The Card Is In A Language I Cannot Read

You can read three words.

One of them is a number. One is something you learned as a child because she said it every time she came into a room. The third you only recognize because it is on a package in that cupboard.

The rest is her handwriting and nothing else. Letters you know the shapes of and cannot assemble, in a hand that curls in a way nobody writes here.

And she spoke it to you for years. It was all around your childhood, in the background of every visit, and you answered in English and everybody thought that was fine, and it was fine, and now she is gone and there is a card.

Nobody taught you, and that is not a complaint about anybody. Families do this. One generation lets a language go and nobody notices it happening until somebody dies and leaves something written.

So let me say the first thing plainly, before anything about a kitchen.

This is about her and about the language, and the cooking is second.

Nothing here is going to hurry you toward a pan, and nobody is going to tell you what she would have wanted. And if you read this to the end and decide not to make it, that is a complete and good ending and this article will say so.

Intreat me not to leave thee

There is a moment in Ruth where a woman crosses into a language and a people that were not hers, and says something about it.

And Ruth said, Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God. (Ruth 1:16, King James Version)

Thy people shall be my people.

She is choosing a language she was not born into, a place she did not come from, and a people whose words she would have to learn as an adult with an accent that stayed.

And nowhere in the book is that treated as a lesser belonging. Nothing is qualified. She is not a partial member of anything.

You are related to that card by belonging rather than by fluency, and words you were never taught have never once made somebody less family. Ruth 1:16 has a woman enter a people she was not born into with no qualification attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man holding a page he can read three words of.

And read what she does not say.

She does not say: once I have learned the language. She does not say: when I can speak it properly. The belonging is declared first, in a language she was still acquiring, and everything else follows it.

You have the belonging first rather than at the end of a course, and being unable to read something has never once come before belonging to the one who wrote it. The Spirit of God is the one with somebody holding letters he knows the shapes of, and Ruth 1:16 puts the declaration before any competence.

The card is not the last of her language

Here is the second part, and it is about what that page actually is.

Right now it is a locked door. It looks like the one piece of her that is genuinely unavailable to you, and the not being able to read it has become a small proof of something you already feel, which is that a whole part of her went past you and cannot be recovered.

That feeling is honest and the conclusion is not quite right. The language is not gone. It is spoken by a great many living people, it can be learned at any age, and the fact that nobody in that family handed it to you is a thing about a family and not a door that has closed.

And there are people who can read that card. A neighbor. Somebody at a place of worship. A person at work who would be delighted to be asked. The card is not a sealed object.

You were holding a page rather than a sealed door, and a language nobody taught you has never once been a language that stopped existing. Ruth 1:16 has a woman take on a people's words in adulthood as an ordinary thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man who has been reading a locked door.

And here is the part that matters most, and it is permission rather than instruction. You do not have to cook it. Not this week, not ever, and not because you failed something. And you do not have to learn the language either, and nothing in this article is quietly asking you to take that on.

The only thing worth doing this week is taking the card out and reading what you can, out loud, including the parts that come out wrong. The rest stays entirely open.

You have permission for this to end at the reading, and three words said badly out loud have never once been the smaller version of anything. The Spirit of God is the one at that drawer with a man who is free either way, and Ruth 1:16 makes belonging the first move rather than the reward.

What this week is, with that card

So here is the assignment, and most of it is not cooking. Take the card out, read it out loud as best you can, and cook it this week or decide not to.

Out loud, and badly, is the whole of it. Say the three words you know. Sound out the ones you do not, in whatever approximation your mouth produces, and do not stop at the ones that come out wrong, because wrong is what a person who was never taught sounds like and that is not a shameful noise.

It will be difficult. Something happens when a dead woman's language comes out of a living mouth even when the mouth gets it wrong, and no explanation of it works as well as doing it.

You are letting her words be spoken badly rather than kept silently, and an approximation said out loud has never once been worse than a page nobody reads. Ruth 1:16 has a woman commit in a tongue she was still learning, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with a man sounding out letters he does not know.

Then the second half, which is genuinely open. Cook it this week, or decide not to, or ask somebody who reads it to tell you what it says first. Any of those three is a finished act. If you cook it, it will not taste like hers and that is not a failure toward her. And if you decide not to, say that out loud too, in the same voice, and put the card back where it lives.

You are choosing rather than postponing, and a decision not to cook it has never once been the same thing as not having faced it. The Spirit of God is the one at that drawer with a card going back in, and Ruth 1:16 requires no fluency of anybody before the belonging is real.