Spirituality: Lessons for Language Learners

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Welcome to The 5-Week Linguist Show. This week, I wanted to talk about languages and spirituality. Charlemagne once said to have another language is to possess another soul. I’ve thought about that so many times over the years. Having another language gives us an entirely different outlook on life. It gives us a whole different set of ways to connect with people that you would never be able to talk to. It’s not just limited to the people we talk to. It’s limited to the ideas and the content they produce the films, the literature, their history. It completely broadens your horizons and opens up your world to so many possibilities.

I want to really define what I believe spirituality to be and give you just a little bit about my background. I was not raised with any type of organized religion. My parents divorced when I was very young. My father was almost anti-religion. He was raised in a Catholic house, and he’s a doctor level engineer who believes in logic, and reason, and mathematics, and numbers, and does not believe that there is anything beyond. Growing up, he felt that church was just his duty and that it was something that he didn’t want in his adult life.

My mother was raised in an Episcopalian household. Religion was important, but it was … They were really nice people, my mother’s family, and went to church. It was also social and a part of their culture.

Neither of them had any inclination to raise us with any religion. My brother and sister were both baptized as part of my father’s Catholic upbringing, and they decided they would not going to do that with me. And if I’m fairly honest, it gave me this huge sense of fear and instability when I was really aware that everyone else my age was learning religion, so going … Whatever that meant. Of course, that’s different for everyone. But, they had a really strong sense of what they should do and what they shouldn’t do and then what was going to happen later on. I felt really scared about that, even though I knew … I didn’t know the specifics. I knew that there was something else and that there was something greater beyond what we were experiencing here, but I had no idea what that was.

As an adult, I am really grateful for that experience of not being raised to believe in any one particular religion, because I do think that it’s helped me be open-minded to just see religion as part of someone in their culture and not completely defining them, that we have more in common than we don’t. So when I look at religions, I consider … I’m able to just see it as part of something bigger and not something that disconnects us, but something … Not a place in which we differ necessarily and that I come to believe that spirituality encompasses and accepts all religions and beliefs. I found that really comforting.

Recently, I was listening to Berné Brown. I want to get her quote right. She talks about how important spirituality is. I feel like she is a church-goer, and that maybe recently she has some sort of service, Church with Berné Brown, I think they’re calling it. I think it’s non-denominational. It’s just people getting together.