Heart Language
My spirit has a heart language and I think I’ve been in denial about it.
Before I explain the crux of that statement, let me set it up for you. In the TESOL graduate program of 2017 at UNM, we were all taught the importance of acknowledging and honoring the first language of our students to whom we would one day be teaching English.
A person’s first language is sometimes called the “native tongue”.
In one academic journal, I heard it referred to as the “heart language.”
I really liked this term.
When I first heard it in one of my classes, I learned that many people who are raised in other countries speak several more languages besides the one they learned at birth, the heart language.
During this discussion, one of my professors from Pakistan said that there was a language he spoke in his home and his village first, Punjabi, and a language he spoke within the city in more formal settings, Urdu. He was also taught English in school. I remember him telling all of us that Punjabi was a language looked down upon in larger, more metropolitan areas of the country. He tried not to use it when he needed to impress someone or prove that he was an educated man; in those cases, he would use Urdu. Yet, he told us, “Punjabi is my heart language.” It is still his heart language. Today, here in the United States, he is even trying to teach his baby daughter Punjabi. And I think that’s beautiful.
When my professor told us about speaking Urdu in the city, instead of Punjabi, I learned that this is called code switching. Code switching is changing what language you’re using in order to move up or down the “power ladder” of society. Only the lucky ones who speak more than one language can participate in code switching, but it can also be done with different dialects, accents, and slang. Code switching occurs all over the world, with tribal African and Native American languages that have never even been written down, all the way up to more “politically powerful” languages like French, Spanish, English, Portuguese, etc. Where you are will determine your ranking in “language economics.” Typically, the most powerful language is determined by how many people use it.
But, a person’s heart language always remains the same and arguably, cannot be changed.
Once I learned about all this, I experimented with it in my classrooms. Every time I spoke or attempted to speak the “heart language” of the kids I was working with, be it Sesotho, Spanish, or the little Arabic that my fourth graders taught me, the countenance and even posture of the child I was speaking to would change completely. I’m no hero– I probably didn’t say it right, they always laughed at my accent, and even my Spanish is usually very weird grammatically…
But it never failed when I tried: The kids would sit up straight, eyes glittering, and exchange glances and giggles all over the class. I couldn’t get them to listen to one single word of English during the lesson about families: “WHO! WHO IS IN YOUR FAMILY? JOSÉ, SISTER? YOU HAVE A SISTER? DO YOU? WHO! WHO IS IN YOUR FAMILY?”
But the second I say to him “Hay Díos mio, José!”, his shoulders would pop up and he would cock his head. He would start listening.
Two Syrian cousins in my fourth grade class were most definitely whispering to each other in Arabic about my tattoos (code switching in action!) and, instead of ignoring them, I caught both pairs of their sneaky eyes and yelled one of the only Arabic phrases I know:
“YALLA!” (Let’s go!)
The boys’ eyes grew huge and they burst out in laughter.
But I got their attention, and they certainly started participating in the lesson from then on.
So, why? Why does my silly attempt to speak their language reach them better than my annoying repetitive English?
Because– it’s their heart language.
Because they heard those sounds and words whispered to them when they were tiny babies. They heard those words when their mothers sang them to sleep or when their older brothers tricked them. They heard the smooth ease of letters and words (too difficult for me to pronounce) every day, outside their homes, with their neighbors, in their market places and on their playgrounds.
We think in our heart language and dream in our heart language.
We write birthday cards in our heart language and tell jokes in our heart language. In fact, I once asked my German friend Christoph if he was actually funnier than we knew him to be, since we can only speak English with him and that’s his second language. He responded with a huge sigh, and he said, “Finally someone understands! It is so hard for me to time a joke right in English. But when I am speaking German, I am actually really funny!”
I believe him. The misfortune is that there is a part of him we never got to meet. That’s how powerful heart language can be, especially pertaining to personal identity and how we view the world.
What’s always been very sad to me is when a child refuses to speak her heart language with her family in public. It’s English only for her in front of all her friends and her teachers. She feels shame probably because no one else in her class speaks that language; maybe she just wants to fit into her group and go unnoticed like the rest of the pack. This is seen often when kids are late-elementary age through middle school.
But something happens like magic when these multi-lingual kids move on to high school and college. Their heart language, if they continue to use and learn it, become a pivotal and powerful part of their identities. They are seen as leaders in their communities, full of confidence and pride in who they are and where they came from.
There is something deeply human and magical and beautiful about our heart language. It’s the language your mother or father whispered to you, the you when you were too little to spell or repeat it back to them. It is a pillar of our identities.
You, me, and all those precious children have a right to guard that native tongue and use it to fully understand the lives we live and to make meaning from it. Which is why they taught us in TESOL grad school to use and honor a student’s heart language; for with it, the students can understand in the purest and deepest sense possible.
And using it validates who they are.
So, how is this idea of “heart language” a metaphor for my life and why are you still reading this?
Spiritually speaking, in terms of my Christianity,
I think I almost lost my heart language recently.
And that would’ve been so tragic, knowing all I know about it now.
In my personal deconstruction, I’ve allowed myself to take apart all that I’ve known and all that I’ve been taught; I’ve allowed myself to see how far I can throw all the stuff I’ve been carrying in me and calling sacred for 20+ years.
“Will this idea shatter if I do that?
Will that truth disappear if I believe this?”
In response to this season of life that is most likely inevitable for all of us, some people go off the rails to test things out.
They release themselves from rules. They “go crazy” doing all the stuff they never were able to.
That’s just not my style.
I think intellect is my vice of choice.
So I dove into every book and podcast and sermon that I could to make sense of all the tradition I was given. It’s been years of unraveling.
With every step I’ve taken towards learning a new language of theology, each step towards making sense of faith and Christ and ever-present God: left foot, right foot: human suffering; left foot, right foot: prayers high and low; left foot, right foot: the Bible. With all those steps, I was formalizing the words I used to describe God, to describe what happens to me when I come into contact with God.
And the farther I went, the colder it felt.
Like my Pakistani friend, I decided to pick up a language more widely known and more powerful, to get what I needed. I wanted to respect myself and be respected. I wanted to explain things. I wanted to impress others and reconcile the giant gap I faced between real life and belief.
The problem with all this formal language is, I’m a romantic.
I’ve always loved a love story. I come from a church home whose mission involved impressing so deeply into my heart the love of God, and the grace of God.
As I little girl, I used to curl up in a ball and imagine I was laying on God’s lap. I used to picture God sitting at my bedside when I was sleepless with anxiety. When it rained, I was convinced he did it for me, because rain was my favorite weather; it was him telling me he loved me that much.
I would walk around school with my right hand weirdly cupped at my side, convinced I was holding God’s hand and he was holding mine back.
But growing up happens. Coming of age happens. I have seen more of the world. I have suffered more pains. I have asked more questions and have had even fewer answers. I have read book after book, and thus, have learned more ways of talking about God and explaining God. I have become multi-lingual, spiritually speaking: code switching in order to shift the power towards intellect. So that when I talk about God and think about God, with myself and with others– reason and rationale will be at the forefront.
You can’t lay in God’s lap.
God wasn’t holding your hand then.
It was raining because it was monsoon season.
As I was adopting new languages with all my learning, I certainly felt smarter. But everything suddenly felt sterile. Shiny.
Like metal instead of wood.
I remember trying to pray and feeling like I didn’t know who I was talking to. Like I didn’t know how to talk to him. If my idea of his love was nonsensical, then what was His love like…?
I forgot how to speak my heart language.
Those pictures of me and God in physical embrace were pictures I began to cross out in my mind. I wrote them off.
When I thought about God, there was no warmth to be felt about Him anymore.
As I sat in my room trying to pray, an adult woman who’s come this far in her faith, only to feel like she was now standing over an ice chasm,
I felt God say, “My love is a warm love.”
Just like with my kids in those classrooms,
My spirit gasped.
My eyes glittered.
My shoulders popped up.
My heart language. I heard my heart language.
God speaks my heart language? God knows my native tongue?
Could it be, all those years in childhood, when fear tormented me night and day,
I was laying in God’s lap.
He was holding my hand.
He did reach for me with falling rain.
Why not?
Foolish things are always confounding the wise, aren’t they?
God speaks my heart language. God knows my native tongue.
Of course He does…of course. Yes!
Simply put, warm love was my lullaby of choice from God the Father when I could barely talk–
it is the language I learned to speak with Him when I was very small.
And such gushy, romantic love, complete with imagery and goosebumps and longing sighs,
that is still my heart language.
God taught me this language. He raised me to speak it.
And with it, I can understand what is being said in the purest and deepest sense possible.
And by speaking my heart language to me, God validates who I am.
To think that I almost threw it out!
I thought it was childish and unfounded.
With all the intellect I gained, I was ashamed to use my native tongue. I wanted to sound smart, I wanted to talk like everyone else.
Yet, when I stopped using my heart language, it was like part of me went into comatose; perhaps it was the deepest part of me.
All it took was one breath of affirmation from His lips to my ears,
“My love is a warm love”,
and all of me came alive again.
My heart language stood erect once more and brought oxygen and fire to every part of my Spirit. Hearing it again, after all this time of denying it, the intonation and cadence of it, from God himself, jolted through me like electricity.
God created me to respond best to that kind of speech.
To express myself with that kind of language.
I have built my life on the warm language of God’s love.
And that’s okay.
I can be proud of it and of who my heart language made me today.
I can be prouder still because God Himself continues to speak it with me.
I couldn’t explain God or grasp his Person even if I had all the time and books and words in the world. I couldn’t feel the full weight or know the full depth of His love even if I hurled myself into poetry and perfume and song for the rest of my life.
But what I am sure of, beyond every shadow of doubt, is that with my heart language, with this warm love I’ve been living in and breathing by since God first found me, I can hear his voice.
I pray that the simple hope I’ve found in my heart language is a hope that someone else out there can rediscover too.
God speaks your heart language.
A unique-to-you-two-there-since-day-one-heart-language that books and podcasts and other people simply can’t supposed to explain or even understand.
As I end here, what a wonder that it’s pouring rain outside.
