A BIGGER WORLD
Author: Fr. Michael Byron
May 15, 2021
When I was a student in
middle school there were at least two subjects that I was made to study, not
because they were required by the school, but because my parents said I had
to. I hated both of the classes, not only
because that’s how a middle school student like me responds automatically when
being told that he has to do something just because his parents tell him
to. I hated them for the same,
different, reason. It was because I couldn’t imagine how or why I would ever
need to learn such things. They seemed
to me to be utterly useless. The two
subjects were Spanish and keyboarding (which back in the ancient times was
known as typing). Typing class was doubly
hated because I had to go to summer school to take it. Why in the world would a young boy ever have
a need for knowing how to use a keyboard? Unthinkable! That’s what
secretaries did, and they were all girls. And what kid growing up in Edina would ever have any use for being about
to speak Spanish? I had never seen or
met anybody from a Spanish speaking place other than our nanny who was from
Chile, and she had learned English which is what everybody in my world spoke…
and as far as I was concerned it was the language that worked best because it
happened to be the one that I knew. After all, isn’t the study of languages just a matter of memorizing
which English words translate into which identical foreign works? Who needs to do that?
(Perhaps I should add here
that another class that was required at my school for all the boys was called
“industrial arts,” which resulted in my learning how to a candle holder in
metal shop – though we didn’t use candles in my home; and learning how to make
a hockey stick storage rack in wood shop – though neither I nor anyone in my
family played hockey; and learning how to set type in offset printing shop – a
skill that would become utterly obsolete within ten years.) The girls were all required to take home
economics class, there they learned to cook and sew – skills that I’d love to
have today but do not have.
So what’s the point of
recalling these memories here and now? Simply this: Both I and the
school that I attended were pretty certain back then about what I was supposed
to learn about and why. And the answer to the “why” questions was basically, “because
I and we couldn’t imagine it any other way.” Why wouldn’t a boy not need a hockey stick rack, and why would he ever
need to know about nutrition? It seems
that we already know a whole lot about settled facts back then, some of which
eventually proved not only to be wrong but actually Non-sensible. And we thought that because we were all
convinced that the world as it then was the world as it had even been and ever
would be. And that world was very, very
small and insular.
Which brings me back to Spanish
class. I eventually went on to earn a
minor degree in Spanish in college, which was sufficient to teach me not only
how to speak in certain syllables, but just as importantly it awakened me to
the fact that to understand another language – really to understand it – is to
step in to whole world that is other that the one that I have known up to now,
the one that I may have presumed was the only one that exists, or ought to
exist. There are words in foreign
languages that have no exact English translations, and vice-versa, because a
language reflects a whole way of understanding what life is all about. Languages bear deep meanings and not only
vocal sounds. To learn another language
is to learn how to listen in a new way as much as it is to learn to make noises
with your mouth. When a Spanish speaker says “Tu eres mi hermaro” that doesn’t
mean simply that you happen to be my make sibling, the son of common parents. It means, “you are my brother (2X) – or my
sister… mi hermana.” There is a depth to
that word that can be utterly lost in English translation, and frankly,
cheapened in translation.
Today is Ascension Day in our
church, and one week from now it will be Pentecost – the culmination and
conclusion of the great season of Easter. And during these last days of the paschal season out liturgical prayers
and scriptures invite us to recognize that the whole world is truly different,
truly changed as the result of Jesus Christ. Our own small worlds confined by their own small languages and
constricted understandings – have been burst open by the resurrection,
ascension and send forth of the Spirit of God through Jesus.
We are all made larger, and
made into one, not by stuffing everybody else in to our own pre-conceived ways
of understanding God and ourselves, but by exactly the opposite! by allowing
the languages, the stories, the meanings of other peoples’ lives to penetrate
and yes, change and expand our own meanings. Those whom we rightly regard as different are not merely repeating our
own stories using different syllables. They are inviting – in fact requiring - us to be something new and
bigger together as the People of God, the Body of Jesus Christ, as the
church. St. Paul expresses it richly in
his letter to the Ephesians today: There
is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God
overall – but a God who is not constrained or contained or adequately
understood through the life of only some or a few of us not confined to one language
or culture, or set of circumstances - and certainly not identified with one way
of worship or of voting or of exercising Christian ministry. Paul goes out of his way to mention the many
gifts and responsibilities and kinds of wisdom that together make us one in
discipleship: some are apostles, other
are prophets or teachers or pastors ... or lay leaders or artists or musicians
or English speakers or Spanish speakers or Arabic speakers or political
liberals or conservatives, or people who arrive with points of view or life
histories that we do not yet understand as languages that we need to hear, or
as responsibilities that we must embrace as our Christian call – not “may”
embraces if we like, but must embrace – even when we’d rather not,
because the world as we have known it up to now is too small. That’s where God’s Spirit is always pushing
us.
As a young man I had yet to
learn that I not only would benefit from learning typing and Spanish lessons,
but that I needed those things. Sadly,
it not by any means only the young who have yet to figure this out. Some of the
most calcified and rigid dispositions can still be found among the elders – and
those who Jesus describes elsewhere as the “learned and the clever”. Let us pray never to fall in to the falsehood
of believing that we are already learned and clever enough or that one language
is the only one sufficient to certain God. Which is really nothing other than
to remain true to our call.
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