What is your Soul?

I’ve got some SCOOP on the soul.
You have a soul
Everyone has a soul
Animals have a soul
What is your definition of your soul?
“Body in charge during life, soul takes over after body dies.”
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This is The Great Commandment:

“…You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and with all your mind and all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

On the surface it is a simple statement but the biggest FAQ (or frequently asked question) from my perspective is “How do I love God with my soul if I don’t know what my soul is?” So that’s the topic for today…What is your soul?

You could find a few answers to that question in here in this book entitled The Inner Journey Home: Soul’s Realization of the Unity of Reality, (A.H. Almaas)* about 725 pages answering that question. But I’m prepared to tell you in the next 15 minutes before you partake of the soul food waiting for you on the communion table.

So let’s just go for it!

This is not a new topic but one seldom spoken about. The reason is there are so many exalted theories about the soul that go back to the early authors on the topic who didn’t agree on it enough to make a theory that sticks.

The ancient Greeks started writing about this a long time ago and Socrates is credited to be the Father of the Western conception of the soul about 2,500 years ago. People have been writing books like this 725 page tome about it ever since.

At first at the famous Council of Nicea in the year 325 the fathers decided that the soul had no spiritual essence and only the grace of God as mediated through the church could purify the soul which was wretched and tainted by original sin. In other words they taught that humans are as rotten as garbage and only God can save us and only if we go to church. They further controlled our redemption for one thousand five hundred years by decreeing that reading the Bible yourself was a crime punishable by death. Yes, only the priest could read the Bible and they burned you at the stake if you dared to hold one, own one or read one. They burned many men like this before they started burning women as witches.

This was very lucrative for the church because those found guilty and executed also forfeited all their land and possessions to the church. The punishment often extended to other family members so brothers and sons often also lost their property as part of the punishment.

Now lest you decide to hate the Church for the vile ways it manipulated and controlled humans for 1500 years I want to add a dash of perspective. We humans were primitive and tribal when all of this was started. We were still tribal in feudal and Medieval Europe 1,000 years ago. Think about the painful difficulties in tribal societies like Iraq and Afghanistan where it takes force and fear to organize tribal authorities. Many scholars say that it is because of the Church that Western Civilization has developed the way we have without tribal warfare limiting the advancements we have enjoyed.

So the rise of the Church was a power struggle. They worked together with reigning monarchs and they used the doctrine of original sin to teach our inherent wretchedness and keep us convinced we needed a middle man to have contact with God. Vestiges of our wretchedness are still around and we sing about it…”Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me”…and so forth. But for the most part, progressive Christianity at least has pulled away from the use of original sin and violence for control.

Then monasteries came into being and some devoted monastics (monks and nuns) who spent a great deal of time in prayer and contemplation of God began to have a direct experience of the love of God and they experienced their own divine nature or true nature as love. Slowly we have moved toward the image of a more loving God and a more concrete  understanding of the indwelling resurrected Christ.

But the soul has been a confusing topic and if you went to a minister and said, “What is my soul?” he/she might say, “It is the part of you that lives after your body dies.” “Well,’ you might say, “How do I connect with it now?” This is the point at which the topic gets very , how shall I say it?….woofty? Woo woo? Let’s just say it’s a topic that’s hard to wrap your head around. It’s been swept under the rug a lot because of 1) esoteric theories, 2) lack of agreement over time and the 3) soul’s very subtle nature.

I think it took an atheist Jewish psychologist in Chicago to discover an easy way to connect with the soul and he stumbled upon it in his therapy practice working with troubled young women about 30 years ago. You can’t imagine my joy when I discovered the work of this man! For 35 years I have been a searcher and have never found a satisfactory answer to the question, “What is the soul?”

Look at the cover of your bulletin.

Dick Schwartz was working with young women who were cutting themselves, binging and purging, suffering terribly. One day when his client came to her session with a huge fresh cut across her face, after promising at the previous session she would not hurt herself. She told him, “I wasn't going to cut but a part of me made me do it.”  In desperation Dick asked to speak to the part of her that did the cutting.

Immediately a part of the young woman came forward and explained that the cutting was essential protection and for her own good. The part explained it convinced her to cut herself because it was protecting her from the emotional pain she would feel about her childhood if she wasn’t in physical pain. The part believed that physical pain hurts less than emotional pain.

Over time Dick learned that all of us have inner parts that work to protect us and even the extreme parts that cut or are addicted to bad substances are all trying to protect and help the inner system to cope and thrive. In a concrete way he learned that all of our parts are good and if we build relationships with them and learn their highest intention for the inner system we can help them relax and take their preferred role which is always to help and do no harm. When an inner part learns they are hurting more than helping they stop. Dick teaches that we are all multiples with many parts and that all parts are good and all parts are welcome. (Not multiple personality syndrome but “I have a part that wants to eat the bacon and a part telling me not to eat the bacon.”)

What about our wretchedness? When the parts that might be called wretched are understood and loved by our soul they integrate into positive, resourceful parts that contribute and nourish the whole.

Every part of you is good and when welcomed to the feast at the inner table of the soul you become more and more able to live from the essential qualities of Being listed on the front of your bulletin.

Dick created these 8 “C” words to help us remember the qualities of the Soul (which he calls Self because he is in the world of psychology and not faith but he acknowledges his experience with people is that he is communicating with their soul). His therapy system identifies the parts and has them step aside until the targeted troubled part has direct contact with the client’s/your soul. When the troubled part feels the connection, calm, compassion, caring and clarity of the Soul it transforms, heals, relaxes, and often sobs with relief that it doesn't have to do its difficult job any more.

I’ve worked with people with this method for many years and I know it works. I believe I can have direct contact with my soul and you can have direct contact with yours. We can live directly from our soul and not with our parts being in charge.

I know that all of you is good and there is nothing inside you that is not good. At the essential level of your soul you are clear, connected, compassionate, caring, courageous, creative, calm, curious. The other parts of you that pop up like anger, jealousy, judgment, hatred, fear, are parts of you that can take over and convince you that there is no other choice but to be angry in this moment. Those parts are not bad and they aren’t your soul. Your soul is more like the 8 “C’s.”

Furthermore, I agree with the Christian thinkers and mystics who teach that our soul is the divinity within us …the living God, resurrected Christ, eternal, precious, permeable, impressionable, a pearl beyond price. Our soul works together with the intelligence of the heart and it is who you really are.

You are good
You are precious
You are clear
You are connected
You are calm
You are courageous
You are compassionate
You are caring
You are creative
You are curious
That is who you really are.

Your soul is your essential Being that longs for the spiritual food of the communion and the connection with the other people in this room and around the world. So let us sing a bit and share a meal for our souls!

Amen.

Sabbatical replacement pastor Reverend Gayle Madison
First Congregational United Church of Christ, Santa Rosa
July 6, 2014

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison

More About Mary Magdalene

Scripture: Gospel of Mary Magdalene: Dialogue One
FCCSR Sabbaticval Replacement - June 28, 2014

The scripture reading from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene brings the reality of that text into our worship space. Recent scholarship and the examination of that text have opened my eyes about Christianity in ways I never dreamed possible 30 years ago. I’m going to preach today like they tell us to NEVER preach. We are going to go galloping along through some history of the Gospel, politics of the time it was written, Mary Magdalene’s relationship with Jesus, non-dual being, personal transformation, scriptural deconstruction, and my mother’s underwear.

It is an intimate journey to delve into the new Mary Magdalene scholarship so I want to use an intimate metaphor to make my point about what this has been like for me and what I want to communicate to you. As a child I was deeply attuned to my mother and the things that made her happy and the things that caused her suffering. Playing at her feet and being near her body I absorbed many intimate details of her emotional states. I loved hearing her cries of joy when she scored huge points in a game of Canasta. And I felt her relief from suffering when I watched her take her girdle off at the end of the day. She would sigh with a sigh that went inside me and allowed me to relax too. Then she would put on her red wool bathrobe and hold me on her lap. I hated that girdle becauseI knew it bound her up, gave her a stomach ache and made her inaccessible to me in some way.

When I read the Mary Magdalene scholarship I’m going to share with you today I felt like I was taking a girdle off my head which has been binding me up for 35 years since seminary, and I didn’t even know I had it on. The Gospel has enabled me to sigh and relax and it has deepened and completed me in my faith, like having a cuddle on my momma’s lap. Maybe today’s sermon will help you take a girdle of perception off your heads regarding the Bible. I hope you can settle in for a cuddle. Those with ears to hear this, let them hear.

This Gospel was not discovered with the Dead Sea Scrolls or the Nag Hammadi trove. It first came to light before that in 1896, discovered by a German collector in an antiquities market in Cairo. There is a tendency to hide and hoard this kind of information so the first German scholarly edition did not appear until 1955.

It is a 5th century Coptic/Egyptian version and two earlier 3rd century Greek versions have also been found which confirm it was a common text copied and circulated widely in early Christianity. Check that off your list, it is for real.

Only about half of the Gospel exists in four dialogues or scenes with Jesus covering metaphysical teachings. In stark contrast with the four cannon Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke John) the Gospels of Thomas, Philip and Mary Magdalene highlight how we haven't been given much of Jesus’ metaphysical teachings…so it’s an exciting next step into knowing him better. We have read the first dialogue of Mary today.

There is much to explore in this first Dialogue: 1) The interweaving of all reality, 2) attachment to matter, 3) the question of sin, 4) the indwelling of the “Son of Humanity” and 5) not making too many rules or laws that will dominate our spiritual journey.

That’s it! It’s those unwritten rules and laws about scripture that have felt like a girdle on my head. For example, the unwritten rule in Bible study that Mary Magdalene is a prostitute, that Jesus was not married and that women were not disciples. I don’t believe any of that any more.

So I’m going to resist exploring the text and instead tell you about Mary’s role in teaching us about resurrection.

There are some things to understand before we willy nilly tear the girdle off our heads. I need to prepare you so we can take this journey into more of Cynthia Bourgeault’s scholarship from her book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: I’ll transmit some of what Bourgeault teaches and you can read the book and decide for yourself how it fits into your faith perspective.

1) Overwhelming scholarship to debunk the myth that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute. If you want convincing there stacks of books at this point to prove there were political reasons to discredit her. I’ll name one later.

2) Jesus taught the path of personal transformation which was the slow and persistent overcoming of the ego through a lifelong practice of surrender and non-attachment. His methodology was gradual, conscious and sober. Not much of this came through the New Testament as we received it.

3) The late arriving non-cannonical (didn’t make it into the Bible) gospels of Mary Magdalene, Thomas and Philip belong to the tradition of universal wisdom with its core teaching being this personal transformation.

4) There was a powerful clash of perspectives in Christianity from the very beginning between Peter’s perspective and Mary Magdalene’s perspective.

5) Matthew, Mark, Luke and John emphasize Peter’s perspective of “right belief” , Mary’s perspective emphasizes deep personal metabolizing of the ego and transformative personal change.

6) So we’ve got the “Transformation” followers and the “Right Belief” followers in early Christianity. When the “Transformation” followers saw that the “Right Belief” gospels were winning, so to speak, they buried the Transformation texts in jars in the desert. The Right Belief followers had a good reason to discredit Mary Magdalene and call her a whore because it helped them discredit the “transformation school.”

7) We have vestiges of the teachings of transformation when Jesus frequently said “you guys don’t get it” he was talking about his message of personal transformation. He had an inner circle of people who were on the same page with him about surrender and non-attachment.

 SIDEBAR: Speaking for myself and perhaps for our Buddhist practicing pastor I can say that because this metaphysical and transformation piece are missing in the Christian teaching we have serious spiritual seekers today combining Christianity with other paths like Buddhism so they can find transformation teaching or they leave Christianity completely.

8) Mary was definitely in Jesus’s inner circle, in fact she was called “first among the disciples.” Of all the disciples she is the one who fully understands his message and reproduces it in her own life. FIRST on the scene at the resurrection is the giant clue written in invisible ink right before our eyes the whole time.

OK. Are you with me so far? This is a lot of heady stuff but now I’m going to tell you the good part about taking off the girdle.

We remember all the scriptures that acknowledge Mary’s devotion to Jesus. She washed his feet with costly oil, she was there at the foot of the cross after the others had run away. Mary followed the small entourage that took Jesus’s body from the cross to place it in the tomb and she held vigil at the tomb after everyone else had gone home. She was there first thing in the morning to discover the empty tomb. Mary was the first one to see the Resurrected Christ and the one instructed to go and tell the others. She wasn’t just a devoted disciple.

No, there is powerful evidence to suggest that Mary and Jesus were partners. It doesn’t matter if they were married or lovers or spiritual partners in a plutonic relationship. Because we have been taught that Jesus was a celibate single male (created in the image of Catholic priests) it is fun to contemplate what it means if he was married like 100% of all men and women during this period of history. Everyone’s survival depended upon being married at an early age and there is stacks of scholarship to deconstruct the celibate Jesus myth too.

It is a provocative thought but I hope you can save this question about Jesus’ physical relationship with Mary to think about in the car on the way home and follow me to the most important point of my message today.

Jesus and Mary loved each other and had a deeply spiritual connection. There is much to say about the kind of love between Jesus and Mary. It is nothing like the romantic love so valued in our culture today. It is called conscious love and it is love in the service of inner transformation. Among esoteric and mystical Christians it is called the “Fifth Way.” It emphasizes the conscious and implicitly relational path of Christian love. It’s energy is always radiating outward and it is never self-defended or congealed…it is a fluid inner state of spiritual awakening in which two people together are aware and connected to the cosmic oneness of the universe.

They no longer believe in God which implies otherness….they participate in God so there is no separation between the beloveds and God. There is only ONE.

Joke: You remember what the Buddhist said to the hot dog vendor? Make me one with everything.

As ONE in life when Mary and Jesus are separated by his death something extraordinary happens. Their quality of love created an energy field which I know many of us have experienced with those we deeply love. And with conscious love this energy field is so strong it has its own body with a subtle substantiality. Sacred wisdom traditions here in the West have called it the “subtle body,” the “Light Body,” the “resurrection body,” and the “wedding garment.” While they were both alive in the flesh this subtle body or soul of their love remained invisible.

But when Jesus died their hearts were stretched taut to accommodate the vast distance that had opened up between them. They weren’t separated but there was the cosmic chasm caused by death.

Over 35 years I have pastored to many widows who like Mary were feeling this cosmic chasm after their husband’s death. They continue to feel their beloved and they hold aspects of his being or his final suffering and they KNOW he is not gone because they feel his presence.

Right after I read this book I was invited to preach at the Cloverdale church where I had pastored for almost 12 years. I saw a dear church member whom I had not seen since the death of her much adored husband. “Oh Elaine,” I said, “I’m so sorry you have lost Bud.” “Oh Gayle”, she said with confidence and sparkling eyes, “I haven’t lost him, we have coffee together every morning in our rock collecting room.” I thought of Mary Magdalene and how she is the one who taught us about the resurrection. Elaine experiences resurrection every day when she has coffee with Bud. It gave me shivers and I deeply understood what she was saying because of just reading this book.

Here is the point I have been galloping toward with all my heart.

Mary is the one who taught us about resurrection because she is the one who was a sky walker with Jesus and her heart instantly soared across the divide between life and death searching for her beloved, following the curve of their mutual yearning for each other…like Elaine followed Bud and held the tether of his subtle body.

After Jesus died the conscious love of Mary and Jesus are one in time and one in eternity and they become what is called “pancosmic” and their love is a natural energetic bridge connecting heaven and earth.

This excites me because I have seen it myself happen over and over again between people who have a spiritual connection when one of them dies.

To read what Bourgeault has written about this connection during the first days after Jesus death when Mary was holding the tether of Jesus during the three days before he appeared to her is a spiritual feast. Let me commend the book to your reading list…and help you if your girdle is still stuck on your head.

Take off the idea that we know with certainty the things we claim to know about the Jesus story. Being able to use this current scholarship and my own imagination has deepened my faith. That the personal, human love between Mary and Jesus revealed the resurrection makes sense to me and makes me giddy.

Not long after reading this book I was called to the deathbed  of a former parishioner who had completely lost her faith. She didn’t want to hear about Jesus or God and she didn’t want a minister to attend her death. She felt a connection with me that made her feel safe. She felt she was dying into an pit of nothingness. I had buried her husband with whom she was very close so I used the cosmic energetic bridge of love to help her cross over.

“Margaret,” I said, “You can find the bridge to David. His love for you and your love for him is still alive and that love is a bridge that will help you cross over. Let your love for David guide you into the unknown.” Her health aide had known David too and she took up the loving mantra during Margaret’s final days. “Follow your love for David.” Margaret died a peaceful death with the photo of David as a young man in his WW II uniform at the foot of her hospital bed in her living room.

Resurrection is as tangible as the deepest love you have felt for a lover or a child or a pet. Many of us have felt the energy of a loved one after they have died. Our understanding of Jesus’ resurrection is because of Mary’s love for him and their connection after his death. A huge portion of our Christian story has grown out of the love between a man and a woman.

So here we are with the girdle removed. Who knew there was so much MORE ABOUT MARY MAGDALENE!

Amen.

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison

Summer Solstice Reflections

Once again I have discovered that making one small change can result in wonderful big changes! But why is change so hard to make sometimes?

At least six years ago a friend gave me a Western Bluebird nesting box for my birthday. I loved the way it looked and rather than immediately taking it up the hill to affix to a fence post I kept it around as garden art.

I PROCRASTINATED. It looked cute decorating my garden but every time I looked at it I knew I was procrastinating. It’s too muddy up there”, I reasoned in the winter. “There might be snakes in the long grass,” I muttered in the summer. “My husband just doesn’t seems willing to help me with this project,” I shifted the blame.

I WORRIED. I worried about how to attach it correctly, “Should I use an ‘L’ bracket or nail it down?” Western Bluebirds are particular about which direction the entry hole faces.  “What if I put it up facing the wrong direction?” I fussed internally.

I MADE EXCUSES. I finally got the box up but it had been so long that one piece of the wooden top had split. No birds nested in the box for two more years. “This isn’t the right habitat for Western Bluebirds,” I reassured myself.

I FELT GUILTY. I know the habitat of the Western Bluebird is compromised and they have greater success nesting in boxes than in hollow trees.  I felt guilty so finally I put up a new box after Googling the direction for the hole which I determined with the compass on my Smart phone. I attached it with ‘L’ brackets on a 5’ fencepost and went to swing in the hammock. It was easy.

Suddenly this Spring our back yard has at least two nesting pairs of Western Bluebirds! One of them is in the box and another in a snag in our neighbor’s yard. As I observe with my bird watching binoculars it seems our yard is filled with lovely swooping Bluebirds. They hang out in family groups so we have the benefit of a whole congregation of Bluebirds! We enjoy flashes of blue among the olive and oak trees as they busily hunt for flies and caterpillars.

FLIES and CATERPILLARS!!! Oh my gosh, olive fruit flies and oak worm caterpillars plagued our back yard last summer. The flies ruined the olive crop and the worms denuded the oak trees. Google tells me that Western Bluebirds very effectively control insects in their nesting areas! Making the one small change by finally putting up the nesting box has had a big impact on the habitat of our yard. We anticipate a less infested olive harvest and leafy green California oaks.

So with a flash of blue in my heart I release a little prayer on the cusp of Spring becoming Summer, “Please God, help me with the little changes I want and need to make.”

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison

Centipedes Don’t Count

No one talks about lice. It is on the DO NOT MENTION list of what not to talk about in polite company. I listened to a pod cast recently about the seven things you may not bring up at a dinner party. One was “what I dreamed about last night”  and I can’t remember the others but I’m sure lice was on the list. No one cares.

Seriously, when I got back from visiting my grandchildren and got the call two days later from my daughter that the whole family had lice, I was traumatized. None of my friends wanted to talk about it and my hair dresser took two days to answer my text! So, I’m going to write about it to vent and process.

I hung up from the phone call with my daughter and thought, “No big deal, so the kids had lice. Kids get lice at school and so what if the whole family found out today that they all had lice.”  I felt loving compassion for my daughter and her husband and gratitude that there are delousing parlors in their area. They had all been seen by a professional, received the most up-to-date treatment and the situation was under control.

Then I started to feel an intense crawling sensation on my scalp and I thought, “Oh my god, LICE!” I rushed to the drug store and had a hushed conference with the pharmacist  explaining that I’ve heard that lice are immune to all the over-the-counter treatments that used to control them when my children were young. “Could you,” I pleaded in a whispered and desperate tone, “Could you please recommend the strongest over-the-counter preparation so I can treat myself for lice because I just found out my grandchildren have it and I spent 5 days at their  house.”  I grinned, raised my eyebrows and tilted my head.

He acted as if I were asking for hemorrhoid preparation and with a flat affect and no response to the details of my plight he pointed out the CVS drug store brand of lice treatment. I knew it wouldn’t work but I bought two boxes which promised two nit picking combs each and scuttled through the line at the front of the store.

Once home I ripped into action. I tore the sheets off the bed, took all the pillows and put them in plastic bags, washed all the clothes I had worn on my trip and told my husband he had to have the treatment also because he sleeps with me. Dutifully, he examined my head and applied the treatment. I did the same to him and neither of us found any sign of lice or nits. 

I told myself that was probably enough and went to bed. Several times during the night I woke up feeling my entire scalp crawling with vermin. In the morning I gave my husband the nit comb, a magnifying glass and I sat under a bright light. He searched my head for 20 minutes, “Nope, nope, nope, nope,” he dutifully reported as he searched each quadrant of my scalp. He went to work.

There was a storm with winds and torrential rain outside. I felt crawling on my scalp as if the bugs had multiplied since the day before. “Of course they have multiplied since yesterday,” I reasoned. “The invisible eggs that my husband didn’t see have hatched!” I searched the internet for delousing parlors in my area and found Bugalugz Parlor a forty-five minute drive away. 

At 2:00 I called the Bugalugz number and a woman answered the phone. “Do you have anything at all available today?” I queried  as my voice only cracked a little. “Yes, she replied, I have a 2:45.” The wind and rain didn’t even bother me as I drove with great resolve and determination to end my suffering.

Bugalugz Parlor was decorated in cheerful primary colors with cartoon characters painted on the walls of the reception area. The treatment room was also cheery and I used the time I was being examined to ask the technician about her job. She reported that after three years there she only seldom gets the feeling that she has lice crawling on her head but in the beginning she had the sensation a lot. 

“The two year olds are the hardest,” she confided. “Their doting mother’s bring them in and I tell the toddler I’m going to tickle their hair with my comb while I examine them. They usually cooperate until I find lice and actually start applying the treatment. Then they start to really scream.” Her voice was serious and she seemed like she needed to talk about it so I encouraged her to go on.  “Sometimes I worry that Child Protective Services are going to come in here and arrest me because the kids scream so loud. But the mothers say, just do it and let him scream.”

I can relate! That’s exactly how I felt, JUST DO IT. She did examine me and found nothing so I paid my $35 and drove home in the pouring rain. I thought it was the best $35 I had spent in a long time until I got home and started feeling lice crawl on my scalp.

As soon as my husband got home from work I got the magnifying glass, the nit comb and the bright light and begged him to examine my head. Patiently and lovingly he sat down and began to search. “Nope, nope, nope,” he systematically reported. Then he said, “Oh,” and tilted my head closer to the light, “Centipedes don’t count, right?”

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison

The Human Love Affair With Language

A to Zebra Language is an awesome language vocabulary building product developed by, well, my husband at our publishing company World Trade Press.

It’s about building vocabulary in foreign languages but not just any languages. You can learn 15,000+ vocabulary words in two of the traditional romance languages, French and Spanish and two Germanic languages, German and English. What!? ENGLISH a Germanic language?

I’m no linguist and was more than a bit unhappy to learn that English is considered a Germanic language. Perhaps if you are an Anglophile like me and you love all things British (well, I confess I’m off the queen lately) you prefer to think of English as one of the Romance languages. I like to think of sun splattered vowels and wine soaked verbs. But no, the so called Romance languages are those that grew from the continuation of colloquial Latin spoken by commoners or non citizens of the Roman Empire. They aren’t called Romance because they are romantic but because of their connection to Rome. They include Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese and Romanian. Romanian? Who knew?

The empires that arose after the decline of the Roman Empire in the fifth century did such a good job establishing themselves overseas that today about two thirds of Romance language speakers live outside Europe.

They are mostly Spanish (386 million speakers to French’s 75 million) and that’s why A to Zebra Language has two kinds of Spanish, the Castillian and Latin American versions because the accents and vocabulary on the two sides of the Atlantic are that different.

But I want to get back to English being considered “speaking in Barbarian”. The Roman Empire called every language spoken by people living outside the Roman Empire the equivalent of “gibberish”. Sounds like New Yorkers!

Wait a minute! What about Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England? The Roman Emperor Hadrian started building the wall in 122 A.D. to keep “intact the empire” because one of his gods instructed him to do it. Britain was part of the Roman Empire so I confess, I’m confused but never mind it’s 2014.

So much for speaking Barbarian Gibberish 2,000 years ago. Today English is the official language of the European Union with 375 million native speakers and over a billion second language speakers the world over. It is the official language of the United Nations and agreeably the language of global commerce…and probably the World Wide Web. Yes, you can call it linguistic imperialism. Or is it just the irrepressible human drive to communicate with each other using the most accessible language? I prefer the latter.

English had all the makings for accessability and becoming the language that dominates the world scene because of its mongrel roots. Northern Germanic, Celtic, Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, Norman and French all heavily influenced the formation of modern English. What came out is a high-bred language that is flexible, expandable and can be simplified for quick learning. Unlike any other language English expands by between 8,000 to 25,000 words each year! No wonder we can’t understand teenagers!!!

And even with English domination, the world is filled with people who long to learn the languages spoken by others; many different languages! It is part of the grand love affair humans have with each other and our compulsion to communicate. It is also an important way to develop the brain. Languages are taught in schools because it is important to understand how language is formed and how to speak in another tongue. It is an academic challenge and it is FUN.

So that’s why my husband developed A to Zebra Language, the vocabulary builder that rocks! He developed a way to learn vocabulary that is fun and that really works because you see the word spoken by a native speaker, see a photo of the object and see the written word/s. I especially like the visual art and romance glossaries, romance as in “I love you”. Body parts is interesting too!

FREE! I want you to give it a try and see for yourself for free. We sell it but I want my readers to enjoy it without charge until July 1, 2014. For a quick look at A to Zebra Language watch this introductory video.

GO FOR IT AND JOIN THE HUMAN LOVE AFFAIR! Have fun building your vocabulary in French, German, English and two kinds of Spanish!

?Quires casarte conmigo?
Veux-tu m’espouser?
Willst du mich heiraten?
Will you marry me?

Copyright © 2014 Gayle Madison