A diversity of languages, races and cultures seeking unity

The film School of Babel tells the story of a group of immigrant children who have come to a school in Paris. As they are from all parts of the world French is a foreign language for them. They are, therefore, put into a class by themselves as they need to bring their competence in speaking French up to an acceptable level before they can join the normal classes in the school.

They vary in age from 12 to 15 but this is only a minor difference between them compared to all the other things that separate them. For example, they represent many of the essential racial groups, religions and languages of the world as well as coming from a wide variety of backgrounds. Some have been very neglected by their parents; one very young Chinese girl has not seen her parents for 8 years. As a result, a number of the pupils have become troubled and rebellious and find it hard to fit into the highly regulated French system of education, while others have retreated into themselves and are fearful of being open with anybody.

The Tower of Babel
I assume that the film’s name is an allusion to the story of the Tower of Babel told in the book of Genesis. There it illustrates one of the effects of our tendency to walk out of God’s presence or to exclude ourselves from God’s intimacy through what we do or fail to do. In the Bible story of the Fall people have already expressed their belief that sin separates us from God and from each other. Having forfeited the true source of their deepest significance and happiness in this way they burden the material world with making a name for themselves and with providing a happiness which it was not designed to provide. They say to themselves,

“Come, let us build ourselves a tower with its top reaching heaven. Let us make a name for ourselves and hold together, lest we be scattered all over the earth”. Gen 11:1-4

The effect of building the tower to attain happiness using only their own resources proved disastrous. Separated from the one for whom they were made, the God whose love held them together, they disintegrate and are scattered throughout the world. This is symbolised in the story by their language becoming confused “so that they no longer understood one another”. It is this divisive feature of language that Jacinta Ramayah, a Malaysian poet illustrates in her poem The Tower of Babel. However, she also believes there is a common language that is “a declaration of a love sincere”.

 Clicks, rolls, twists of tongues
sounds echo deep from the lungs,
strokes, lines, whorls, curly ends
are messages used by early man.

Guttural tones and stiletto barks
soft and hushed or loud remarks,
raised in anger, trembling in fear
or declaration of a love sincere.

Watch the play of various stances
of vivid hand and body gestures,
they complement the sweet voices
and tones of various languages.

The tower was built by man’s pride
God swooped down and cast it aside,
prose and poetry divided everywhere
a gift for people to learn and share.

The diversity of peoples

In School of Babel the pupils are away from the affection of their parents and initially feel that they live in a hostile environment where they are fearful and guarded. Drawing them out of themselves and drawing them together is the very formidable task that confronts their teacher for it is not hard to envisage that this group of pupils with all their problems would be practically unteachable especially as part of a large class of 20 to 30 teenagers.

We do not see much of the very gifted teacher who takes these pupils for a whole year as we only hear her voice in the background but as the story of how she interacts with her pupils unfolds our admiration grows. Her greatness is founded on the fact that she can hold the attention of a classroom where all that divides her pupils could so easily make her task impossible.

The Lesson

Her voice expresses a deep sensitivity for all that troubles her pupils as well as for their aspirations. So she is not just encouraging them to speak French but meeting the need every pupil has for understanding, acceptance and affirmation. She knows when to challenge those in her care not to be afraid to articulate their experience. She is a good example of someone who knows where to tap into people’s experience and how hard to push them. She is a great example of a skill needed to be a good teacher that the following story expresses very succinctly.

Knowing where to tap and how hard
Having suffered for some time from the noisiness of their heating system the workers in a factory demanded that something be done about it. So an expert in heating systems was brought along and he made his rounds of the pipes listening to them and tapping them with a steel rod. Within a short while all the noise stopped and the manager asked what was the charge. “Well”, the expert said, ‘for my time I need one hundred euro but for knowing where to tap the pipes and how hard to do so I need nine times that amount.

Through the medium of people’s experience
When I was a teacher and later accompanied people on their inner journey I gradually learned the importance of people’s personal experience and knowing how to encourage them to make use of it. There were always areas of this that were profitable for people to enter and other areas that were not. Knowing where to tap and how hard to tap was very important. This was something the teacher in School of Babel was an expert in as she knew that people are at ease speaking about their own experiences and that using this was the easiest way to learn a new language. She also sensed how wounded some of her pupils were by their past and that it was important for them to voice some of this but that there was much of it that they should not be pushed into expressing.

What underlies good teaching
There is a very moving scene at the end of the film in which the teacher and the pupils are saying farewell to each other. Watching them we realise what a bond has built up between the pupils and between them and the one who not only made them competent French speakers but taught them as well to relate in such a positive way. One Ukrainian girl who early in the film was very silent and guarded gradually turns into a beautifully communicative person. The way she and the other pupils were drawn out of the protective shell they had built around themselves reminded me of the following story that someone gave me a copy of when I began to teach Religious Education.

The Miracle of Love
Just after the second world war there was a young girl called Karen who was sent to a transit camp in Palestine. Like Karen most of the people there had been through the concentration camps in Germany in which they were very differently affected by that experience. All this challenged Karen`s desire to help those around her and so she began to teach young people in the transit camp to read and write.

One day she came across a boy of her own age, called Dov, living by himself. Nobody belonging to him had survived and he had been so badly affected by the experience that he refused to communicate with anyone. He just sat in his little tent all day staring at the wall. At least that is what the few people who had tried to help him saw and so they had stopped trying to reach him.

Not so Karen, she persisted in coming to see him every day in spite of his silence and apathy. She was very ingenious in her efforts to get some response from him until one day she got a flicker of one that she kept working on. Eventually he began to talk to her and to show her his drawings, the memories that imprisoned him in horror.

Through Karen he began to venture out of his tent and gradually to talk with others. Then one day Karen was killed in an accident outside the camp. People rallied around Dov for fear he would again shut himself off. They were amazed, however, to hear him say that he wanted to live in a way that would be worthy of Karen, in a way that she would be proud of.

Love’s magnetic field

The teacher in School of Babel and Karen give us a very tangible impression of how the author of the following passage from the Acts of the Apostles sees the Holy Spirit working in each person’s life.

All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language. Acts 2:4-8

Sharing the same space

What is happening in this passage is the reversal of what happened in the story of Babel; there is a re-establishment of our ability to communicate and be together. Even though we speak different languages we are enabled, under the influence of the Spirit, to understand one another using the language of love. It is this that the teacher in School of Babel illustrates so powerfully in the way she accepts, affirms and acknowledges the gifts of each of her pupils; she speaks a language they all understand and respond to.

“I will draw all peoples/things to myself”
This power of love to reintegrate what our sinfulness tends to separate is a major theme in the Gospel of John. For him what causes this drawing together of all things again is the power of Jesus “lifted up” on the cross and in the glory of the resurrection; it is the power of what John calls Jesus’ love of us to “the utmost extent”. Jn 13:1 It is as if the love of Jesus creates a magnetic field within which we are all drawn to each other by being so powerfully drawn to him.

And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people/things to myself. Jn 12:32

He did not say this on his own, but being high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God. Jn 11:52

The Pharisees then said to one another, “You see, you can do nothing. Look, the world has gone after him!” Jn 12:19

A wonderful expression of this magnetic power of Jesus is found in Magdalen’s Song in Jesus Christ Superstar. In the song we can hear how Jesus gradually enraptures her.

I don’t know how to love him,
What to do, how to move him.
I’ve been changed, yes, really changed,
In these past few days.
When I see myself, I seem like someone else.
I don’t know how to take him,

I don’t see why he moves me.
He’s a man, he’s just a man,
And I’ve had so many men before,
In very many ways, he’s just one more.
Should I bring him down,
Should I scream and shout,
Should I speak of love, let my feelings out,
What’s it all about?

Don’t you think its rather funny,
I should be in this position.
I’m the one whose always been,
So calm, so cool, no lover’s fool,
Running every show,
He scares me so.
I never thought I’d come to believe,
What’s it all about.

Yet if he said he loved me,
I’d be lost, I’d be frightened.
I couldn’t cope, just couldn’t cope,
I’d turn my head, I’d back away,
I wouldn’t want to know.
He scares me so, I want him so, I love him so.

“Manners maketh man”
This is my concluding story for 2014 and it is on a theme that is common to many of the films I have been impressed by during the year. This has to do with the style with which the people in the stories I have focused on love and relate and it is an aspect of life that has always interested me. This became more apparent to me during this year when I realised afresh how central the style with which we love and relate is to Vatican 2. There it became an expression of a new way of seeing and valuing ourselves as Christians that was common in the first millennium.

As a result of all this I find myself as Christmas approaches revisiting the poem below by Hilaire Belloc and its belief “that the Grace of God is in Courtesy”. I love the way he finds this borne out in the wonderful reality we celebrate at this time of year and I am grateful for all the ways the people in the stories people tell in films reveal this Grace to me in their very distinctive style of kindness and Courtesy. May the Courtesy of Christ inspire your Christmas and your New Year.

Of Courtesy, it is much less
Than Courage of Heart or Holiness,
Yet in my Walks it seems to me
That the Grace of God is in Courtesy.

On Monks I did in Storrington fall,
They took me straight into their Hall;
I saw Three Pictures on a wall,
And Courtesy was in them all.

The first the Annunciation;
The second the Visitation;
The third the Consolation
Of God that was Our Lady’s Son.

The first was of St. Gabriel;
On Wings a-flame from Heaven he fell;
And as he went upon one knee
He shone with Heavenly Courtesy.

Our Lady out of Nazareth rode –
It was Her month of heavy load;
Yet was her face both great and kind,
For Courtesy was in Her Mind.

The third it was our Little Lord,
Whom all the Kings in arms adored;
He was so small you could not see
His large intent of Courtesy.

Our Lord, that was Our Lady’s Son,
Go bless you, People, one by one;
My Rhyme is written, my work is done.
Hilaire Belloc