“Je suis désolé.
Je ne parle pas français.” This is the
phrase I memorized: “I am sorry. I do not speak
French.”
I said this many times on my recent trip
to France. For the most part, my apology did not bring
about a sympathetic response. French people expect people
to speak French. Period. And while many do speak English,
there was an expectation that I would have also sought
to learn their language.
I did give myself a quick crash course
before I went, but it was not enough to carry on even
a basic conversation. I could read some of it, and occasionally
understand a bit, but that was about it.
We are fortunate, of course, that English
is the international language of commerce, so that makes
it easier to get by without the bother of learning the
words of another. But I also became even more fully aware
that our language insularity does not speak particularly
well of us as a nation.
Two weeks ago, I was celebrating my oldest
son’s birthday with a group of international friends
he has made at the school he is attending near Paris.
Gathered in one room were an Australian (married to a
Dutchman who couldn’t come), two Spaniards, one
German, one Colombian, two Americans, and three from France.
We conversed in English since that was the one common
language.
There were also seven children under the
age of 2 ½ there, and I asked each parent what
languages they were teaching their children. The Spaniards
speak primary to their sons in Catalan, a Romance language
with some French characteristics and one of the official
languages of Spain, and also expect them to speak Spanish.
They do not speak English to them. The French couple speak
only in French to their children. They would like for
him to learn English someday, but do not wish to be the
ones who teach it to them. The Australian-Dutch couple
speak primarily in English to their daughter, with some
Dutch thrown in, but do not expect her to be fluent in
Dutch. The American-Colombian couple speak primarily in
Spanish to their children (my grandchildren), and expect
that to be the first language, but with considerable facility
in English.
All this leads me to thinking about the
whole issue of words and communication and languages and
misunderstandings. I know that even if we speak the same
language, we may not understand each other at all. As
one who has spent possibly way too many years in school,
studying theology and things of God, it is easy for me
to throw around words like, “sanctification, ecclesiology,
redemption, proclamation, hamartology, and supralapsarianism”
and not realize these words are rarely, if ever, used
in everyday conversation. Every person with specialized
work also develops a specialized vocabulary which may
also sound incomprehensible to those on the outside.
Then I look to the words of Jesus and find
that he spoke in the common language and used the words
that everyone knew to help them bridge the gap between
their lives and the joy of intimate connection with God.
Living and working in a farming and ranching world, he
reminded them that he’s a good shepherd, and his
sheep respond to his loving voice. As did farmers, Jesus
willingly scattered the seed of the kingdom of God everywhere—knowing,
just as those who work the ground for a living know, that
not every place would be immediately receptive and that
some seed would fed the birds rather than growing into
new plants that would feed the people. But that didn’t
stop him from spreading it out everywhere. He reminded
people that the things we experience daily can serve as
doorways to the heavenly places, should we chose to hear
the invitation to enter in.
Yet as I write this, I also know that as
we enter into deeper intimacy with God that we must also
learn to see and speak differently. We must learn to find
the holy and sacred in the common things. We must learn
the language of prayer, of worship, of radical generosity
and service, and these words and concepts do not come
easily to most of us.
With all this, I believe there is a call
on all of us to expand our vocabularies and our language
abilities. We need to learn the languages of others, and
the language of God. By so doing, we open ourselves to
far deeper experiences and find ourselves amazingly enriched.
It’s worth the effort.
