We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The

Host: The evening light poured like amber wine through the dusty windows of a forgotten bookshop on the corner of the old street. Shelves sagged beneath the weight of centuries, filled with words that once promised salvation. Outside, the city hummed with muted chaos—horns, footsteps, and the distant cry of a street preacher dissolving into the exhaust-stained air.

Host: Inside, the air smelled of paper, incense, and the faintest trace of rain. Jack sat slouched in a worn leather chair, a single lamp casting gold across his tired face. Across from him, Jeeny leaned on the counter, her fingers resting on a tattered copy of The Confessions by Augustine. The silence between them was thick—heavy, not empty.

Host: The quote hung in that silence, like smoke refusing to fade:
“We looked too long for God and truth through words alone. The fruit for humanity has been rather limited, it seems to me—especially when I observe every day the extraordinary amount of unhappy and angry people in well educated and ‘religious’ countries.”
— Richard Rohr

Jack: “He’s right,” Jack murmured, tapping ash into an old ashtray. “Words have become our idols. Everyone quotes truth—no one lives it. The more we talk about God, the further we seem to drift from anything divine.”

Jeeny: “That’s a bitter truth, Jack,” she said softly. “But isn’t that because we’ve forgotten what words were meant to do? They weren’t supposed to be walls—they were supposed to be doors.”

Host: The lamp flickered, casting restless shadows on the spines of holy books and political manifestos alike. Each title gleamed faintly in the dimness—Doctrine, Faith, Freedom, Law. The air itself seemed to hold its breath.

Jack: “Doors?” he laughed without joy. “These words became mazes. Every religion, every philosophy—more arguments, more categories, more ‘truths’ that divide. People spend lifetimes parsing verses while their hearts rust shut.”

Jeeny: “Maybe because we made truth a competition,” she whispered. “We turned it into something to win, not something to become.”

Jack: “Exactly,” Jack said sharply. “Look around. The most ‘educated’ societies are full of emptiness. Churches packed on Sunday, therapists on Monday. Prayers at dawn, rage at noon. If words could save us, we’d be gods already.”

Host: The wind rattled the windowpane. Somewhere down the street, a church bell tolled six—deep, ancient, mechanical. Jeeny turned her gaze toward the sound, her eyes full of something between sorrow and defiance.

Jeeny: “But words aren’t the enemy, Jack. They’re the trail. The problem isn’t the path—it’s that we mistook the map for the journey. We worship language instead of what it points to.”

Jack: “And who decides what it points to?” he countered. “Every prophet, every scholar, every preacher claims their words are the bridge. And yet, the bridge keeps collapsing. How long before we admit the structure’s rotten?”

Jeeny: “Then what do you propose? Silence?”

Jack: “Maybe. Maybe silence is the last honest prayer we have left.”

Host: Jeeny blinked, startled by the edge in his voice. The rain began again, slow and rhythmic, tapping against the glass like deliberate punctuation. Each drop a reminder of something unspoken.

Jeeny: “But even silence has a language, Jack,” she said, her tone firm now. “It’s the sound of presence—the kind you feel, not define. You think people are lost because they talk too much. I think they’re lost because they don’t listen enough.”

Jack: “And yet we’re surrounded by words about listening. Mindfulness books, meditation apps, sermons about stillness—it’s all branded silence. Even silence has become noise now.”

Jeeny: “Then the problem isn’t the words, it’s the hearts that use them.”

Host: The clock behind the counter ticked steadily, marking each second as if judging them both. The debate had begun to pulse, its rhythm deepening like the hum of a distant storm.

Jack: “You still believe in hearts?” he asked, his eyes narrowing. “When even love’s turned into a slogan? When people post ‘be kind’ online and tear each other apart in the comments? We’ve buried sincerity under semantics.”

Jeeny: “I still believe,” she said quietly. “Because I’ve seen it. I’ve seen a mother hold her dying son and whisper nothing, just hold him. No scripture. No philosophy. Just love—raw, wordless, eternal. That’s God, Jack. That’s truth.”

Jack: He stared at her, cigarette trembling slightly between his fingers. The smoke curled upward like the ghost of disbelief.

Jack: “So you think the divine hides in gestures, not doctrines?”

Jeeny: “Yes. In gestures. In faces. In the small, unrecorded acts that never make it into sermons. You can quote a thousand verses, but one act of real compassion speaks louder.”

Host: Her voice broke, not from weakness, but from the weight of conviction. The rain thickened outside, blurring the world into streaks of silver and shadow. Jack rose, pacing between shelves, his boots thudding softly on the worn floor.

Jack: “You sound like a mystic. Rohr would approve of that. But tell me, Jeeny—if experience is the only truth, what happens to thought? To reason? Without words, how do we teach anything?”

Jeeny: “We live it,” she said simply. “Jesus never wrote a book. Buddha spoke, but his silence taught as much as his words. Lao Tzu said, ‘The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao.’ Every great teacher tried to point beyond language. We just built temples around their sentences.”

Host: The lamp light trembled again as if bowing to her words. Jack stopped pacing, his shadow thrown large across the wall—distorted, human, uncertain.

Jack: “You’re right about one thing: we’ve built too many temples. But can humanity really live without interpretation? Without naming what we experience? Isn’t language what makes us human?”

Jeeny: “It’s what makes us human, yes. But it’s also what blinds us to being. The word tree isn’t the tree. The word love isn’t the feeling. The danger isn’t language—it’s mistaking it for reality.”

Jack: “And yet without it, we have chaos.”

Jeeny: “Without spirit, we have emptiness.”

Host: Their voices clashed like sea and shore—one of logic, the other of light. The storm outside grew heavier now, lightning flashing briefly through the fogged glass. The air in the shop felt charged, ancient, alive.

Jack: “You want transcendence without structure, Jeeny. That’s naïve. Civilization itself was built on articulation—laws, ethics, systems. Take away the word, and you take away the world.”

Jeeny: “No, Jack. You rediscover it. You remember what it felt like before the world was named. Before God was argued about. Before truth was traded for the comfort of being right.”

Host: Jack’s hands clenched at his sides, his jaw tense. For a moment, he looked as though he might shout—but then, slowly, something in him softened. The fire in his eyes dimmed to something like weariness.

Jack: “Maybe that’s what Rohr meant,” he said quietly. “We’ve read our way into disconnection. Talked ourselves away from what’s real. I see it every day—priests quoting love while their eyes go dead. Scholars dissecting meaning until nothing’s left but syntax.”

Jeeny: “And yet here we are, still speaking. Still searching. Maybe that’s the paradox—we need words to find the silence behind them.”

Host: The rain slowed. A fragile quiet filled the shop—the kind that feels sacred, not empty. Jack sat back down, the cigarette long gone, his hands folded loosely on his knee.

Jack: “Maybe truth isn’t a doctrine after all. Maybe it’s a rhythm. Something you feel in your chest when you stop pretending to know.”

Jeeny: “That’s it, Jack. Truth isn’t found in syllables—it’s felt in stillness. The heart is wiser than the mouth.”

Host: The lamp burned steady now. Outside, the city had grown calm, its lights reflected in puddles like small, trembling stars. Jack glanced at the shelves—the endless ranks of books, words piled on words—and for the first time, he seemed to see them differently.

Jack: “We built towers of words to reach heaven,” he murmured. “And all we found was echo.”

Jeeny: “But even echoes can guide us,” she said with a faint smile. “As long as we remember to listen.”

Host: The rain had stopped completely now. A beam of moonlight cut through the cloud and settled on the open book between them, its pages trembling slightly in the quiet air.

Host: Neither spoke again. The words had served their purpose—and surrendered.

Host: And as the lamp flickered out, the world seemed to exhale, leaving behind only the living pulse of something beyond speech—presence, unbroken, finally heard.