Trying To Get My Tongue Around Things

So I've been thinking about tongues a lot lately. Not just the muscle in your mouth that you use to stick out at annoying children or lick yummy ice cream off spoons with, but the activity of 'speaking in tongues'. For those of you that aren't of the Christian persuasion, speaking in tongues is, according to the church and the Bible, a spiritual gift bestowed by God that allows you to speak in a different language to pray. It seems to come in two forms - a sort of private language that sounds vaguely like Hebrew where you don't know exactly what is being said, used for personal prayer to God when you want to pray but don't know what to say. Then there's a more public version where someone speaks out loud in a language they've never learnt, and someone else is bestowed with the translation, for the 'edification' (heh heh, see previous Christian Dictionary!) of the congregation.

Let me tell you, as a newbie believer this is one of the most fer-REAKY aspects of  Christianity, and one that makes you suddenly start wondering if you've got yourself involved with a bunch of chicken sacrificing cult members. I find it quite comforting that even in Paul's day (that's St Paul of the Bible, I just realised I need to clarify, not Paul McCartney, Paul Simon or any other Paul) people saw the apostles engaged in this gift and assumed they were drunk  - it shows that humans have always been, and always will be, cynical buggers, and that people weren't automatically gullible about miracles when Jesus was alive just because they're, you know, OLD and HISTORICAL. . . I would bet my bottom dollar that had I lived in Paul's time I would have been shouting "Drunkard"! and "Wino"! with the best of them.

Whilst part of me still maintains this view, various things over the years have slowly made me reconsider and decide that sometimes this phenomena is genuine, and if it's in scripture maybe I shouldn't totally diss it (the reliability of scripture is a whole other blog session that maybe I'll go into another time) and that I should, you know, have a little faith.  I vowed to set my innate cynicism aside the other day and give it a go . . . .  It was NOT an unmitigated success. I opened my mouth - and nothing came out. I tried to be a bit more proactive and have faith that if I just started making noises the language would come, but all I managed was:

"Ah, ah, ah . . .corashaaaa . . . la la la, tra la la . . . aye carumba! Rah rah rah . . . Rah Rah Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen, there was a cat who really was gone. Oh no wait, that's not right. That's Boney M lyrics . . . "

So! Just to recap in visual form:

Speaking in tongues:

NOT speaking in tongues:

Not, to the best of my knowledge, the language of angels.

"Aye Carumba" indeed.

The catchphrase of Speedy Gonzales has also been known to come out of my mouth in times of attempted prayer . . . 

 I am not kidding, once I went over to the house of a girl from church who got words from God all the time and has a super active prayer life. She prayed with me that I would get the gift of tongues. As we were praying she asked if I felt anything on the tip of my tongue that I wanted to say. I grasped at straws and said the first thing that came to my mind: "Hakuna Matata". 

To be fair, it does mean No Worries . . . 

I can't even FAKE this language!! Unless God is communicating to me via the medium of cartoons and disco music?? Soooooooooooo, maybe I'll stick a pin in the whole 'speaking in tongues' thing for the moment and just go back to normal prayer. It's not like I've ever run out of anything to say after all.