THE POWER OF LANGUAGE
I grew up with two inspiring story-tellers. My parents were wise, profound and impassioned. My father’s stories were often gripping of the heart…the stuff that lingers for a lifetime.
One of the many stories I grew up hearing was the sorrowful tale of how Stalin suppressed the Ukrainian people and crushed their spirit by starving them. I remember hearing how they took away their food, cut off any outside help - virtually locking them in their towns to die, and then made it illegal to use the words famine or starvation. The very language for their misery was taken away.
Quoting from The History Place (http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm) -because my memory tends to run very imaginative): The Soviet Union wanted to seize the Ukrainian farmers’ lands but when the people resisted ... Stalin's secret police…systematically attacked and killed uncooperative farmers. But the resistance continued. The people … remained stubbornly determined to return to their pre-Soviet farming lifestyle. Some refused to work at all, leaving the wheat and oats to rot in un-harvested fields.
In Moscow, Stalin responded to their unyielding defiance by …deliberately caus(ing) mass starvation and … the deaths of millions.
Moscow needed the farmer’s wheat (think 1984) to sell it to other nations in order to generate cash for modernization plans.
By January 1933, there was simply no food remaining to feed the people of the Ukraine. … (If the wheat had remained in the Ukraine, it was estimated to have been enough to feed all of the people there for up to two years)
Here is the part of the story that I most clearly remember…
When the Ukrainians Communists asked for help: Stalin responded by … seal(ing) off the borders of the Ukraine, preventing any food from entering, ..seizing any stored up food, leaving farm families without a morsel. … By the spring of 1933, the height of the famine, an estimated 25,000 persons died every day in the Ukraine…. a person could be arrested for even using the word 'famine' or 'hunger' or 'starvation' in a sentence.
There were other points my father made when telling this story (like the silence of Journalists due to pro-communist sentiments); but the bit about the suppression of their language to describe their experience still haunts me.
When words are taken away and a people’s experience silenced, something disturbing is afoot.
Language brings things to the light – even if, at the time, the language is awkward or inadequate. There are many ways that language can be takien away from us. Folk may hide behind the precision of language in order to not hear, not understand; and when this happens, something un-christian has occurred, we have violated the call to not be easily offended. (There has been a large shift in my lifetime from the onus being upon the listener to seek an understanding of what the speaker is meaning (intent); to the current state of the hearer’s right to be readily offended, and, therefore, no longer required to listen to, nor even respect, the speaker.)
Our eighth graders this year will be reading a book by Vishal Mangalwadi about William Carey. William Carey was a missionary to India in the early 1800s. William Carey understood the power of language.
Precious excerpts from our book read:
Carey’s generation believed that it was necessary for us to freely dialogue and debate truth, because we all tend to believe rationalizations that are untrue. Freedom of conscience is incomplete without the freedom to change one’s beliefs, to convert. A state that hinders conversion is uncivilized because it restricts the human quest for truth and reform….(p.85)
In order to carry out this aim of reform, Carey sought to develop India’s vernacular languages (everyday spoken in the street language vs. the language of academics and books).
Crucial to the European Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther was the knowledge that, in order to transform His people, Christ used the language of the common man, Aramaic, rather than the Hebrew of the sacred Jewish Scriptures. Until the sixteenth century “the languages of learning” and therefore of the elite had been Latin and Greek, whereas ordinary people in Europe spoke German, French, or English. This allowed the privileged elite to exploit ignorance.
In order to liberate the masses, to make the knowledge o f the truth available to all the people, the Reformers began to translate the Bible into the languages of the common people. Martin Luther himself translated the Bible into German.
Obviously, to have the Scriptures translated into the spoken language of the people ... the people had to learn to read and write the language they spoke. This then further effected the government of the people. It is not possible to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people that functions mainly in the language of the elite…. The genius of the market economy is that it liberates the energies of the masses for making contributions to the economic life of the country in which they live. This contribution is impossible if an elitist language becomes a barrier over which ordinary citizens cannot climb….
A feature of medieval society is its use of an elitist language (such as Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, or now, English) as a means of discriminating, and also as a method of granting unearned privileges to an aristocracy. It became possible for India to make the transition from Persian as the court language, to Urdu, and then to the regional languages… because of Carey’s labor and leadership in turning the vernacular languages into literary languages through Bible translation.
Quoting from two different peers of Carey:
Mastering the complex classical speech and literature of the learned and priestly class, and living with his Master’s (Christ’s) sympathy among the people whom that class oppresses, Carey takes the popular dialects which ...[the medieval-minded pundits considered a language ‘fit only for women and demons’]and grew them into an effective language.
Carey refused to have English as the medium of instruction in the college he founded…He was well aware that the vernacular languages of the people were not developed enough … to use for higher education…He strove therefore to develop both the vernacular languages and the literature. After a team… would complete the Bible in a language, he would encourage them to translate educational books in that same language.
The Power of language…
Ecclesia Classes is deeply desirous to give our students the gifts of language and ideas. Mangalwadi writes about how the fertile fields of ideas go on to create human awakening music and art. We want to see our students’ hearts, minds, souls awakened (both individually and corporately as the body of Christ) to all that we are meant to be as those who reflect well the image of our loving Father.
From censored language or, simply, insular language to becoming folk for whom the language of ideas does flourish, we want our students to be capable of conveying eternal hopes and dreams… to be literate in the fullest sense of the word. Not elitists but visionaries, who can speak with heart and soul, naming the things that need to be named, conveying the dreams that Joel tells us they are to be dreaming. Speaking truth in love, liberating themselves and the world about them from the superficial realities of which Jeremiah writes so well: “you have become a superficial people for you worship superficial things” and again, "They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, saying, 'Peace, peace,' but there is no peace.”
Rather, to be a people of substance in the light of love.
I grew up with two inspiring story-tellers. My parents were wise, profound and impassioned. My father’s stories were often gripping of the heart…the stuff that lingers for a lifetime.
One of the many stories I grew up hearing was the sorrowful tale of how Stalin suppressed the Ukrainian people and crushed their spirit by starving them. I remember hearing how they took away their food, cut off any outside help - virtually locking them in their towns to die, and then made it illegal to use the words famine or starvation. The very language for their misery was taken away.
Quoting from The History Place (http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/genocide/stalin.htm) -because my memory tends to run very imaginative): The Soviet Union wanted to seize the Ukrainian farmers’ lands but when the people resisted ... Stalin's secret police…systematically attacked and killed uncooperative farmers. But the resistance continued. The people … remained stubbornly determined to return to their pre-Soviet farming lifestyle. Some refused to work at all, leaving the wheat and oats to rot in un-harvested fields.
In Moscow, Stalin responded to their unyielding defiance by …deliberately caus(ing) mass starvation and … the deaths of millions.
Moscow needed the farmer’s wheat (think 1984) to sell it to other nations in order to generate cash for modernization plans.
By January 1933, there was simply no food remaining to feed the people of the Ukraine. … (If the wheat had remained in the Ukraine, it was estimated to have been enough to feed all of the people there for up to two years)
Here is the part of the story that I most clearly remember…
When the Ukrainians Communists asked for help: Stalin responded by … seal(ing) off the borders of the Ukraine, preventing any food from entering, ..seizing any stored up food, leaving farm families without a morsel. … By the spring of 1933, the height of the famine, an estimated 25,000 persons died every day in the Ukraine…. a person could be arrested for even using the word 'famine' or 'hunger' or 'starvation' in a sentence.
There were other points my father made when telling this story (like the silence of Journalists due to pro-communist sentiments); but the bit about the suppression of their language to describe their experience still haunts me.
When words are taken away and a people’s experience silenced, something disturbing is afoot.
Language brings things to the light – even if, at the time, the language is awkward or inadequate. There are many ways that language can be takien away from us. Folk may hide behind the precision of language in order to not hear, not understand; and when this happens, something un-christian has occurred, we have violated the call to not be easily offended. (There has been a large shift in my lifetime from the onus being upon the listener to seek an understanding of what the speaker is meaning (intent); to the current state of the hearer’s right to be readily offended, and, therefore, no longer required to listen to, nor even respect, the speaker.)
Our eighth graders this year will be reading a book by Vishal Mangalwadi about William Carey. William Carey was a missionary to India in the early 1800s. William Carey understood the power of language.
Precious excerpts from our book read:
Carey’s generation believed that it was necessary for us to freely dialogue and debate truth, because we all tend to believe rationalizations that are untrue. Freedom of conscience is incomplete without the freedom to change one’s beliefs, to convert. A state that hinders conversion is uncivilized because it restricts the human quest for truth and reform….(p.85)
In order to carry out this aim of reform, Carey sought to develop India’s vernacular languages (everyday spoken in the street language vs. the language of academics and books).
Crucial to the European Protestant Reformers such as Martin Luther was the knowledge that, in order to transform His people, Christ used the language of the common man, Aramaic, rather than the Hebrew of the sacred Jewish Scriptures. Until the sixteenth century “the languages of learning” and therefore of the elite had been Latin and Greek, whereas ordinary people in Europe spoke German, French, or English. This allowed the privileged elite to exploit ignorance.
In order to liberate the masses, to make the knowledge o f the truth available to all the people, the Reformers began to translate the Bible into the languages of the common people. Martin Luther himself translated the Bible into German.
Obviously, to have the Scriptures translated into the spoken language of the people ... the people had to learn to read and write the language they spoke. This then further effected the government of the people. It is not possible to have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people that functions mainly in the language of the elite…. The genius of the market economy is that it liberates the energies of the masses for making contributions to the economic life of the country in which they live. This contribution is impossible if an elitist language becomes a barrier over which ordinary citizens cannot climb….
A feature of medieval society is its use of an elitist language (such as Latin, Persian, Sanskrit, or now, English) as a means of discriminating, and also as a method of granting unearned privileges to an aristocracy. It became possible for India to make the transition from Persian as the court language, to Urdu, and then to the regional languages… because of Carey’s labor and leadership in turning the vernacular languages into literary languages through Bible translation.
Quoting from two different peers of Carey:
Mastering the complex classical speech and literature of the learned and priestly class, and living with his Master’s (Christ’s) sympathy among the people whom that class oppresses, Carey takes the popular dialects which ...[the medieval-minded pundits considered a language ‘fit only for women and demons’]and grew them into an effective language.
Carey refused to have English as the medium of instruction in the college he founded…He was well aware that the vernacular languages of the people were not developed enough … to use for higher education…He strove therefore to develop both the vernacular languages and the literature. After a team… would complete the Bible in a language, he would encourage them to translate educational books in that same language.
The Power of language…
Ecclesia Classes is deeply desirous to give our students the gifts of language and ideas. Mangalwadi writes about how the fertile fields of ideas go on to create human awakening music and art. We want to see our students’ hearts, minds, souls awakened (both individually and corporately as the body of Christ) to all that we are meant to be as those who reflect well the image of our loving Father.
From censored language or, simply, insular language to becoming folk for whom the language of ideas does flourish, we want our students to be capable of conveying eternal hopes and dreams… to be literate in the fullest sense of the word. Not elitists but visionaries, who can speak with heart and soul, naming the things that need to be named, conveying the dreams that Joel tells us they are to be dreaming. Speaking truth in love, liberating themselves and the world about them from the superficial realities of which Jeremiah writes so well: “you have become a superficial people for you worship superficial things” and again, "They have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, saying, 'Peace, peace,' but there is no peace.”
Rather, to be a people of substance in the light of love.
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