Entre Mundos: On Poetry, Spanglish, and Speaking in Tongues
A young poet learns to speak with God.
By Juan Carlos López
1.
All poetry is communion. It is a choosing, blessing, breaking, and sharing of ourselves to the world. It’s what all poets, artists, and musicians try to point to, or grasp, or stumble into as they create their art. In some way, the remembering that Jesus talks about in the last supper is precisely a re-connecting of our humanity, to our neighbors, and to God, for the sake of the world. It’s a meal where the shared language of food reveals God’s hospitality. Like a good poem, this meal invites us into curiosity and wonder. Is the miracle in the bread and the wine? Is it in the sharing? Can God be this abundant? Does God really want these sinners at this table? There are no simple answers, and I find that the breaking and sharing of this sacred meal is best described with a poem:
acción de gracias –
there’s a poem
only God could write
a word hidden
for eyes to see and ears to hear
open hands and broken hearts
a poem you can taste
food for the road home
a meal you did not crave
and did not know you needed
The first time I spoke in tongues happened while I was slain in the Spirit on the dirty linoleum floor of a church rec room. That’s what our particular brand of Pentecostalism called the overwhelming feeling of emotion, of coming to terms that God is here now, and your body is unable to stand at the joy of it all. Before the first time I spoke in tongues, I kept falling to the floor during altar calls, trusting that whoever was behind me would catch me. I kept showing up. Week after week, I came forward at church during the altar call, received prayer, and fell to the floor in tears. These were sometimes tears of joy and other times deep sorrow. Each time I would get up feeling like I had somehow failed because I could not receive this gift being promised, or that I was not worthy of receiving what God had for me. It wasn’t until someone shouted as they prayed over me, “Come on! You already have it… just speak.” Then, as we say in certain Pentecostal circles, my tongue was “loosed.” Allow me to interpret this: I gave up trying to make sense of what was happening and surrendered to the mystery of the human experience. I gave up. I surrendered. To God? Maybe. I figured if I couldn’t understand myself, then maybe at least God understanding me was enough.
Growing up bilingual meant that I was doing the work of a translator at a very young age. In this way the work of interpretation found me. Being born in Los Angeles and raised in Guadalajara taught me to navigate the pressures of having to choose between one world or the other. El Norte, as my family called the United States, was supposedly a place where the streets were paved with gold and the buildings made of crystal. So it wasn’t strange for me to be able to speak a heavenly tongue, one that only God could understand, because I already knew what it felt like to stand in between two worlds and make them one.
Eventually, we found out that El Norte was another place with powers and principalities that demanded the sacrifice of the fruits of your labor. After all, what are rent, phone bills, and green card applications if not a kind of burnt offering at the altar of this economy? At least that’s how it feels, like some shadow chasing you in a nightmare while you’re running away underwater. Merging these multiple worlds requires a certain level of attention, creativity, and imagination if you want to survive. All you can do was to keep showing up, because you know that not everyone survives this way of living. I understood what it was like to have these multiple powers, whose presence you tried to avoid or appease on a bi-weekly basis. The landlord wants la renta, the police quiere la licencia, la migra wants your physical body relocated, gang members want whatever’s in your pockets, and so on.
When I look back, every memory of poetry in my life is filled with gaps, like line breaks.
2.
Unlike the first time I spoke in tongues, I don’t remember the first time I wrote a poem, or even the first time I was introduced to the concept of poetry in school. When I look back, every memory of poetry in my life is filled with gaps, like line breaks. What I remember is that it was always there as an outlet for me when I needed inspiration or when I wanted to express the difficulties of being in love as a teenager. The inspiration to write came through popular music, love songs in Spanish that my mom would play, or from reading other poems. When I was a senior in high school, I found solace in the poems written by Tupac Shakur and Jewel. It was their music that first captured my imagination, which then led me to find their poetry books. Their poems were short and relatable, and it helped that they were close to my age when they wrote them. It helped me feel that I wasn’t alone growing up poor and heartbroken. So I started to write poems any time I felt lost, sad, or insecure. I would fold them and keep them in between the pages of those books.
I came across their music and poems like any other kid going to high school in South Central LA. This was the music my friends were listening to, it was the soundtrack at the local swap meet, and it was what the alternative and hip-hop radio stations played. This was a place where you could find a liquor store and a storefront church next to each other and where Tupac, Jewel, and Chalino all held a space in your CD holder. It was a place where Spanish and English transformed into Spanglish, the way a good Pentecostal preacher and a lively crowd become a whole new thing, something that can’t be fully described but only experienced. This is all a poetic remembrance, of course, because daily life wasn’t always easily held together like this. Yet, the process of writing, editing, and sharing poetry shapes our imaginations in these surprising ways. Eventually, you find yourself able to translate your own emotions, your city, and your culture, and in the creative process you begin to see your own humanity in the people to whom you belong.
Eventually, I noticed this small miracle of how similar the practice of speaking in tongues was to writing poetry. Was I copying what others were experiencing? Is the poet voice I use the “real” me or the someone I would rather be? I ask because I’m always shocked at the lines I end up writing, things I never say in “real” life. Is that what speaking in tongues is? The Spirit praying prayers we’re too afraid to pray? Is that what poetry can be?
I think that like prayer, writing poetry forces us to encounter emotions that we might otherwise avoid: anger, joy, confusion, and scariest of all—love. Now imagine adding the insecurity of possibly not being understood by writing in Spanglish. Or of having to italicize the very words that say what you truly feel. Sure, God can understand heavenly tongues, but can God help me interpret the words I have for myself?
There is no competition between understanding God and ourselves.
3.
Powers and principalities force us to choose who we are for and who we are against, but poetry, like the gift of tongues, teaches us that we don’t have to make a choice. There is no competition between understanding God and ourselves. The work of translation and interpretation is the work of creativity. Like a payday that lands when nothing is immediately due, poetry creates the space for us to say what we truly need or want to say without the pressure to perform.
I don’t speak in tongues very much anymore, at least not in the traditional sense. Instead, I’ve learned to write as many poems as I can, no matter how bad they may be. Those are the poems that I hang on to because I can see myself more clearly when I read them months later. These poems are so ordinary, like a meal of bread and wine, but become something more when they are shared. Some of the poems that I remember the most are the ones that make me say, “I can write like this too.” As with the promise the preacher would shout when explaining the gift of speaking in tongues, “You too can speak to God!” Then, you too can live in such a way that your life is a gift. You too can write something so ordinary that it brings you back to yourself and closer to your neighbor—which to me is an even greater miracle.
Hablo en lenguas.
Mi segundo lenguaje fue uno espiritual
I fell to the floor crying tears, de gozo,
my tongue was loosed and I spoke
palabras que solo Dios entendía
there are things that can’t be expressed
con cualquier lenguaje, some things need
fuego del Espíritu. I’m bilingual,
hablo spanglish y en el Espíritu
both are heavenly tongues, lenguas
que el mundo no entiende, tongues
como de fuego.
Juan Carlos Lopez lives in Southeast LA with his wife and their two children. He holds a Master’s Degree from the Pentecostal Theological Seminary in Cleveland, TN. He is a former Youth Pastor with the Assemblies of God, and now gathers around the table at a church plant called Parish LB. He is an Adjunct Professor at Latin American Bible Institute, where he teaches Church History and Ministry and Social Justice courses.