Babel's tower is mentioned at the biblical book of Genesis as a huge tower constructed by the descendants of Noah, with the finality of touching the skies.

God supposedly got upset with such audacity, and therefore made each worker who was building the tower to speak a different language, so that they could not understand each other.

Thus, when one asked for tiles, the other would give clay instead, and so forth, until the general misunderstanding made all of them get apart.

According to the myth, this story would explain the origin of the different languages.

Every myth contains interesting information, which sometimes helps us understand the reality of each period. Others serve us to think about our days, as in this case.

The supposed theory about the origin of idioms can sound absurd, but we can leave it aside and pay more attention to the idea of the misunderstanding, the confusion amongst people.

We could go further and say that we still do not understand each other in many aspects.

Our religious beliefs, for example, can sometimes state the same ideas using different words, in a different way, and even though we can not understand each other.

We all have the same Creator, but as we call Him different names, we do not see each other as brothers.

We sometimes read the same lessons, the same passages, but we cannot go further than our own interpretation.

We focus only on the small differences that drive us apart, without realizing the huge affinities which instead unite us.

We lack, essentially, humbleness and fraternity.

Humbleness to perceive that we are not the owners of an immutable, absolute truth.

Humbleness that can make us think about other people's opinion, taking it in consideration and reflecting upon it, before being completely against it.

Humbleness that can help us make an effort to have a better communication with the others, in the name of harmony and peace.

Respect is the direct son of humbleness.

To give every one the right to think as they wish, to be as they like, is an act of respect.

Humbleness should make us fight for our beliefs without having a personal argument because of thoughts which go against ours.

Fraternity, in its essence, proclaims us to act as brothers.

To act as brothers presupposes friendship, consideration, tenderness.

To be fraternal means to tolerate in the name of affection. It means to be willing to help, and to be prone to goodness, always.

Humbleness and fraternity will be responsible for the conquest of understanding in today's Babel's tower.

Each one of us can do our share. Each action towards fraternity and union is important and necessary.

If we make an effort not to make of our homes and the environment where we work a tower of misunderstandings, we are already on the right path.

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The Codifier of the Spiritist made the following question to the Spirits:

In seeking societal living, do people only obey a personal sentiment, or is there a wider, providential purpose for this sentiment?

To what they answered:

Humankind must progress. But they cannot do so alone, since they do not all possesses every faculty-they need contact with others. In isolation, they become animalized and etiolated.

No man has complete faculties. It is with social union that they complete one another, to assure well-being and progress. That is why, needing one another, men should live in society and not isolated...

Spiritist Moment Team, based on item 768 from O livro dos
Espíritos, by Allan Kardec, publishing house: Feb.
July 13.2009.