by Eric H. F. Law
Arriving in the United States at age 14 as an immigrant from Hong Kong, I struggled for many years to learn to communicate in a language other than my native tongue. Every year on Pentecost Sunday I heard how the Holy Spirit filled the followers of Jesus, who then began to speak in other languages.
I longed for this miracle of the tongue for myself — if only communicating across the language barrier were that easy, if only the Holy Spirit didn’t need to work through me. The harder I tried, the more nervous I became, and the less effective I was as a communicator.
I grew up in a family and in a culture that did not encourage young people to speak but rather valued as good the young person who listened and did not boast. In the United States, I found myself living in a society that fixates on our ability to speak. Participation in a classroom means speaking. A good leader is equated with a good speaker. A good pastor needs to be a good preacher.
Therefore, a person whose cultural upbringing does not focus on the ability to speak appears weak. Many perceive a person who does not speak English well as unintelligent. My inability to speak proper English made invisible and irrelevant all that was inside me — my thoughts, my creativity, and my experience.
While I was struggling to pronounce the English language correctly and write it properly, I lost sight of how the Pentecost experience might help me when people treated me as inferior, sometimes thought I was stupid, and judged that I had nothing to contribute to what was going on. I was too caught up with the “speaking” part of the Pentecost event to recognize it also involves listening.
Effective communication requires both speaking and listening. If someone is speaking and no one is listening, no communication happens. Jesus challenges us, “Let those who have ears, listen.”
All through high school, except for two teachers, very few English-speaking people bothered to listen to who I was and what I could offer. Even fewer valued the gift I had for listening that my upbringing had imparted to me.
- What is a personal experience in which you accomplished meaningful communication with another? Were you more a speaker or listener in that event?