To Dream, Perchance to Speak

When I was learning the Spanish language in high school, I had a 'leg up' because both of my parents had studied Latin as a required subject in high school. Neither could read or speak Latin, except for the responses at mass. No, I wasn't aided by any knowledge they had gained but by the fact that they both still kept their old Latin textbooks on a bookshelf in our home.

When I found myself bored because I'd read all of my library books, I was in the habit of taking a volume of the encyclopedia or any random book from their shelves into the bathroom when I bathed. The bathroom was the only quiet place in a house with six younger siblings, so sometimes I liked to take a bath just to have some privacy. I never learned Latin, but from this reading I certainly did learn more about grammar than most at a very young age. I also was blessed in seventh grade with one of the meanest English teachers ever: Mrs. Gittings of the Infant Jesus of Prague School, who had the audacity to insist that children learn to diagram sentences even though that was no longer the educational fad. I just loved Mrs. Gittings...even though she made me read David Copperfield, one of the most insipid novels ever.

First studying a foreign language formally in high school, my original approach was to view it as a study in cryptology. Grammar was part of the code; vocabulary the other. I just loved secret codes, and enjoyed solving cryptograms and word-related puzzles. I just knew that someday, I'd find the master key and the whole language would be revealed to me. Nope, this allegorical philosophy and method tanked. I was getting an 'A', so it was OK in that regard, but I knew that I wasn't learning to speak the language.

The next approach was musical: keep the rhythm and conversational tonal pitches and don't worry so much about the words. When I actually started listening to the language, I could feel that I was learning much better. In public places, I knew what language people were speaking even though I spoke none of them from the song that the language made* from the groups of people talking together. The Mexicans sounded different from the Cubans, but it was obvious the song was in the same genre. I learned to say "como se dice" a lot to my teacher, who would give me the words I didn't know. By this time, I'd finally started to study the past tenses, which I think was my major stumbling block and the source of my frustration. They teach only present tense in the first year of study, and I don't know anyone who actually speaks in the present tense.

The approach that finally worked for me was to work and work and work until I developed the ability to think rationally without using any language at all. Little children think like that, it is only when they are around four years old that they have a running verbal interior dialogue. My thoughts when I was doing this correctly were exactly the same as my thoughts when I was sleeping and having a dream. So, I started trying to deliberately dream in Spanish. That worked. I didn't think in English and translate it into Spanish anymore: I started to think and speak in Spanish because I made room for it in my thoughts instead of clinging to the more comfortable ways of thinking in English.

When I hear of people now who struggle with learning languages, I suggest that they try to dream in the language. Nearly everyone I suggest that to thinks I'm crazy. The idea never occurs to anyone, but some actually try it. Many more people than I had thought can learn to do it. Those who do learn to do it have always told me that was their turning point in overcoming their difficulties and eventually they master the spoken language.

The best ESOL teachers (English as a Second Language) that I substituted or served under in Collier County, FL knew all of this intuitively. When Sister Lorraine in Immokalee taught her tutors, the approaches and techniques that she taught encouraged the natural learning of language, especially by absolutely denying the use of the written word. Speech is a verbal skill, and the written word unwittingly short-circuits in favor of the translation mode that gets in the way of actually learning the language. My friends at our Literacy Society and the immersion classes in the elementary schools foster the right attitudes in the students and their results are very impressive.

All of the books designed to teach American children to speak foreign languages seem structured to learn and memorize individual words. Maybe we should play them foreign language TV and try an immersion system instead? We have the technology!

* A funny story about language as song: Once at the Calistoga coffeehouse, I heard a group of people speaking in Italian at a table in the outdoor garden. They were obviously tourists, as there were maps and folders from the hotel all over the table. So, as a good Neapolitan anxious to keep our good reputation as a friendly place and also as a good Sicilian/Markejan, I walked over to welcome them, babbling in Italian. We all had a good laugh: they looked at me like I had two heads, since the music that I took for Italian was actually Spanish with the Argentine accent of Buenos Aires! (I was doubly embarassed, since I should have remembered that, since when my grandfather 'Joe' fled Italy by emigrating to the United States, his brother went instead to South America.)

What's The Word

Muslims got around the problem of translating the 'Word' into the babel of human languages by simply demanding that converts receive the Koran in Arabic; this was extremely important because their 'Word' was the physical book and message of the Koran.

Christians and Jews aren't 'people of the book' like them despite their claims to the contrary. The Jewish people's 'Word' isn't Scripture, or Talmud traditions, but a lived a covenant relationship between (1) Abram named Abraham and (2) The Lord; their relationship has been maintained for millenia, passed from father to son to the 12 tribes and then their whole nation. Our Christian 'Word' is a physical, divine, spiritual, living person: the Risen Lord, Jesus the Christ, who lived, died, and lives today; our relationship to Him and His Father who is known through Him is continually taught by the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.

Sometimes, our languages still get in the way...but today we have technology tools to serve The Lord better.

For Ben: One Man Much Loved

Ash Wednesday 2009

I tried to give it to Peggy, but she was adamant that she was done with trinkets. My son Stephen and I had been delivering odds and ends to various charities, and the medal must have fallen out of one of the bags.

I continued out the door to my car. Ben Simpson was re-arranging his music and stands in his car. He didn't know, but I'd left him a music 'cheat book' for the Big Band era songs for the nursing homes with one of the priests, for him to receive as a surprise. I was curious if he'd gotten it yet, & surreptitiously looked for it in the very cluttered vehicle. This was pretty normal for me, as I flit about many places and have many interests. I joke that I'm "one of St. Anthony's kids", i.e. that I'm always finding things or remembering treasures discarded.

Ben wandered in much the same way, so we were related in many ways. For example, I always sought advice from men I respected when I was unsure of decisions involving my fatherless sons, and Ben often was kind enough to help me think things through. I always hit the pancake breakfasts for clubs and charities, including the one at the airport for the Civil Air Patrol. When I mentioned going there one year, of course it was one of Ben's passions. (On his advice, I even took the boys and their friend to see if anyone might be interested in joining their youth corps.) When I was a teenager, I'd been a member of a guitar mass group, so sometimes we talked about music or discussed which hymns might appeal to which congregations. I was always honored that he asked my opinion, since he was a professional and I just a tinkerer whose memory bridged the 'old' and the 'new' Church music years.

Ben and I were also family in a couple of ways. For several years, my son had a best friend who shared his entire name... Stephen Joseph Bartholomew was the son of my body and Stephen Joseph Nathaniel, now a Marine, was the son of my heart. I used to call them "Stephen Joseph squared." Well, the Marine's aunt and the Simpsons were best friends; in fact, one couple were godparents to the son of the other. So, sometimes we talked about them.

I have six younger brothers and sisters, and through the marriages we have a very wide range of nationalities and religions. I have two Jewish nieces in a progressive community in New Jersey, Irish, Mexican, Greek, two families of Polish, English Presbyterian...So when Ben's son was "breaking his mother's heart" by marrying outside of the Roman Catholic Church, I could share how the Lord worked his will in my own family life. There's nothing to soothe a troubled soul like a factual witness!

Earlier this Wednesday morning, I'd been teasing him about playing 'follow the leader', since we'd visited just yesterday after mass at St. Agnes and here we were together again at St. John's. Now, here we were as fellow travelers again moving from the church to the parish hall. In a way I was glad to speak with him again, since Bob & Peggy were as concerned as I about how sad he was this Advent season. That is a time when everyone needs to be particularly solicitous of the widowed. Advent is harder than Christmas for so many. Ben was always so faith-filled that the change in him this year was apparent. The joy was missing, and replaced with something else that he was not yet comfortable sharing. Just before mass, Peggy had noticed that something was not quite right, but she didn't know what it was either.

"Ben, I have this little angel for the car," I said. "You see so many more people than I do. Do you think you could find someone who needs it?"

Ben took the angel from me and looked at it thoughtfully.

"It's for me...it's mine," he said. "I'm always in a hurry these days. I don't worry about it, though, since I have a very fast guardian angel."

"Benjamin," he said. "You remember who Benjamin is, don't you?"

I don't know why Ben wanted to talk about his name. By now, he should have learned not to play Bible trivia with me since I'm a history and Old Testament buff. I remember being impatient, since I was in a rush to finish many things before taking my sons to Chicago for Christmas, and all I wanted to do was to find a home for something beautiful.

"Of course I remember, Ben," I said. "He was the youngest and dearest child of Jacob, called Israel. His beloved wife, Rachel, died giving birth to him and Jacob was never happy ever after unless that boy was by his side. His full-blooded brother, Joseph, nearly killed Israel when he insisted his father allow Benjamin to be brought to him in Egypt during the famine."

Peggy now was making her way to the parish hall. I caught her satisfied smile as she watched us talking by Ben's car under the tree. She was probably relieved she escaped being saddled with another piece of paper or medal or something I'd picked up from the floor. I can be quite annoying, and no doubt she was very relieved that I was bothering someone else today!

"Benjamin", my friend Ben said as he loaded his car, "was much loved. Did I tell you that I'm going flying today?"

We talked some more, about nothing and everything as was our way together. He spoke several times about how very much he was looking forward to finishing the many things he must do--always quite a list!--before he finally would be free to fly.

Ben loved to fly. There, in his eyes each time he mentioned his plan to fly this evening, was the joy that I had missed in his manner. That was all that he really wanted to talk about. I teased him about having way too much to do and that he should have a kid chauffeur him around so that he could finish his notes and make his plans instead of having to keep his eyes on the road. Ben agreed that he was probably doing too much again, but it was obvious that being of service, being busy, and having just a few minutes in the Lord's beautiful sky was all that he wanted in life right now.

No longer worried about him for today, I left the pretty little trinket with him. Knowing Ben, it was in his pocket when whatever overtook him that night robbed us of his melodious voice.



Ben, our dear friend, please know how very much we all miss you.

This Benjamin was one man much loved, and I have no doubt that he knows now, as he rests in the arms of the Savior he so loved, just how very much.

H

I have not posted here in a very long time. Instead, I had begun several .doc papers.

I have three main insights that I think appropriate to explore: personal witness of the Communion of Saints, discussion of Hubris and The Commandment, and ecclesiology reflection that I've tentatively titled The Womb, The Tomb, and The Church.

Pray for me.