More summer in the City

Wrigley Field

Lost in Translation

Translation...

Its a word that keeps coming to mind. I spent a week in Germany, an invalid for my lack of language. And yet, even as I spent the days, some farmiliar bridges appeared - a word which is similar in English, a patient translator, a picture, some context - and I began at some point to recognize a favorite quote of mine:

The things that we have in common far outweigh the things that divide us (Walt Disney)

I'll be in Mexico next week. Only for 3 days, but it will be seen whether my years of toil over that language will return to me, as they did a couple years ago in Costa Rica. Maybe if grace could find me in German, such study - be it ages since - will be blessed in Mexico?

But this word keeps finding its way into my head - in English. It is in my own native language that I most frequently find a need for "translation". It is not in some foreign tongue where I typically struggle for a word, or for some combination thereof by which I might express my heart. I walk away from an encounter with a friend, and suddenly a turn of phrase echoes in my mind from a different perspective - I find myself hoping that they didn't "take it the wrong way". Email, text message, even this blog - I am buried in words, haunted by my lack of them, even among so many... fearful that one will be lost or changed as it leaves my head & finds its way in a world of perspectives not my own.

It's not only as it pertains to matters of the heart. How will my thoughts at work be perceived? What motives will be attributed to me? If I teach somewhere, what part of what I send out lands just as I intended on those who hear me? What experiences lie behind them, which translate me differently than I could ever know? As my children become such reasonable people, how will they regard my intentions towards them - my rules, even the freedoms I allow them?

And what of those experiences which are wholly "other" from my daily life? A Castle in Schwerin, a connection at summer camp, service to an orphan in Israel, or even a special, intimate time with the Lord - out of which I must go make dinner... How does all this settle - how does it translate back into the world of the mundane? These particular cases, I find, must make their home in me - they must carve themselves out a place of permanence. Is it in my "heart"? my memory? some electrical synapse in my brain? It is the place in me which makes me, me. But even in this most intimate & personal of places, some translation is needed.

My prayer becomes known: That the same Helper would serve both within and without; that the One who must so often translate me to me, would also be active in translating me to the world around me. That He would search me and know my heart, my inmost thoughts, that as He leads me in the everlasting way, He might lead me among friends and strangers in a way that protects us all from wrong perspectives. Even as I pray, another word comes to mind.

Incarnation... a very specific kind of translation...

The wild and amazing lengths to which He went in order to provide this Helper... the condescension He embraced in order to translate His very Self to me...
I come to think its not too much to ask, I come to a place of rest instead of striving, a place of trust instead of fear.
I am safe, I am valuable, I am loved, no matter what... whether I see it, whether anyone else sees it, it is true...

Truth translated – over my twisted, dysfunctional inner monologue that would scream otherwise – to a place deeper than any the world could reach. It is this which builds my conviction of things not seen.

FairieLand

Rotkohl

I am looking at it, I am smelling it, I am tasting it, I could reach out & touch it.
It is available to every one of my senses, and yet I cannot name it. I have no word for it.

There are things in this world that I have many names for - like the Eskimo's have many words for snow, or perhaps the French for love...
but I sit incapacitated by the phenomenon right in front of me, unable to label it - unable to connect with someone who is farmiliar with it.

Is there a greater distance to try and cover? Thousands of miles (kilometers?) will ultimately separate us, but this feels just as much a barrier.
I am close enough to touch this person, but I am imprisoned from even that by my inability to find a word for some vegetable on his plate.

Suddenly, I fully regret every reticence I ever had to trying new foods, from the time I was eight years old until now.
I regret not learning this language at every opportunity I ever had to do so.
I regret the rebellion of mankind at Babel that ever segregated us so.

Because all I want in this moment is for the barriers to be gone.
All I want is to be able to know what to call the thing that is transpiring in front of me,
as it pertains to the vegetable, and otherwise.

Maybe if there was a name for it, then there might be a clear path towards it.
Instead, I stand in the land of things undefined - things unspoken for a lack of words.

How long would I have to study, how proficient would I have to be,
to be able to properly know and understand and confidently move in the realm in which I now find myself?

Even if you gave me the name, my sense of being disoriented would not fade
for I am sure of only one thing now - that I've never known anything like this before.

And yet, I have to ask, what am I striving for?
What will it serve me to know a clear path when in 10 hours I will be racing home faster than a human mind can comprehend?
What is gained from such perception when the heart will only break for having had it?

Cole Slaw.

There it is - a link to something farmiliar... a guidepost in this distant wood.
And now I know. I know all I need to know. About the vegetable anyway.

The rest remains - compelling, intoxicating, a veritable need - just as distant, just as reserved, just as untouchable...
or am I only protected?

For as accessible as Red Cabbage might be 24 hours from now, how will I ever find Waldmeister - let alone THIS?