Shweta comes from India. Julia, an engineer from Mexico.
Jacinta is our class nun. She’s from Nigeria. Leonardo, Thiago, Christane, and Simone are all from different parts of Brazil.
Maria is from southern Spain. Marta is from Poland.
We are all learning German. But it’s not the only language we have in common. It’s hard to give a presentation on your mother-tongue when everyone in your German class already knows your language. It’s difficult to know what to say, when you are learning “hello” and “goodbye” in a half dozen ways you never knew, but when it’s your turn to share… you can contribute nothing to the conversation because your language was a part of the obligatory studies of these people from their childhood.
A mentor of mine frequently told me, “Language is a vehicle for culture.” It’s more than “just communication.” It’s more than another set of words. No, language carries with it cultural story and cultural values.
This week I heard my cultural story in a way I hadn’t before. I heard a story of dominance. I heard the years-later ramifications of a colonial empire, forcing its values and ways on others. I heard a culture that asks the world to accommodate to it.
Time and time again, I heard my classmates describe how and when they began learning English, and how it was forced upon them by their various systems, “if we are to have a good life.” And every time I heard this brought up, it hit my heart. I began seeing, with waves of guilt, how the world is made easier for English speakers… even if we are only the 3rd largest group of native speakers (Mandarin and Spanish before us, respectively).
It’s the same story. Privilege. Power. Directly taken in the past. Passively propagated in the present.
It’s a story of slavery. It’s a story of taking land, massacring peoples. It’s a story of racism, ethnocentrism, and pride.
It’s a story that is hard to hear. It hurts to hear. It’s easiest to justify it, or to ignore it completely. Because if you hear it, it breaks you.
“God, what have we done to your world?”
…
The story is not over.
We live in the ruts in the past. It has determined parts of us, but not all of us… not yet. But that small margin of freedom is the only thing that keeps me from giving up. It’s the only thing that allows me to accept the guilt, to face the story how it is.
I live in the privilege of my cultural story, but I have also a small choice to give from that. I have the option to live in a way that values the Other. I have the option of listening, of learning, and of keeping my mouth shut long enough to let the Other have a voice… their own voice.
And maybe through a little more humility and a little more hospitality, we can find some healing together.
Still Wandering,
Tony