They stood facing each other: one obstinate and angry, the other desperately trying to explain. Both kept repeating their lines, unchanged. The more he tried to get her to understand, the angrier she became. The tension escalated with each call and response, complaint and explanation. Her anger confronted his logic and attempts to control his frustration.

I watched these two friends caught in their impasse. I felt helpless. I didn't know what to do. She felt unheard. She felt his refusal to acknowledge her hurt in a helpful way indicated he was ignoring her and what mattered to her. He felt she was doing the same to him.

I don’t remember the substance of the argument, but 25 years later it remains imprinted in my memory. Curiously, I remember it less for the conflict or anger, and more for an insight that came to me at the time. She didn’t care about his logic. He didn’t care about her feelings; well, he did, but the logic of his argument mattered more.

This woman and man spoke two different languages, as different as Chinese and Croatian. “Chinese” and “Croatian” both begin with “C” but after that they quickly part company. My friends both spoke English and each recognized the words the other used, but after that, the deeper meaning of what they said proved mutually incomprehensible. In difficult conversations, the message often lies less in the words and more in things that words don’t articulate.

In the last few years I have been troubled that so many people cannot talk with one another. Politics, religion, gender, race, income and the like, divide our community, nation and world. Anger flares up. Road rage and shootings happen weekly and daily in schools and places of worship. We cannot talk with one another about our different sets of fears.

I wonder why. Why can't people on the Right and the Left talk with one another without a shouting match? It's almost a ritual, a litany where “Y” says something and “Z” makes a predictable, scripted response. “Y” follows with their own predictable, scripted responses. Anger flares on both sides, instead of “The Lord be with you.” “And also with you.” (Both together) “Amen.”

Recently my friends' argument came to mind again. Group B feels deep frustration. Group A ignores Group B's fears. Group A responds with logical arguments that make perfect sense to them but gain no traction with Group B. Group B gets angrier because logical arguments don’t acknowledge the humanity, the hurt or fear behind the anger. They speak two different languages, as different as Russian and Xhosa (Nelson Mandela's first language). No wonder neither comprehends the other.

Perhaps the time has come to stop yelling the same litanies at one another. We could learn a new “language” and become “bilingual”. We could ask people to share their stories; what makes them happy and what they fear. Something may get lost in translation but that’s better than the failure to communicate we have now.

Rev. Dr. Bruce MacLeod is the Interim Minister of First Baptist Church