I remember when I was a little kid and began to learn that there were different languages. I loved that primary song where you learn how to say \u201cthank you\u201d in languages from all over the world. It felt so cool, like learning some kind of secret code. But even as I learned these words I still assumed that when people heard them they were having the exact same experience that I was. For example, I heard the word \u201chola\u201d, but in my mind it was immediately translated as \u201chello\u201d. To me \u201chola\u201d didn\u2019t exist as its own word with its own meaning; \u201chello\u201d was a word with meaning, and hola was just another way of saying hello. I still remember the day when I realized I was wrong. I was wondering why people would speak in other languages at all if the languages were being translated in their minds into English (because that\u2019s what happened in my mind it never occurred to me it wasn\u2019t happening in everyone\u2019s). So why the inefficiency? Why not just speak English in the first place? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe those words weren\u2019t being translated into English in people\u2019s minds. This was a shock. Maybe those words had meaning in and of themselves and people were having conversations and experiences that I not only couldn\u2019t participate in, but maybe couldn\u2019t even fully understand even if someone translated for me, because those words may have had meaning that couldn\u2019t be fully explained in English. This fascination stayed with me into my adulthood when I chose anthropology as my college major, hoping to be able to further delve into and appreciate the diversity of human experiences.<\/p>\n
A while ago I was talking with our daughter who shared how since she has hardly ever felt the spirit it must be that God just doesn\u2019t care about her. This broke my heart. I could understand why she felt this way. The way she had been taught about the spirit was similar to my own experience. We had always heard the spirit described in the same language\u2014a burning in the bosom, the still small voice, that feeling of direction where you \u201cjust know\u201d. I had experienced all these things, and for much of my young life I had never questioned them, and didn\u2019t understand what people meant when they said they had never felt the spirit. It was easy to ascribe their dearth of experiences to spiritual deafness or immaturity or sin or lack of faith or maybe something vague about God\u2019s timing. In my youth it had never occurred to me that it could be anything else because the language I had learned that explained the spirit only explained it in these ways. The spirit is a feeling; if you don\u2019t feel it it\u2019s either because of something ineffable about God that will only make sense at some future date, or because you\u2019ve done something wrong. There is nothing else.<\/p>\n
But what if there is? What if the languages of the spirit are as rich and varied as the languages of humanity? What if there are experiences that we are missing out on because we only conceive of the spirit in one way, like when the ancient Roman\u2019s created a steam engine and only used it as a novelty to amuse and entertain because they couldn\u2019t conceive of it being used to propel ships.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve become obsessed with this question over the years, more so as society has been fragmenting into Puritanical tribes where only one world view is tolerated, and where to even listen to another view is an act of treason punishable by exile. The exact opposite of God\u2019s Zion, whose strength comes through making our tent increasingly bigger and more inclusive (Isaiah 62), and which is defined by the richness and multiplicity of sacrifices by all inhabitants that make it possible for all to belong, as opposed to the oppression and marginalization of the Other that is a necessary part of power consolidation.<\/p>\n
The importance of variety in the gospel and Zion is made plain in the very first revelation in the Doctrine and Covenants when God says that things are explained to us in our own language. God speaks to us in the way we understand, which may not always be the same as our Bishop or neighbors or friends or family. What do we miss out on when we try to stamp out the languages of the spirit by assuming it can only speak in one? What can we not see or understand, what do we prevent others from seeing and understanding, when we use language that inhibits any other way of perceiving eternal things? How many have felt they had to accept that God just doesn\u2019t talk to them, or that they have reached their capacity of what God is willing to reveal to them?<\/p>\n
So this blog series is to try and fulfill a promise made to a little girl when she decided she had to accept that God didn\u2019t care about her. Its purpose is to delve into different languages of the spirit; to branch out so that there is no longer one language drowning out and precluding all others. These posts will not create a comprehensive list (that just continues the problem of boundary enforcement), but they will discuss some specific ideas, especially focusing on ones that are outside the box of what we normally consider regarding how the spirit can speak to us. And hopefully they will help us to think differently of what the spirit is, and maybe help us to break some of the chains by which we sometimes carefully bind it through our assumptions and fear of change. Society has never been more pluralistic, and so perhaps there has never been a time when it has been more difficult and important for us to be able to appreciate these different languages. We are seeing families, wards, and communities fragment as we refuse to acknowledge each other\u2019s experiences and try to force everyone to fit into our own. But we can rise to this challenge. We don\u2019t have to wait for Isaiah\u2019s prophecy of a covenant people bound by their compassion and love for the Other; we get to be those people now. And it starts with learning something new about God and ourselves and each other, one language at a time.<\/p>\n
[This series Languages of the Spirit will be posted Friday mornings]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I remember when I was a little kid and began to learn that there were different languages. I loved that primary song where you learn how to say \u201cthank you\u201d in languages from all over the world. It felt so cool, like learning some kind of secret code. But even as I learned these words I still assumed that when people heard them they were having the exact same experience that I was. For example, I heard the word \u201chola\u201d, but in my mind it was immediately translated as \u201chello\u201d. To me \u201chola\u201d didn\u2019t exist as its own word with its own meaning; \u201chello\u201d was a word with meaning, and hola was just another way of saying hello. I still remember the day when I realized I was wrong. I was wondering why people would speak in other languages at all if the languages were being translated in their minds into English (because that\u2019s what happened in my mind it never occurred to me it wasn\u2019t happening in everyone\u2019s). So why the inefficiency? Why not just speak English in the first place? It suddenly occurred to me that maybe those words weren\u2019t being translated into English in people\u2019s minds. This […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-politics"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42572"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42573,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42572\/revisions\/42573"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}