communication on Weakness

Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

As a stranger walked down a quiet residential street, he noticed a man struggling with a washing machine at the doorway of his house. The homeowner was clearly having a hard time, so the passerby, wan...

Communication is something we usually take for granted, it seems simple enough, after all. But one thing I’ve noticed (Stu) over time is that, especially in complex organizations, communication often ...

You always risk people misunderstanding you when you say anything.

Famed pastor and educator A. T. Pierson (1837–1911) lamented his own human inadequacies in communicating to his congregation the depth and levels of the “unsearchable riches of Christ:” “Unsearchabl...

Communication usually fails, except by accident

The greatest problem with communication is the illusion that it has been accomplished.

If you’ve ever watched a war movie, or a film that takes place in the military, you’re likely to have encountered a specific scene, in which a subordinate will have something to tell a senior officer ...

Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much

E-mail is the great scourge of modem communication. It facilitates the passing on of simple information, yet it forces complex matters to be presented In a fashion that makes what is difficult appear ...

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

Our bodies, created in the image of the Triune God, have much to teach us about the virtues of conversation. The human body is a wondrous symphony of diverse parts: 206 bones and over 600 muscles, con...

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.

In a statement created by Christian leaders across the world, the Lausanne Willowbank Report calls for church leaders to return to the humility and servanthood that Jesus manifested in His earthly min...

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.

Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken languag...

Two monologues do not make a dialogue.

We were created to communicate, to speak truth fully to one another, so that we might be members of one another. To be members of one another means we must learn to trust one another. Trust, like trut...

In 1990, Elizabeth Newton earned a Ph.D. in psychology at Stanford by studying a simple game in which she assigned people to one of two roles: “tappers” or “listeners.” Tappers received a list of twen...

The overall purpose of human communication is - or should be - reconciliation. It should ultimately serve to lower or remove the walls of misunderstanding which unduly separate us human beings, one fr...

We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding.

In an interview with MIT psychologist Sherry Turkle, Megan Garber asks what makes in-person conversation unique, compared to all the other ways we communicate these days: Conversations, as they tend...

An attempt to wrest from God the prerogatives of absolute freedom and infinity leads to the inversion of Pentecost and what is in effect a new Babel. 'Postmodernism' represents that Babel perf...

The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said.

When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant, and effective.

The last time someone said to you, “I need to talk to you,” how did that strike you? Did you think, Maybe she needs to tell me how much she appreciates me. More likely you thought, I’m in trouble. Whe...

Edward T. Hall likened the effects of culture to an iceberg. Some aspects of a culture are overt, in clear view above the waterline, so to speak. But most are hidden deep below the surface, forming th...

Men hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they don’t know each other; they don’t know each other because they cannot communicate with each other; they can’t commun...