Heart’s Tongue
Around our Winter Solstice Fire, there are many languages. Since our lingua francas are Spanish and English, we conduct our ritual in these languages, but our accents reveal under-stories. RItual space involves sharing from the heart and the heart often expresses itself most clearly in mother tongue. French, Dutch, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Welsh and Catalan – we take time to allow these mothers (and fathers) to emerge. To be heard, seen and felt. There are plenty of reasons to eschew a dominant language. Under Franco’s fascist dictatorship, speaking Catalan was banned. Children from Catalan homes learned in school through the medium of Spanish. After the fall of Franco, local leaders established Catalan as the linguistic medium for all of public life and after 40 years of this policy, 95% of people in Catalunya understand the native language. During the 19th century, a co-ordinated attack made it unacceptable for children from Welsh…