Hearing God

This morning, I overheard this conversation between my two daughters (aged 5 and 3):

Older sister: You know, we can never hear God.
Younger sister: Yes we can!
Older sister: No, we can never hear him.
Younger sister: But I hear God every time I say the word God. You watch: God. See, I just heard “God”!

I don’t know about you, but I was impressed – there’s an entire theory of language here which deftly and elegantly resolves the hotly debated question of whether human beings can hear God. Perhaps my little daughter has been reading the pre-Socratics – it was Zeno who said, “If you say cart, a cart passes through your mouth.”