First Language

The heavens are telling the glory of God and the firmament proclaims [God’s] handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words, their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. – Psalm 19:1-4 (NRSV) 

You can forget a language pretty easily. Even a language you’re fluent in, even a language you both understand and speak. Even your first language. Find yourself surrounded only by speakers of something else, get in the habit of some other tongue, and you can forget. Maybe not everything, but enough so that understanding becomes laborious, speech becomes halting. 

Listen: the heavens are telling the glory of God. Can you still understand their language? The high tongue of the firmament, the quaint idiom of the days, the whispered parlance of the night? Do you still know it? 

You did once. You used to lie there wide-eyed and entranced, listening to its song. There was a time when you would prattle on in it for hours; we could hardly get you to shut up. Remember? 

Or have you, like so many, forgotten? 

Where would you go if you wanted to hear the old tongue again? Where do they still speak it as easily as you used to? There’s got to be somewhere where they will reteach you, start you out with basic nouns and walk you all the way up through verbs and cases and tenses, sophistication, maybe even humor. 

It’s not that hard to forget a language, even your first one, even the one that all the creation was created knowing. But it’s never too late to learn it again. 

Prayer
Help me remember the language I knew at the beginning. Amen.

About the Author
Quinn G. Caldwell is Chaplain of the Protestant Cooperative Ministry at Cornell University. His most recent book is a series of daily reflections for Advent and Christmas called All I Really Want: Readings for a Modern Christmas. Learn more about it and find him on Facebook at Quinn G. Caldwell.