The author cites a study which revealed that ministers across diverse creeds, all designated "communication" as their primary concern. [20] We encounter barriers that block the meeting of meaning. The main question to which this book is addressed: How can the barriers to communication be overcome? [35]

Ironically, language itself is a barrier. Howe also discusses how Images, Anxieties, Defenses and Purposes obstacle our connections. He provides a wonderful definition of communication, as a "meeting of meaning between two or more persons". [23] He defines Language "as the process of knowing and being known through the use of words". [26] Images are the filters which distort and separate people. [29] Anxiety, even being anxious about communicating, is a third barrier. And it often leads to a fourth, defensiveness. Self-justification, projection (blaming others for that which one is responsible for), and clinging to a prejudice as a defense. Compulsions, such as oversharing and over-talking, are often defensive. The fifth barrier to the meeting of meaning is holding contrary purposes. All five blocks are barriers to the meeting of meaning, and are "symptoms of the deeper barrier which is the ontological one, our concern for our being". [31] This is why most communication is a monologue.

Most "communication" is a monologue, but in an everyday way, there is a great miracle when dialogue emerges. Dialogue is the "secret" incarnation of words into action.

The author says: "This, then, is the purpose of dialogue: the calling forth of persons in order that they may be reunited with one another, know the truth, and love God, man, and themselves. We move toward the realization of this purpose when we speak responsibly out of what we know, when we help others to say Yes and No as responsibly as possible, and when we keep the forms of our life open to life itself." I love how he grasps the importance, and the difficulty, of saying "Yes and No". ( )