Beyond Babel: A Call to See, Listen, and Learn

Diverse Black figures gathered across generations, connected by flowing tapestry-like threads. In the background, an unfinished, fading tower rises symbolically, contrasting with the warmth and movement of the people below.

One of the great gifts education offers us is the opportunity to acquire lenses through which we can see the world more clearly—and more truthfully.

Each year, Black History Month comes and goes, and many of us engage in familiar practices: we share quotes, sing songs, listen to sermons, maybe attend an event or two. But too often, we never get close enough to the lives and voices whose experiences, suffering, perspective, and vision would actually allow us to see differently—to be enriched, convicted, converted, and challenged in our daily living.

This year, some dear friends asked Linda and me to curate resources they could use throughout the month. It was a big ask—not because of the work itself, but because it placed on our shoulders an invitation to self-examination. What has shaped our thinking? What music has formed us? Which poets, theologians, artists, and organizers have influenced us? What do we privilege, and what do we ignore? These are questions all of us contend with, even if we pretend we do not. And they are not questions with neat or final answers.

The Black experience in America is not a single story. It is a tapestry of pain and perseverance, faith and brilliance, lament and joy—woven from countless lives and histories. No one person, group, tradition, or institution could ever fully represent it. There is not a single lens capable of capturing such a reality. That is precisely why all of us need to be immersed in a multiplicity of voices and relationships—so that we are continually learning to see more than what we can currently see.

I’ve never loved the phrase “we stand on the shoulders of giants.” Too often, it misplaces the weight of history and obscures the faithfulness of ordinary people—people who chose to do the right thing at great personal cost. People who organized, taught, preached, resisted, nurtured children, opened their homes, sang freedom songs, and kept hope alive when hope was expensive. It does take height to see over the horizon, but we don’t get there because we have the right heroes. We get there because ordinary people choose humility, solidarity, courage, and love.

That’s where the story of the Tower of Babel feels especially instructive. Babel was not condemned because people worked together, but because they sought uniformity over relationship, dominance over mutuality, legacy over love. They built upward, not outward. They forgot humility. They forgot solidarity. They forgot that wisdom is found not in speaking louder or higher, but in learning to listen across difference. When we try to construct singular narratives about history, progress, or justice—when we rush to build towers that erase complexity—we risk repeating Babel’s mistake. The work before us is not to build higher towers, but deeper communities; not to master the story, but to remain teachable within it.

May this Black History Month be more than a moment.

May it be a practice.

May it draw us closer to voices that unsettle us and expand us.

May it help us resist the temptation of easy stories and instead embrace the holy work of listening, learning, and living differently—so that together we might help build a world marked by dignity, justice, and shared flourishing.

---