel of it really is, what likely happened that day that they’re telling about with such passion.

There are a few things I can make good guesses on from Acts 2. It seems to be a story that is told to reverse of the Tower of Babel story. In doing so, it suggests that God has the power to connect us. It speaks of the power and mystery of the Holy Spirit, and explains that the Spirit is able to connect people across seemingly impossible barriers. Beyond that, I’m not really sure what it means, but I find those two pieces worthy of attention.

Let’s look at the Tower of Babel story, to make sense of my claim that Pentecost “undoes” it. The story is set in Babylon, and seems to make reference to the temples of Babylon to their god Marduk. Those temples were ziggurats, sort of rectangular towers with ramps. They are look like segmented pyramids. They were made of bricks, and could easily be called towers.

Ancient Israel’s history with Babylon is complex. Babylon was located in one of the early centers of human civilization, Mesopotamia. According to Genesis, Abraham himself left that area when he came to find the Promised Land, and the patriarchs’ spouses also came from there. So, it was a motherland to ancient Israel perhaps similar to how Great Britain is motherland to the USA (even though many of us don’t have British ancestry). Like the complicated history we have with Great Britain, so too did Israel and Babylon. Babylon defeated Judah in 587/586 BCE after an extended siege, destroyed the temple and the city gates, and took the leaders into exile as slaves in Babylon.

I believe, that the Hebrew Bible itself was written during and immediately after the exile. The stories, commands, and prophecies were usually much older, but they came into their current form at that time. They were both told and edited to answer the question “why did this happen to us?” alternatively phrased, “If our God is powerful, how did we get defeated (by Babylon)?”

In the story of the Tower of Babel, the story ends calling the tower “babel” which in Hebrew is “balal” which means “to confuse.” I think the story aims to diminish the power of Babylon by demeaning their temples, and at the same time tries to give an answer to a big human question: “why can’t we understand each other?”

It is a good and big question. It is much larger than even confusion about why various human languages exist, or why language itself keeps changing. Even when we speak the same language, it can be VERY DIFFICULT to understand each other. In this story, the confusion is said to be a punishment to limit humankind. It is funny though, isn’t it, that the diverse and wonderful cultures and languages of the world are perceived as a punishment?

Sometimes the challenges to communicate and understand each other are really frustrating. I guess they could reasonably be seen as a punishment. The ways that we as humans feel disconnected from each other feels wrong. Furthermore, we often feel incapable of changing it.

I can sense in the Tower of Babel story a quest to understand the human condition. The Pentecost story in Acts, by inverting the Tower of Babel story, says that the Holy Spirit changes the human condition that keeps us separate from each other and unable to understand one another! Even better, in the Pentecost story, the vast diversity of human language continues to exist, it just ceases to be a barrier.

The more I thought about this story this week, the less I was distracted by the “whys” and “hows” of it, and the more I found myself thinking about that mystery of the Spirit. The story says that the Spirit came and changed everything, connected them to each other, and made possible what had seemed impossible. That is, it says the Spirit is a Spirit of connection.

One of my all time favorite books is “A General Theory of Love” written by Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon, all of whom were professors of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine at the time they wrote it. It is a book about love and human connection, from the perspective of brain science. They spend a lot of time explaining the function of part of the human brain that we share with other mammals: the limbic brain. The limbic brain is the brain that connects. Because of it, mammals are inherently social, and we impact each other, deeply. As they say, “A mammal can detect the internal state of another mammal and adjust its own physiology to match the situation—a change in turn sensed by the other, who likewise adjusts.”¹ That’s pretty amazing.

We mammals have the capacity for “limbic resonance—a symphony of mutual exchange and internal adaptation whereby two mammals become attuned to each other’s inner states.”² Not only can we do it, it is our normal and constant state! General Theory of Love explains, “So familiar and expected is the neural attunement of limbic resonance that people find its absence disturbing. Scrutinize the eyes of a shark or a sunbathing salamander and you get back no answering echo, no flicker of recognition, nothing. The vacuity behind those glances sends a chill down the mammalian spine.”³ Among humans, “Because limbic states can leap between minds, feelings are contagious, while notions are not.”⁴ Feelings are contagious! We do know this, when someone in a terrible mood walks into a room, we all feel it. The same happens with someone in a great mood. It happens on more subtle scales too. This may even explain some of why we get so much out of worship – we are able to build on each other’s good feelings and joy in seeing each other.

Of course, while we are able to connect to all mammals, but we only form attachments to some. They say, “It is attachment that makes familiarity trump worth. A golden retriever thrills only to his owner. He is amiably and helplessly indifferent to passersby who may be kinder, fonder of walks, quicker with treats—he does not, he cannot value them. Everyone is in the same limbic boat as those patient, expectant dogs.”⁵This is, in part, because bodies aren’t as stand alone as we think! We as humans can’t function alone. They say, “Most people assume that the body they inhabit is self-regulating— that their own physiologic balance occurs within a closed loop.”⁶ However, “The mammalian nervous system depends for its neurophysiologic stability on a system of interactive coordination, wherein steadiness comes from synchronization with nearby attachment figures.”⁷ Or, to put it another way, “But because human physiology is (at least in part) an open-loop arrangement, an individual does not direct all of his own functions. A second person transmits regulatory information that can alter hormone levels, cardiovascular function, sleep rhythms, immune function, and more—inside the body of the first.”⁸ Given this information, they say human “Stability means finding people who regulate you well and staying near them,” and “This necessary intermingling of physiologies makes relatedness and communal living the center of human life.”⁹

This mammalian attachment stuff applies to partners, to parents and children, to friends and neighbors, and even to church community. Also, as most of us know from experience, it applies to pets. General Theory of Love says, “Somehow the attachment architecture is general enough that a human being and a dog can both fit within the realm of what each considers a valid partner. And the two can engage in limbic regulation: they spend time near each other and miss each other; they will read some of each other’s emotional cues; each will find the presence of the other soothing and comforting; each will tune and regulate the physiology of the other.”¹⁰

Now this information has some serious implications for our lives! We need other mammals who help us regulate well. We can’t function on our own!! General Theory of Love says, “Being well regulated in relatedness is the deeply gratifying state that people seek ceaselessly in romance, religions, and cults; in husbands and wives, pets, softball teams, bowling leagues, and a thousand other features of human life driven by the thirst for sustaining affiliations.”¹¹ Now, that makes sense, huh? But!!! They continue, “Some cultures encourage emotional health; others do not. Some, including modern America, promote activities and attitudes directly antithetical to fulfillment.”¹² They also tell us why: “The simple equations of love. Like this: relationships live on time.”¹³ They say, “A culture versed in the workings of emotional life would encourage and promote the activities that sustain health —togetherness with one’s partner and children; homes, families, and communities of connectedness. Such a society would guide its inhabitants to the joy that can be found at the heart of attachment.”¹⁴

Isn’t it fun when scientists use their own methods, words, and theories and then come around to something that sounds remarkably like the kin-dom of God? Also, it is very good to have reminders to seek out those mammals we love and savor the time we have to be near them!

I want to expand their theory a little bit though. They talk about mammalian limbic resonance, and I am hoping we can consider the capacity for resonance to be one of the functions of the Spirit. After all, God is love; and God is the one in whom we live and move and have our beings. I think power and wonder of attachment and connection is a part of the mysterious loving power of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, I think it is worth considering the Divine as…. mammal-like. At least as far as we could consider the Divine to be another being with whom we share love and intimacy, whose capacity to form attachments with us and resonance with us would be an additional source of health and joy! And, we’re told, relationships thrive on TIME. That would indicate that spending some time aware of the wonder of the Presence of the Divine and attending to it might be a very good use of time.

The Spirit resonates. Perhaps we could say that the Spirit IS resonance, and that’s how all mammalian connection is possible! The Spirit helps us connect, to bring us joy, health, and fulfillment. We can also seek resonance directly with the Spirit. Our brains are already designed to do it, to seek connection through resonance. Through the Spirit we are connected to all that is, and more. Resonance is a language we all speak, and it requires no translation. Perhaps that’s a part of the Pentecost miracle. Thanks be to God. Amen  

1Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, Richard Lannon, A General Theory of Love (New York: Vintage Books, 2000) page 60.

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Rev. Sara E. Baron

First United Methodist Church of Schenectady

603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305

Pronouns: she/her/hers

http://fumcschenectady.org/

https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

May 20, 2018