Neither Language Came

He has prayed in two languages his whole adult life and never once decided to.

It sorted itself out somewhere in his twenties. The ordinary praying is in the language he works in, thinks in, argues in, does the shopping in. Thank you for the day. Look after the children. The thing about the van.

And then there is the other one, which is the one his grandmother prayed in at a stove with her back to the room, and that one comes out when it is serious. When his daughter was born. When his brother rang at midnight. It arrives on its own, unasked, from somewhere below the level where he chooses words.

He has never analyzed it. He would have told you, if you had asked him at any point in thirty years, that this was simply how it worked and that the second language was the deeper equipment, held in reserve, kept for the real things.

And then in March he sat in a hospital corridor at two in the morning while somebody he loves was in a room he was not allowed into, and neither of them came.

Not the working language. Not his grandmother's.

He sat on a plastic chair with his hands between his knees for close to three hours and did not say one word in either. Not in his head. Not under his breath. Nothing.

At about half past four a nurse brought him a cup of tea he had not asked for and he thanked her, out loud, in the working language, and it was the first thing he had said to anybody or anything since he had arrived.

It came out all right in the end. That is not what this is about.

What this is about is that it is August now, and he has not told a living soul that on the worst night of his life, with the deeper equipment held in reserve for exactly that, the reserve was empty.

And that is you on your own plastic chair, or you would have stopped reading.

Underneath both of your languages there was a third thing

Here is the passage, and I want to show you where it puts the floor.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.Romans 8:26

Too deep for words.

Not too deep for English. Not too deep for your grandmother's language either. Under words, all of them, every language there has ever been, at a level where the question of which one you are using has stopped being a question at all.

You have spent thirty years believing you had two levels: the everyday one and the deep one.

There were always three.

You have a third level under both your languages and it was working in that corridor for three hours. It is written that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26), and too deep for words does not exempt the language you love most. The Holy Spirit was praying under the plastic chair while you sat with your hands between your knees.

Now let me deal with what you concluded that night, because I think you concluded something and have not said it.

You think the reserve failed you. You think you found out, at the moment it mattered, that the thing you had counted on for thirty years was not actually there.

You did not lose your prayer in that corridor. You went below the level where you have ever been able to watch yourself pray. It is written that we do not know what to pray for as we ought (Romans 8:26), and that shortfall does not appear when a person is weak, it becomes visible then. The Holy Spirit had been covering it in both languages for thirty years and you had never had to notice.

And I want to say something about the three hours, because you have been counting them as empty.

Three hours of a man sitting outside a door he cannot go through, with everything in him turned toward the person on the other side of it, is not three hours of silence.

Your three hours were prayer and they were understood in full. It is written that He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:27). The Holy Spirit put the whole of that corridor in front of the Father without one word of it being said out loud in any language.

And the cup of tea, and the thank you at half past four.

That was the first word you said in nine hours, and you said it to a nurse, and you have filed it as an irrelevance.

It was not. A man who has been sitting in the dark for three hours and can still say thank you to somebody carrying a cup has not run dry. Something in him is intact. His grandmother would have recognized it instantly.