How does language evolve? What do the words we use say about the cultures we come from? In this issue, KidSpirit contributors examine prose and poetry, perception and power. Writers share discoveries about the origins of symbolic texts, the lasting influence of ancient poetry, and the meaning of the word God.

1. How does language change our perception of reality? Anya Dunaif grapples with the Editorial Board’s Big Question in her article, “100 Trillion Connections.” She explores two examples to help readers understand linguistic influence: how a native tribe communicates about colors and how the Mandarin language describes time. Choose a topic that represents your culture’s values (freedom, love, etc.), and write down some words or phrases that illustrate your ideas. Then, share your findings. What do these phrases tell you about your culture and its values?

2. In “Immortality, Poetry, and a Whole Lot of Spinning,” Noorjehan Asim describes the impact of Sufi culture on her country, Pakistan. Noorjehan writes, “Sufi influence lives on in poetry and music, and in the lives of people who follow its path.” What artistic creations have had a lasting impact on your life? Brainstorm a few songs, poems, artwork, or books that represent one phase or aspect of your life, such as a favorite summer or a hobby. Share this list with your friends. What do you notice? What does the list reveal?

3. In a PerSpectives article called “Mother Tongues,” Gary Eberle shares his belief that just as humans are wired to understand language, religious belief systems are ingrained from a young age. He calls for readers to understand “religions as dialects of a great universal language,” and suggests that for increased harmony, we must learn to become polyglots of culture and religion. Consider the ways in which we might become more global in our thinking and practice. Discuss your ideas with the group or with a friend. Do you have ideas in common or are your approaches dissimilar?

The Word Group Guide

Drifting down Broadway, I think of you. The philosopher Roland Barthes argued that the author is dead in his work and that the reader doesn’t need to know him. But this is not true, at least not for you.

To be honest, I know my contemplation on Broadway right now is just a continuation of what I thought about last night at my desk. I was looking at photographs of you on Google: pictures from different ages, with or without a hat, with or without an eye patch, with or without that weary look in your eyes.

—what are you looking for?— my friend asked.

In truth, I did not know. The only thing I felt sure about was that it was not adoration. Not the adoration beautiful young Fitzgerald and Hemingway aroused in me. It was something one could not surmise simply by saying, “Finally, you reveal your teenage girl’s heart.”

Truth be told, I was seeking an answer to an ineffable question.

What was I looking for in you? This question occurred to me two years ago, the first day I read your work. I leafed through pages without knowing the story. It was the words that were enthralling. They were not at all chosen or arranged to tell a story. They were natural, yet elaborate, as if you had spilled silver and diamonds fragments over your page. They shone, telling their own story.

Then I felt the frailty of this metaphor, as these words were not fancy as flying jewels at all. They were quiet as water drops. As they were combined into pages of narration, the droplets became a spring stream. When the stream flowed through the pages, my heart underwent a catharsis, touched and cleansed by the stream; when it crashed on the hard stones of the plot, I could never predict how much energy this soothing, silent stream could release. The word droplets carried each other, detouring and defusing. Divergent thoughts and images were undercurrents in a spring, stirring and interfering with one another unceasingly, unrestrained by meaning or function, shining without limitation.

I was never told where to focus or what to look for, as if you were guiding me from an invisible corner. Even without knowing what your narrators were saying, when I took a break from reading and closed my eyes, I could smell the air mixing with Irish alcohol. At that moment I knew I heard you. Not the narrator experiencing the story, but you staging the words.

Last night in front of my computer, when I was looking at your face in the photos, I tried to imagine what kind of person you must be, with so much brilliance and energy bursting from your slender body. Yet I could see nothing from your photos. Different from Poe’s grave and gloomy eyes, or Wilde’s romantic and coiled hair, your face was rational and composed, hardly reflecting a single sign of where your intense and emotional words must have come from.

Now I ramble into the Strand bookstore on Broadway, thinking about you.

—excuse me. do you have a recording of James Joyce reading his work?”

—if we had one, it must be displayed somewhere. so, I don’t think we have any record of Joyce, at least not any more.

In a mildly morose mood, I leave the bookstore without much struggle in my head. So is that the end? Maybe. Intention, the set “plot,” is not always a wise track to follow as you have revealed. That question still hangs in my mind. Who were you? What were you like as a person? Where did your brilliance and your fantastic ideas come from? What kind of agony did you suffer — what kinds of irrational joy inspired you? What am I looking for in you?

I will not try to answer in this way, this time. I cannot connect with you through your photos. I cannot access the subtle nuance in your voice. As to what will happen in the future, I cannot tell. Maybe one day I will go to Dublin, to Paris, to Zurich, to see what you saw, to feel the origins of your potency. But now I see only your words. As I step out of the bookstore and onto Broadway, I feel myself walk over the imaginary crevice of your physical image. At the same time, my soul joins your soul, guiding my ceaseless curiosity of your captivating words.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Muyun Zhou offers a beautiful meditation on her relationship with the words of James Joyce - and even with the author himself. 

In Search of Joyce

Words. They are behind almost every story. I am fascinated by the importance of words in the Vedas, which, as a Hindu, I’ve grown up with.

Words are the heart of Hindu traditions, stories, and culture. As I’ve returned to the scriptures over the years, I’ve begun to notice a pattern. Words come to the forefront, like in the Vedic creation story, where they inspire the creation of the universe.

This ancient fascination with verbal purity is kept alive by priests in India even today. By passing sacred hymns down the generations, priests have been able to preserve stories and prayers, some thousands of years old, almost perfectly.

When I looked into one of the most important Vedic texts, the Vedanta Sutra, this phrase struck me: “anavritti sabdat” in the original Sanskrit, or, “by sound vibration, one becomes liberated.”

I decided to start my search at the very beginning. According to the Vedic creation story, the first word ever spoken is tapa. A powerful being called Brahma, the builder of our universe, was born into darkness. All he saw was the giant lotus on which he was sitting, and a stem which disappeared into gloom. He didn’t know where the lotus came from, and he didn’t know how to go about his task of creating the universe. There was silence. Then, two syllables, “tapa,” resounded through space.

In Sanskrit, tapa refers to deep meditation or penance. According to the Bhagavat Purana, a Vedic text, at first Brahma “tried to find the speaker, searching on all sides,” but he then decided to “give his attention to the execution of penance, as he was instructed.”

This single, two-syllable word was what spurred Brahma, the first being, to create the rest of the world. The divine significance of words not only crops up at the heart of Vedic creation stories, but almost everywhere else in Hindu scriptures as an important theme.

The Mahabharata, the longest epic poem in the world, is also full of references to the power of words. Like the Vedas, it is a core text of Hinduism, and has a sacred status. The backstabbing, reversals of fortune through rigged games of dice, and its epic scale make it one of my favorite stories. It tells the tale of a great struggle between five brothers and the cunning Kuru dynasty, who usurp the brothers’ kingdom. The climactic war is dazzling in its scale and ferocity. The combatants use magical weapons called astras, which are capable of destroying planets. These astras are usually ordinary arrows, but they get their powers from certain words.

The warriors speak mantras (repeated sounds to aid in meditation), which infuse their weapons with god-like powers. In a section of the epic, an ally of the Kurus sends a powerful weapon, called brahmastra, to murder an unborn child in the womb of its mother. By chanting sacred mantras, the warrior is able to send the weapon in a way that harms the child without touching the mother. The weapons in the Mahabharata have fantastical characteristics, but they all work because of the underlying power of words. Words can create worlds, and also destroy them.

When I traveled to India a few years back, I got a chance to visit one of its most sacred cities — Varanasi. Thousands of tourists and pilgrims visit it every year. I went to one of its ancient temples with my parents. There I witnessed something I’d heard about, but never seen. A group of “Brahmans,” priests, sat next to the altar reciting old hymns from the Vedas. They sang without stop in a repetitive meter, eyes closed and legs folded. They wore a traditional dhoti garment, which is basically a length of cloth wrapped around the lower part of your body, but they were naked above that. They were still singing when I left, 30 minutes later, and they probably continued for many more hours. I’d just glimpsed a centuries-old oral tradition.

Back before the vast Vedic scriptures were written down, they were kept alive orally. This is quite impressive, since the texts contained thousands of verses. Verses were passed from teacher to student with extreme accuracy. To preserve the purity of these sacred words, Brahmans were expected to not only memorize the words in exact order, but the meter and pronunciation as well. The reason behind this obsession with verbal purity is that Brahmans believed that a word’s potency lay in its pronunciation and accuracy.

Since these words were of spiritual nature, even the slightest distortion could completely change its meaning, or leave it ineffective. The Vedas have a story that illustrates the importance of verbal purity in mantras. There was a man named Tvasta who had a burning hatred for the king of the gods, Indra. He performed a ceremony to obtain a son destined to slay Indra.

According to the Bhagavat Purana, he chanted: “Indra-satro vivardhasva ma ciram jahi vidvisam (Bhagavat Purana 6.9.11)”,  or “O enemy of Indra, flourish to kill your enemy without delay”.

Tvasta intended to chant the word indra-satro, meaning, “O enemy of Indra.” Instead of chanting those words short, Tvasta chanted it long, and its meaning changed from “the enemy of Indra” to “Indra, who is an enemy.” Consequently, instead of a son who would kill the king of the gods, he had a son who would die at Indra’s hands. The smallest mistake in pronunciation led to his plans being foiled. Even today, centuries after these texts have been written down, there are a few in India who keep this ancient oral tradition alive.

I’m part of a monotheistic sect of Hinduism called Vaishnavism. I meditate every morning by repeating a few sacred words on prayer beads. It’s an important part of our religion. The words are supposed to give peace and a connection to God, and they help me through the day. My research gave me insight into the worldview of people who lived thousands of years ago, and their intense reverence for words. They seemed to treat words like deities. As a writer, this devotion inspires me. As a Hindu, it gives me a deeper understanding of my own religion.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Nimai Agarwal takes a deep dive into the words at the heart of Hindu traditions, stories, and culture. 

The Power of Words in My Tradition

Imagine describing the world using just five colors, or explaining a series of occurrences in a system where time moves vertically as opposed to horizontally.

How different would the world look if you had always known colors or time to be such? Would your perception be altered? Would only the way in which you describe your view differ?

The idea that language influences perception, and furthermore that speakers of different languages view the world in distinct ways, has become increasingly popular over the past century. I believe that on the most basic level, perception is not influenced by language. While it is hard to think without words, it may be possible on a subconscious level, in images, emotions, and sounds. People employ language to describe their complex thoughts. However, our reactions and emotions are often unexplainable. On the other hand, higher-level thinking must be influenced by language in some way, since language defines the terms necessary for such ideas to exist.

Given that there is still so much to learn about the brain, it is difficult to quantify the dissimilarities of individual perception. One area we can study is color identification. For example, while speakers of English and most other languages have words for eleven major colors (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, grey, black, and white), members of the Himba tribe in Namibia only have five color categories. The word serandu in Himba encapsulates what an English speaker would call red, orange, and pink. A study comparing how British and Himba children learn, remember, and identify colors supports “the theory that color terms are learned relative to language and culture.”

I believe the world is segmented and classified by individual languages or language groups, though I wonder whether Himba children do distinguish between red and pink, yet lack the words to say so?

One English speaker may call two different shades “pink,” while another says they are “fuchsia” and “bubblegum.” The former may be able to see that there are two shades, but still describe them using the same word. Even between speakers of the same language there can be disagreement on color categorization. But do the learned color terms truly change how people see things?

For British and Himba children who have not yet learned colors, “the pattern of memory errors . . . was very similar.” As they grew and learned, the children’s color memory seemed linked to the color terms they used. This supports the idea that language influences perception. On the other hand, language may only alter how individuals describe their surroundings, while the images that their brains receive are independent of the words used to relay them.

Whether language alters people’s vision or only how they explain what they see, does it change the way in which they conceive of the abstract? For instance, English speakers generally speak of time as moving horizontally, while Mandarin speakers tend to describe it as moving vertically. An English speaker would say the past is backwards in time, while a Mandarin speaker would say it is upwards. The way in which people bilingual in English and Mandarin describe time depends on which language they learned first and how old they were when they began to learn the second.

I have been studying Mandarin for more than five years, and I still have a more difficult time remembering which word signifies the past or the future than I do recounting the words for left and right or the cardinal directions. Even though the words are relatively simple, sometimes I have to pause and ask myself, “Is last week above or below me in time?”

I answer, often subconsciously looking at the ceiling, like I’m looking back in time, back into my memories.

“Last week has already happened, so it is above.”

I also visualize the characters “上” (shàng, which signifies the past) and “下” (xià, which signifies the future).

I think of the present as a long horizontal line that is in both of the characters, and of time as a vertical line — reaching into the past in the case of shàng and moving down into the future in the case of xià. The words are harder for me to remember how to use correctly, because they require me to think about my position in time in a new way, evidencing that language does influence our understanding of the abstract.

Interior perception and the sharing of that perception are very different. The first requires no communication, and the second necessitates a medium — a language or a painting, dance, film, or sculpture. While words may be the primary way of expressing our minds, they are by no means the only way.

Describing reality, like distinguishing between colors and deciding the direction that time flows, is subjective and influenced by language, culture, and innumerable factors. I believe that language itself is not responsible for some fundamental differences in perception, but language does influence how individuals conceive of the conceptual and express their view of the world.

Every action or experience changes you. Your neurons are always forming new pathways; therefore, the language(s) you speak and hear physically alter your brain in specific ways. Some of these new pathways must form in certain parts of the brain that influence vision, hearing, touch, smell, memory, and other areas related to an individual’s experience of reality, linking words to ideas.

I cannot answer the question of how language influences our perception of reality, but I can say that it does in some way — a way that will remain obscure until we know more about the 100 trillion connections existing between all the neurons that comprise a human brain.

In a KidSpirit Big Question response, teen writer Anya Dunaif delves into how language can shape our perceptions. Can words determine how we see the world?

100 Trillion Connections: How Does Language Change Our Perception of Reality?

The Book Thief stole two hours of my life. Markus Zusak’s popular young-adult novel was adapted as a movie in 2013. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat for this reviewer.

The plot involves a young girl, brought by her fleeing mother to a foster family in Germany, where she falls in love with books. Although the movie was enjoyable at times, my mind often wondered when it would be over. The enticing and dynamic characters were the one thing that kept my eyes on the screen. Death is our narrator and the role is played by Roger Allam. He has an appealingly dramatic voice, although his face is never shown. I enjoyed his personality and tone and he was a breath of fresh air during the darker parts of the movie. He appeared at the very end, but I spent the entire last part waiting for a surprise that didn’t come. This may have worked in the book but it feels false on film.

Death introduces the viewer to Liesel (Sophie Nélisse), an extraordinary young girl whose mother abandoned her because she wanted to keep her daughter safe as she fled Germany in 1938. Liesel is brought to live with an older couple in a small German village. Her new caretakers are the kindly, hapless, and adorable Hans (Geoffrey Rush; he is the best thing about the movie), and the grouchy, prickly Rosa (Emily Watson).

I loved the way Rush expresses love and kindness. The warm way he portrays his hearty, upbeat character is truly lovely. I also enjoyed how Watson shows her soft heart, even while screaming until her voice goes hoarse. As Liesel, Nélisse was extremely likable, but her character seemed more like a starlet than a desperate orphan; she had perfect hair even after being shoved into a dirty, cramped bomb shelter.

Unhappy and struggling to adjust to her new life and parents, Liesel finds solace in stealing, reading, and sharing books. Uneducated, she is coaxed out of her shell by Hans as he teaches her to read using a gravedigger’s manual she picked up at her brother’s funeral. Being a feisty little girl, she makes friends with another hearty neighborhood child, Rudy (Nico Liersch), who never fails to make you laugh and cry with his crazy antics. I fell in love with Rudy when he first appeared, just as he did with Liesel. Poor Liesel, however, only realizes it once it is too late.

We learn that nothing perfect can last. It seems that everything might work out for Liesel when the bombs start to drop. Max, a beloved refugee staying at Liesel’s home, knows it is time to go and his presence can only endanger Liesel and her family. He doesn’t want to do anything that could possibly hurt the kind people who have cared for him. After a tearful goodbye, Max departs. Fearing his capture, Liesel runs through crowds of jailed Jews screaming his name, only to be shoved aside by cruel Nazi soldiers.

This tasteless, somewhat dull, movie at least ends with an exciting disaster scene. The director, Brian Percival, took more than a few wrong turns in his retelling of the story from the book. World War II was a horrific time in history, where millions lost their lives. In an attempt, perhaps to make it less horrifying as a movie intended for children, the brutality of the war was removed. But in not showing this harsh reality, it took something away that could have made the film more interesting. The Nazis seemed more irritating than terrifying. Bothersome at the most, these almost-respectful Nazis gave the poor citizens, and perhaps movie spectators as well, a headache. Until the end, the loss of life was more fairy tale than tragedy. The movie smoothed the harsh edges of reality to make it less threatening, but what child wants to go see a slow-paced, two-hours-plus, war movie? Everything from the neat domestic scenes to Liesel’s perfectly styled clothing and hair felt a little too Hollywood.

The movie whitewashed an ugly time in history before hurling viewers to a final, brutal moment. It might have been more successful if it had shown the Nazis in their true form and the story was more succinct. Fewer plot points would have made the movie more viewer-friendly and memorable. The actors’ great performances were, to me, lost on a story that seemed to drag. Perhaps the director should have trusted children to handle an adult topic with appropriate maturity, or that parents wouldn’t allow their children to see this movie until they were older.

I gave this movie a three out of five star rating. The portrayal of the past was historically inaccurate and most of the film was dull. But I did very much enjoy the shocking ending and, on that note, the movie really delivered. Despite the movie’s mistakes, there were characters to love and emotions to tug at your heart, and that is what I feel really makes a movie. An adult may enjoy it more than I did. However, my recommendation is for children, especially younger ones, to steer clear of The Book Thief, at least for now.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Gertie-Pearl Zwick-Schachter shares her take on the film adaptation of The Book Thief.

A Review of The Book Thief

Your identity was revealed to me in a book. The book was written for people three times my age, but I read it because it had the word Christmas on the cover and I loved Christmas more than anything. Believing in you until I was 11 is pretty good, I think — it’s better than most kids.

My family is not religious, though my parents are the children of Catholics. We had one plastic manger, which was kept in my room when I was 11, the last year of my childhood. That’s why I remember it so well. But I liked baby Jesus, anachronistically blond and pale, with a star above his crib. That was the beginning and the end of my family’s Christianity. You, Santa, were the real reason for celebration.

Santa Claus, did you know that I thought you were God for a long time? Did you know you were so important to me when I was lonely? You were proof that magic existed, and that some day fairies would come and take me home. I was a changeling, trapped in the dull, unimaginative land of humans, and you were my bridge back to the Fairy Realm. Since you have faded from my life I have feared that I would become as jaded and cold as the world around me. In the passing years, I have held onto my honesty and kindness like a dying man to life. Do you still have all my letters? Do you still have those scrawled notes signed, “I love you”?

Santa, those letters encompassed my heart and soul, my dearest desires. Nesting dolls, video games, kittens, and a toy from the Island of Misfit Toys. Every year I asked for something different, some odd, little thing I wanted more than anything in the world. They are a lost record of my mind. One thing never changed though: I asked for world peace at the end of each letter. I didn’t know what that meant, of course. Maybe just an end to war for a little bit, not that I knew what that meant either. It was a vague little prayer to the only God I knew that delivered, and maybe in some way it came true. What did I know of the world?

I help my little sister write letters now. She asks for the same things I asked you for, once. A coloring set, kittens, books, colorful presents under the tree. She believes in you, Santa, and I’ve started being you. But I am still a changeling child, waiting for the Fairy Realm to take me back. I am here, and it is Christmastime.

Santa Claus, do you know you are that little bit of God in all of us? That certain, peculiar, indescribable feeling? You are preserved in wax-marks, in the mysterious runes of children asking for puppies and kittens. You are preserved in the hope for world peace. You are saved inside the part of the brain that retains childhood memories, unfiltered and free of nostalgia. You are hope in its purest state. What prayer is more honest than a letter to you? No doctrine, no choir, no mythology — just quiet prayer and love.

So, without further fanfare, I present this one last letter for you, Santa.

This Christmas, I would like a 3DS with the new Animal Crossing video game. I would like some books for my collection. I would love new sketch pads and maybe a recipe book so I can teach myself to cook. Oh, and some surprises, of course. Plus world peace, because I will never grow too old to hope for that.

I love you, Santa. Have a very, very Merry Christmas! Good luck making all those presents, dear friend. My little sister’s counting on you.

Sincerely, hopefully, lovingly, eternally yours,

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Maria Christian reflects on the quiet honesty and love of a child's Christmastime letter to Santa Claus.

One Last Letter for You, Santa

Human beings come into the world hard-wired to speak any human language.

Each of us, at birth, is cap-able of making any sound humans can make, and any baby can potentially under-stand any human tongue. As we grow we learn a particular language — our “mother tongue” — and our ability to learn other languages diminishes.

A “mother tongue” is the language spoken in our home, village, or nation, the one we learn naturally and without apparent effort. It forms our thought patterns. It is the language we babble before we can speak. Our mother tongue enables us to communicate, make our needs known, celebrate with others, and express our deepest thoughts and feelings. We could even say that in some ways, our mother tongue gives us birth, since we human animals are largely formed by the words we speak and the stories we tell. Jews who speak Yiddish call it their “mamaloshen”. The use of “mama” for mother suggests just how intimate the relationship between our language and our identity is.

Whenever I travel away from the American Midwest, where I was born and raised, I am aware that the way I speak English is different from how others speak it. In other English-speaking countries, I am marked by my variety of English as someone from elsewhere, a foreigner. When I travel in France, Japan, or other non-English speaking countries, I struggle to make myself understood because I am fluent only in my first language. After weeks away from home, it is always something of a relief to hear “my” language once again, to speak without sounding like a stranger. I know I am home.

I believe that just as humans are hardwired for language, we are hardwired for religion. That is, there is something deep in our make-up that seeks a higher purpose, a sense of meaning, an ongoing experience of something more beneath the surface of daily life. The religions of the world originate in their desire to articulate this deeper purpose. Most are simply given their religion. They learn it in the same way they learn their first language. Thus the religions we are raised in form a kind of “mother tongue." As we grow up, we learn our religion’s vocabulary, stories, and “accent.” It all happens very naturally. We eventually come to know ourselves in the particular prayers, rituals, and stories of our own religion.

There is something deep in our make-up that seeks a higher purpose, a sense of meaning, an ongoing experience of something more beneath the surface of daily life.

Most of us can get by with one language as long as we speak with those who use the same language because human language is open-ended and expandable. Problems arise when we travel or when someone who does not speak our language comes into our world. Even then, we generally do not hate people who speak another language; we try to communicate with them. We may struggle to form words and phrases in their language and they in ours, but both of us come away a bit richer for our encounter.

I wish the same thing were true of the religious languages we speak. One of the great tragedies of our times is that we have allowed our religions to divide us. Sectarian divisions pit people against one another and cause violence and bloodshed throughout the world. Rather than looking at the world’s religions as dialects of a great universal language, many see them as absolutely different. As a result, we come to look at those who practice other religions as members of a different species, somehow less human. They are “barbarian,” a Greek-derived word that originally meant people whose speech sounded (to the Greeks anyway) like meaningless syllables — ba-ba-ba.

I believe we need to become multilingual when it comes to religion. Just as I better understand my own mother tongue when I learn even a few words of another language, so too, I come away from a reading or discussion of another religion’s sacred language with a deepening of my own understanding of Christianity. Very early on (maybe when I was about 13 and first getting interested in Greek and Roman mythology), I saw similarities between the miraculous stories of classical gods and goddesses and the miracle stories I learned in Catholic school. Later in college, I was introduced to the study of comparative mythology, which examines how stories migrate and morph from one culture to another. In graduate school, in a course on historical linguistics, I learned about etymology and how new words (and thus new concepts and ideas), enter a language to help it change and grow.

The world we live in today is a polyglot (many-tongued) world. It is also a multicultural world. Each of us speaks a mother tongue. Most have a particular religion or set of beliefs which have parented us. But because of the nature of our global society, each of us will have to interact with others who do not speak our language or practice our religion. So we are presented with a choice. We can either retreat into our linguistic and religious bubbles, or we can take the risk to learn each other’s languages. Neither path is easy, but the first leads to division, the second to greater harmony.

We can either retreat into our linguistic and religious bubbles, or we can take the risk to learn each other’s languages. Neither path is easy, but the first leads to division, the second to greater harmony.

I believe the second path is joyous. For me, the variety of stories about the divine is an unending source of wonder and enlightenment. To read the ancient Norse Eddas, the Raven stories of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest, the Bhagavad Gita, or the scriptures of the Hebrews and Christians provides me different windows through which to view the enormity of what we humans call “God” or “the gods.” My notion of God changed when I learned that the word “lord,” which Christians use to refer to God, did not originally mean a high and mighty Being, but came from two Old English words hlaf + weard, which meant the one who kept the loaf (the loaf-ward) for the clan. To learn that the Latin word translated as “lord” was dominus, a word related to the Latin domus for “home” also brought my notion of God indoors, as it were, making God personal and intimate rather than mighty and intimidating. A similar thing happens when I found that the Aramaic word “abba”—which Jesus used to open the Lord’s Prayer and which is usually translated as “Father”—meant something closer to “daddy.” Knowing more about our vocabulary deepens our understanding.

As anyone who has tried to learn another language after a certain age knows, it is not easy to shape the sounds, let alone understand the language like a native speaker. We will never be as “at home” in a learned language as in one that we grow up speaking. Yet life is enriched by the study of a second, third, or fourth language. And the more bits and pieces of language you understand, the richer your own expression of thoughts and feelings will be in your first language. Like ordinary language, the religious language we learn is sufficient for understanding, but that does not mean that we can’t enrich our religious mother tongue with words, stories, and ideas from other traditions.

God is immense, and life is complex. No one religious language is great enough to capture all of God. Learn to speak your own language well but also become multilingual. The world depends on it.

In a KidSpirit PerSpectives piece, Professor Gary Eberle explores the importance of learning to understand each other's languages, cultures, and faith traditions. 

Mother Tongues

White like linen, pure
Untouched
Snow lays on the ground
It’s beautiful and treasured

First snows come and go
Every year.
But what about the first snow
The first snow ever?

A young infant, so pure
Innocent
Goes out to explore
The wonder that is snow

She touches it
She laughs,
It’s cold and soft
Melts in her miniature palm
She laughs, so sweet
So pure.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Liza Makarova takes us back to the innocence and purity of the very first snow.

First Snow

Words have always been, and always will be, a powerful way for humans to convey their thoughts and feelings to others. Yet despite so many ways to communicate, humans still live in a world very divided.

There are many ways for us to live in peace; why then do we choose to travel the tougher path?

Coexistence among individuals, groups, tribes, countries, has seemed almost unattainable for centuries. Conflict is an inevitable part of human life, but is up to us to choose whether we use it to grow as individuals or let its presence define us. Historically, movements have formed that tried to promote coexistence in certain societies. Europe had the ‘Peace of God’ movement in the tenth century, which aimed to stop war through promoting understanding between local people and the church. Much earlier, some say with pre-Islamic roots, possibly Egyptian, the movement of Sufism began to promote the ideas of peace and coexistence.

Sufism — also known by its Persian name, Tasawwuf — means sincerity. It is a path towards spiritual enlightenment and its practice is carried out by devout disciples. Sufism expands human awareness, increases perception. Scholars at the London School of Sufi Teaching have described the feeling of being immersed in Sufism as light flooding into a dark room. We humans live in the dark and see things uniformly. When light enters, the way we view everything changes and may even emerge as different people after the experience.

The intention of Sufism is to make us more aware of the existence and importance of life and death so that we may become closer to the Supreme Reality (that is, God). Sufism, said to have existed before any other religion, is commonly associated with Islam, although it actually predates Islam.

Towards the end of the 1st millennium CE, in the Islamic Arabian Empire, a band of Islamic mystics swept into the subcontinent from what is today Afghanistan and Iraq. Originating from Persia in the 10th century, the movement gained prominence during the 13th to 16th centuries in the subcontinent. The movement never aimed to promote a specific outcome. Instead, Sufis promoted coexistence amongst Hindus and Muslims.

One of Sufism’s tenants is to rid people of the artificial barriers that plague our world: race, ethnicity, religion. It proposes that humans can finally rid themselves of hatred by finding inner peace. Purifying oneself entirely of hatred is a difficult task, especially when sectarian violence between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs was at its peak.

A famous Sufi poet, who went by the name of Jami, wrote:

Purify yourself of hatred and love of self.
Polish your mirror; and that sublime Beauty
From the regions of mystery
Will flame out in your heart
As it did for the saints and prophets.

Sufism teaches ways for people to focus their energy on more positive pursuits, abandon worldly gain, and focus on simplicity. Sufi practices include writing poetry, and folk-tales, singing, and producing music, and altering breathing patterns while meditating to maintain inner calmness and tranquility. Sufism covers every aspect of life and being. It promotes a synergy between all elements of life that go beyond human comprehension. Attempts to understand divine entities have shown to produce creative expression; poetry being its prime example. Sufi poetry, through its beautiful words and topics, details the abandonment of basic human characteristics, such as greed, ignorance, bigotry, and sin. Poems are designed to stir the soul.

Rumi was a poet renowned for his personal experience of God, and how living more simply strengthens our connection to God. Rumi produced a series of works on the subject, including "Be Lost in the Call":

Remember God so much that you are forgotten.
Let the caller and the called disappear;
be lost in the Call (of faith).

A common Sufi belief is that there are as many paths to God as there are souls on this earth and poetry is one of these paths. Poets live to create distinct universes with nothing but a pen. Artistic works aimed to help humans to find a connection to God are so strong that they rejuvenate the soul while simultaneously destroying it. I remember watching whirling dervishes, modern-day remnants of the Sufi movement, spinning in the middle of a pavilion. Men, dressed in woolen, coarse garments, spin. They spin madly, until they have reached a sense of disorientation that allows them to connect with a world beyond the existing one. They spin to the very same poetic verses that were written centuries before.

Spinning calls others to embrace the beauty of religion, to join those drunk on the idea of reaching spiritual purity as opposed to worldly gain and power. Dervishes spin and spin and spin, until there is nothing left but a showcase of their intense affection for God. Just as the message of Sufi poetry allows followers to abandon their misgivings and embark on a journey to happiness, love, and simplicity, so, too, does spinning. When I watched the dervishes, endlessly lost in their alternate realities, it clicked.

Sufism has continued to influence people centuries after the movement originated. It stayed relevant not through conquests or material wealth, but with its simplicity. The movement still achieves its purpose when mere spectators can learn from watching dervishes dance. Immortality is not a measure of how many people remember your name, but how many remember your love and devotion of something bigger than yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gG8YAUqVIs

After contact with Sufism, Hindus founded their own sect: the Bakhti movement. Formed about the same time period, it contained teachings that overlapped with Sufism, linking the same geography, heritage, and culture, which Sufi poetry depicted, to Hindu religion. It showed how Sufism could help develop human bonds through the smallest of things like poetry.

To me, every single aspect of Sufism is exciting, especially its simplicity. I think that finding love with the earthly elements that surround us, or the creator that crafted these elements, is possible. The teachings of Sufism help to give humans a sense of permanence, a sense of being. Sufi influence lives on in poetry and music, and in the lives of people who follow its path. The message of Sufism embodies the larger quest every individual must embark on: finding a place in this world.

The fact that I am a small, insignificant part of a big universe is a realization I have thought about for many years. By observing the tiniest of things, I find my sense of self-consciousness diminish. I look at street sweepers and wonder why some are stuck in endless cycles of poverty. I look at oppressed people and wonder why some people are oppressed and others are not.

I don’t have any answers. I don’t know why things are the way they are today. The world and all its phenomena are inexplicable things that probably leave most humans confused. Perhaps it is this mutual sense of mystery that brings us together in the darkest of times, that allows us to search for answers. Sufism does just that. It comforts me to know that even in ancient times, scholars and saints developed paths that led humans to find inner peace. That quest lives on.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Noorjehan Asim delves into the mystic calls for coexistance, peace, harmony, unity, and spirituality shared by Sufi poets. 

Immortality, Poetry, and a Whole Lot of Spinning

I have always found “my world” too small.

Living in a crowded city in Bangladesh, I am surrounded by one class of people. I am rooted in a conservative society in which, from a very young age, a path is set for every child. Being different is met with disapproval; it means you have gone astray. People around me believe in one source of success: the financial staircase.

It means one should not waste a moment on anything else. There is no time to dream, no time for poetry or painting. The social barriers that confine me are too close; they always seem to be caving in. I have sought larger boundaries and strive to push the walls further back, but have failed dismally. The small world around me seems to fit into the palm of my hand. So small, so frustrating! Wasting my days within these confines, I feel like a prisoner dying to escape, or escaping to die. The air I am allowed to breathe is not sufficient. I am suffocating.

Doesn’t success have a wider meaning? Doesn’t it mean more than status? What about exploring the rest of the world? But one voice is never strong enough to change the tide.

My imagination never knew any bounds, but my world did. Every step I try to take out of line, I feel a tug at the invisible cord around my neck. The shackles at my wrist and ankle refuse loudly as I try to break down the doors. I feel like Rapunzel — trapped in a castle, guarded by a dragon, waiting for a savior — a savior, oh, if only there were one!

From a very young age, I grew up hearing this particular story. It seems my predicament matched a locked-up girl, where the wicked witch of insecurity and immorality threatens every step of her life. Sometimes I feel we are the same, living in two different dimensions within different confinements. But at last, I have found my savior.

I imagine open sky and sprawling green fields. The song of freedom sounds in my ear. I close my eyes and am transported to the land beyond the high walls, the land called my savior, my freedom.

I realized this a few years ago. It was just another day when I had been ridiculed for painting instead of studying for the Olympiad competition. My parents told me to stop wasting my time and do something productive that would appeal to foreign universities. As tears rolled down my eyes, my sister came up to me. She smiled, passing me a paper and pen.

The best gift of my life. That very moment, when I began to write my first piece, I realized the peace that came along with it. As emotions flowed on the perched paper, I felt something lift off my chest. For once I was happy, forgetful of the daily barometers, ready to fight against the tide. That one day has proved to be the pillar of my new life. I can fight. With this strength, I shall fight.

I have finally found that answer. Truthfully, I was scared to share it with everyone. But right now I feel light as a feather. I am no longer afraid. I was looking for a nonexistent heaven. Hardships will never end; they are just a part of your life. There is no way above or below. They were wrong. That precious place is around me. I see it every day. I breathe it in with every heartbeat.

My world, where I get to live with the things I love, is where I belong. Beyond the harsh reality, writing gives me a place where I don’t have to succeed to gain meaning. Stories allow me to sit in front of my piano the whole day without receiving scorching glares from others. They are the place where time stands still as I try to capture the evening with the red wine color at the tip of my pen.

And then I realize that this place is in my heart. I do not have to look far. Every night I dream of it, breathe it in. As long as society isn’t giving me what I want, I shall fight like this: with my pen, in my world, hidden from the rest of the universe.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments piece, teen writer Nusrat Angela describes how she escapes her tightly controlled life in Bangladesh through writing.

My World

Thirteen hours is an excessive amount of time on a plane. Long plane rides are sort of how I imagine purgatory.

On China Air they provide a little map on the video screen in front of you, so you can see how far you’ve gone and how far you have to go. That helped a little.

I realized that I was just a single being, a node, circling half the earth. I watched the tiny plane graphic chase the daylight as the planet rotated. It was noon when we left and would be one o’clock in the afternoon when we arrived. Somewhere over the polar ice sheets, I transcended entirely and reached enlightenment. Unfortunately, the feeling was gone a few hours later. We descended and I came back to cruel reality, barfing into a paper bag while an instrumental version of Adele’s “Someone Like You” played over the speakers. I was in China.

China! The Beijing airport was white and bright and enormous. Jet lag hit me pretty hard and I did not care for the fluorescent, overhead lights, or the bright, midday sun. A skinny boy with a protruding Adam’s apple stood beside me, while tall European families loomed behind. As we shuffled towards immigration, my classmate called out to tell me that I left my headphones on the plane. There wasn’t time to go all the way back through security for my beautiful, brand new headphones, though the woman at information told my teacher and me, in Chinese, that they would be kept in the lost and found as long as we returned within six months.

We hopped on the plane from Beijing to Xian and I sat next to a man whose English was limited.

“You must be very good at Chinese to have come here with your school,” he said.

Oh God, was I good at Chinese? I had been awake too long. Speaking anything but English seemed like an impossibility.

“Not really, um, I. I’ve been awake for a really long time. I’m sorry.”

He looked at me, critically I thought, and went back to playing a game with a buxom cartoon protagonist on his iPod. I was asleep as soon as the plane took off.

When we arrived our group took up residence for three weeks on a college campus in Xian. On my first day, I thought I lost my phone and was briefly adopted by local college students who tried to help me find it. I took classes, wandered around the campus, and sometimes ventured into the city. An English major I met in a café asked me what I thought of Xian. She was trying to practice speaking English, while I was supposed to be practicing speaking Chinese.

“I like it,” I replied in Chinese, using a stronger word for “like” then I meant.

The young woman laughed. “Why?” she asked. “The environment is horrible.”

It was. I felt like I was being smothered by a blanket wherever and whenever I tried to go for a jog. It was a beautiful city in a lot of ways, but I saw the ugliness she was talking about; and even though I enjoyed my time there, I had mostly said I liked it to be polite. I thought she would be offended if I said I didn’t like it. Communication can be tricky sometimes.

We left Xian and flew to Guilin, a remote and strange area, then on to Yaolin. This was a tiny town reached by boat and sandwiched between overwhelming close mountains. A woman with a deformed face looked at us as we entered the little town. At night vendors sold ginger sugar and flying, remote-controlled toys.

Being a westerner in China was like being a little child. I could communicate, sort of, but barely understood what was going on around me. Learning to speak a language and function in a foreign culture is like slowly acquiring a set of tools. I looked up the word for orange so I could buy one; that was a tool. I could say, “I don’t want that” and “take-out.” Those were tools, too. I made a list of Chinese curse-words, just in case I needed to cuss someone out. I learned to barter when I went shopping. I stopped being surprised when Chinese people took photos of my group (obvious foreigners) as we walked by.

A whole month of having to think hard whenever you open your mouth makes you rethink interaction entirely. Coming back to the U.S., I marveled at how easy it was to ask people for directions. All my life I lived in one culture and took it for granted. When I went to China, I realized that the language I spoke, the food I considered “normal”, the social conventions I followed each day, were not givens elsewhere. The experience of being “foreign” was challenging at times, but also a refreshing shift in perspective.

After our stay in China was at its end, my headphones were miraculously waiting for me in the lost and found at the Beijing airport. Feeling victorious I went to buy a ceramic cup in the airport shop to use up my leftover Chinese money.

“Can I help you?” said one woman, in English, at the counter.

“How much does this cost?” I said, in Chinese, holding up the cup.

The woman’s coworker leaned over to her and whispered in Mandarin, “She speaks Chinese.”

She sounded so shocked I almost started laughing. I bought my cup and left.

I’m not fluent in Chinese; I’m not even particularly good at it. But it didn’t matter because these women understood me. And I exceeded their expectations of the normal American tourist. I needed no translation.

After spending time in China, that’s what stood out to me the most. I could understand what people said to me, in Chinese, and make myself understood, in Chinese. Being understood was the rewarding part. It was amazing! Nothing on that whole trip made me happier than that simple act of communication.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments piece, teen writer Zoe Miller describes the challenges and rewards of mastering a new language and a foreign culture as an American in China.

Speaking in Chinese

Sweaty hands, dry throat, pounding heart: these are the classic symptoms experienced by a Scripps National Spelling Bee competitor. Each competitor is reaching for that title — Spelling Bee Champion — while knowing that just one misused letter means their dreams will come tumbling down.

Jeffrey Blitz’s 2002 documentary, Spellbound, follows eight pre-teens on an expedition to the 1999 Scripps National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. This is a great opportunity to enter the lives and minds of the competitors, to see their different studying techniques, their different backgrounds and ethnicity, all of which affects their mindset for the competition. One returning competitor believes that, unlike India, America gives second chances.

Parental involvement is displayed throughout the film. While two parents immigrated to America to give their daughter the opportunity to learn, another hired an array of international speaking teachers for their son. How parents support their children is just one of the many factors that explain why these kids spell competitively. One speller thought it would be “funny to win”; another thought of the Spelling Bee as a war zone. Each contestant had a different motivation. A contestant named Emily explained that it was her competitiveness that kept her coming back to the Bee.

It was said that competitor Neil’s grandfather had hired 1,000 men to chant and pray for him to win, and if he did win, the grandfather would pay to feed 5,000 hungry people in India.

Not only do we get the chance to see the kids at the competition but also in their homes. As said in the film, these kids are not stereotypical nerds. They have friends and family that they like to spend time with, and some might even be considered jocks.

By the end of the movie, compared to the eight kids, I began to feel like the dumbest person on the planet. Still, director Blitz did a fantastic job of portraying each speller as a regular kid. I found each kid so relatable that I could feel their passion and nervousness and I sensed the relief that Ashley felt when she spelled “lycanthrope” correctly. This documentary takes you on a roller coaster of emotions; you want to weep for the girl who goes home crying and cheer for the girl who leaves the stage bowing.

Even though I am not generally a fan of documentaries, Spellbound was an entertaining exploration of the lives of spelling bee competitors. I laughed and cheered for these kids. Despite the excellence of the content, the audio and visual were of poor quality, as well as the repetitive dialogue. Balancing out the positive and negative aspects, I feel the film deserved three and a half stars out of five, but I highly recommend it to lovers of funny, inspirational movies.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Daisy Cohen gives her take on Spellbound, a documentary about spelling bees. 

A Review of the Movie Spellbound

Sometimes, Winter is an old man, hobbling along slowly,
spreading only a thin layer of snowy powder, like dandruff,
from the tip of his knobbly cane to the cracked pavement.
Old Man Winter, his tenuous grasp on the season
breaks easily with the swift and spritely step of Spring.

Other times, Winter is a young boy, laughing delightedly,
turning the surface of the lake to ice as he skates across
his makeshift rink of frozen water, glassy and rippling.
He whips up winds that tease your hair,
and turn your cheeks and nose rosy red with cold.

But this year, this year, Winter is a queen, regal and proud.
She wears a crown of icicles, snowflakes glistening on her cheeks.
Her hair is snow white; her eyes, a glacial blue.
As she passes, bright autumn leaves turn
white with frost, frozen by her icy footsteps.
Blizzards churn around her skirts, waiting, waiting, for her command.
She spreads a deep chill into your bones; it is a coldness that does not fade.
Winter will not be short this year, nor will it be swift.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Angela Nguyen welcomes the blizzards and snowflakes of winter.

Here Comes Winter

A riddle of a kind,
This is a strong bind
Leaves all selfish aims behind,
The one you can only in a thousand find.

A bond which is powerful and fine,
The one without paperwork and sign
Where mankind is in one line,
Holding hands together in a divine shrine.

A joy which is never to end 
It is all "ours," no borrow, no lend

Where care is never per cent 
Here messages from heart to heart are sent

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Jash Kalyani pens a hearfelt ode to joy, love, unity, and hope. 

Riddle

I clasped a scintillating seedling
And vowed to sow it with motive.
Its growth to be a transcendent one,
And bring with it a change,
A change so profound and serene;
Capable of spawning a portrait
Of irrevocable, unconditional love
With strokes of perfection and
Shades of sanctity and brotherhood.

The emerald greens, a perfect healer;
Leaves of the crowned paradise.
To fill up the chasms of the ailing
With its wholesome remedial nectar
Nourish and replenish the barren land,
The miserable and forlorn souls.
The upright stems depicting faith and strength
And the deep roots signifying
The basis and grandeur of generosity.

The divine sapling shall sprout soon
And flip frowns upside down.
Showers of mercy from the
Unseen, infinite and supreme Lord
Shall satiate its intense thirst
Let it absorb the virtuous essence
Of goodwill and harmony.

A dream to sow hope, invigorating seeds
To cultivate unity, peace and equality.

Flowering exquisitely with pride,
The corolla deep, in hue and morality.
Emitting iridescent light,
To enlighten and brighten the world
In a spellbound manner
With rays of hope and optimism
Suffusing the surrounding
With an ethereal glow of compassion.
Weeds of wrath and contempt
Shall uproot from those piercing depths and
The concept of greenery will triumph again
For a lot more reasons then.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Tanmaya Murthy offers a message of growth, healing, unity, and peace.

Sowing Hope

Words and winter
share a bond
borne of snow

and whispers of faith
from mountains to birds
to trees to men

because winter is when
hearts are frozen,
palms frostbitten,
spirits burnt to ice
amidst the onset of turmoil —

and words breathe life
into deadened tree logs
buried under
the weight of the world.

Words do all
the melting, mending
and healing
one poem at a time

and words then become surges
of infinite feeling, keepers
of verse,
enabling sustenance of not
just body, but also spirit

Even as the world’s wizards
design anecdotes
for broken spirits
and time weaves
her woolen blankets
across lacunae of the universe,

words begin to heal
and the world begins
to feel.

there are words, words, words
floating in time
as in jars of human construct

and there are remnants
of wanderlust and stardust.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Swastika Jajoo reflects on the nature of words, winter, time, and hope.

The Word

She had never known
Silence could be so loud.
As she saw people in long cloaks
Talking and working, hurried and busy
The scene of a commotion
And yet, she could hear nothing
An oppressing stillness blanketed everything
Suffocating, gasping for breath
The world dwindled in darkness
And a silence so loud, it could turn you deaf.

A crash had been the last thing
To reach her ears
And a voice calling her name
Then the silence had descended
With searing pain
Cutting off the world, killing her loved ones’ voices
Striving to tear apart all her bonds
She could see everyone around her
But she couldn’t be a part of them
That silence had blocked her ears
Had stolen her voice.

But even through that silence
There was a sound she heard
Soft at first, but persistent
Slowly growing louder
Until it screamed
Louder and louder yet
Screaming out her agony
Her heartburn
Then one day she realized
That the sound was of silence itself.
The sound of silence kept her alive
Kept her hoping
That one day the silence
Would be driven away
For she knew now
That silence couldn’t be without sound
Nor sound without silence
Silence could scream
While sound could keep quiet
That’s why silence was so loud
And sound so silent.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Sunwrita Dastidar describes living in a silent world without speech, language, or words.

Sounds of Silence

I knelt on the silken scarf laid across the hardwood floor, my head bent in silent prayer to the spirits of my ancestors. I heard muffled sounds of chanting monks through the old music player at the side of the decaying red shrine.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Sharon Lin examines the meaning of languages and words in the Buddhist tradition.

 A Buddhist Theory of Language

How does language evolve? What do the words we use say about the cultures we come from? In this issue, KidSpirit contributors examine prose and poetry, perception and power.

The Word Group Guide

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