Just yesterday, the Feast Day of Saint Ignatius Loyola, a nice gift happened along; Mike Walsh, an artist laurelling in the nascent art department of Creighton University (circa 1966-1972), Omaha, Nebraska, responded quickly to my unanticipated email, tacking onto its tailend attachment the digitized photos of three wish-wash-shush presences, floating hushed phonemes like. But hang tight. Mike says "inflating, sighing, breathing and backlit in the early morning breezes." I guess you can only count on that on Peter's Rest, St. Croix; but at Walsh Metal Works??
Naturally I recalled days of yore as Mike and other prototypical spirits raptured through the totally gratuitous unchaining that sparked so many liberations in the sometimes ruefull sixties and early seventies now claimed to be gone by. Special strong characters surmounted counter-currents and such, greatly gifted to oblige gainly sanity, (some) irky conventions, and nurture middle courses nudged to advantage not exactly against anything, but always posively "for" and "with" whatever elements are comfy only by disagreeability . . . mayhap. Mike sent these other two photos as well. I hope to link this happenstance to the remarkable world vision we expand in our own souls every time we celebrate Ignatius, his buddies, and hopefull all who follow him and that spirit--including students of learning grounds tilled here and there by him.
Thanks, God! for the likes of those "old" students of my earliest startups of the Fine Arts department at Creighton; first and best of the BFA winners, ganging up to educate me on the times that are 'a-changin' . . . me just fresh from "Yurp" studies, Paris, Camus, existentialist reads, Jesuit Chefs of Vatican II being cooked up: DeLubac, Danielou, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar and the great Jesuit students at the Institut catholique, while the forbidden fruits of Teilhard de Chardin were sneaking off the presses.
Funny that the History of Creighton University should just now appear, nicely put together by Mr. Dennis Michelic. Funnier still that at breakfast this morning, a fellow Jesuit shyly confessed early diving into the advance copy in our rec room, and moreso jumping ahead to the section he described as "the disruptive years , , , 1963-1974." Why didn't he just say right out, "the Golden Age" ? It is definitely in the hands-on esthetic atmosphere we built together much to the chagrin of the immovable monitors of status quo education that you could've expected SCOLA TO POP OUT OF--and I suspect ultimately the unlikely offspring of a National Language Conference sired and sponsored, at that, by the still at (Iraq) war U.S. Department of Defense. THE FOOUNDATION DESIGNED TO PAY YOOUNG AMERICANS TO ACHIEVE BILINGUAL LEVEL IN A SECOND LANGUAGE. Down the line here, after more elusive ART from St. Croix and the flower gardens of the SCOLA farm, we'll see OBJECTIVES, CONSTITUTION, BY-LAWS and detailed ELABORATIONS of the nature of the thing: FLIO, FREE LANGUAGE IMMERSION OPERATION, spedifically designed to PAY YOUN AMERICANS TO CLUTCH OUT OF THIN AIR THE NAME OF THE FIRST COUNTRY THAT POPS INTO THEIR PUNKIN; HEADS, TO GO THERE AND STAY UNTIL THEY ARE AS BILINGUAL AS CAN BE, TEST OUT, AND RETURN TO THE NATION--CITIZENS OF THE WORLD.
OOOps! I've got to email Mike right this minute -- get an OK for reproducing his stuff. Besides, I'm just getting in to some finessing whereby I can get viewers to put in their own add-ons. Let us see. The Portait Photo is that of Père Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, S.J. whose writings and ideas you will see cited in previous blog postings here as you go along. My point in inserting it here is still to be shown as an introduction to my newest Oeuvre, to set up carefully just the right mood and environment to break the news to all my friends out there. The FLOWERS of course are as always at SCOLA events the element whose presence is absolutely essential to the creation of its wonders. John Wymelenberg, S.J. is the magician whose guiles implode the forces that make the gardens here waltz. Anyway, at lunch today when he admitted never to have looked at the scolastory blog, I asked him if he would so deign if I posted some of his flowers. So, here you are, John. this photo was taken a long time back; I think it is of some of the Roses that Mary favored and which you planted to please her. COMING SOON: the secret key to a bilingual YANKEE. OH YES, I WANTED TO PUT A NICE PORTRAIT OF saint ignatius loyola IN THE SLOT WHERE I ENDED UP PUTTING JOHN'S FLOWERS, BUT COULDN'T FIND A SATISFACTORY ONE. HELP. L.
is the time 
and this could tell . . . ? or maybe this is the place where we pause appropriately to take a look at the highlights of the great flower gardes that John Wymelenberg tends each summer season. Notice in particular some of rhe wild flower stretches in, around and through low-angle views under antennas here and there. You haven't any ideas of the zulu to zulu wonders of scola signal coverage of the entire earth until you roam around the grounds and taste the deep satisfaction we see in the stories of the world--mostly seeing the good and the beautiful. 
or here we go daisy dallying among the groupings of special blooms that Dave Decker's camera finds placed and oriented just the way a florist would want them.
Now through the fields of wild wonders enjoy some of the photos taken at the Lubbers' Birthday luncheon celebrated at the ROSE CAFE in TREYNOR, IOWA just six miles the gravel stretch of coounty L52 from the SCOLA offices, Featured entertainment is a 
SPOON ON THE NOSE ACT by Bob and Rosalie Soloth's grandson ANDREW. View of Lubbers with the ANGEL FOOD VERY LIGHTLY GLAZED, More Mike Walsh Gallery pieces. BAYLESS PARK FOUNTAIN rising among us.
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ANNOUNCING FREE LANGUAGE IMMERSION OPERATION (FLIO)
FREE LANGUAGE IMMERSION OPERATION (FLIO="I FLY" in virtual bilingualism) FREE LANGUAGE IMMERSION OPERATION
OBJECTIVES:
A) To provide efficacious AID for young Americans to choose a country-language-culture that matches their deepest inquisitive spirits, assist them to go there, remain there for, say, three years, immersed totally among your most ordinary typical citizenry--mainly concentrating on learning the language of the people, making lifelong friendships that will link them forever with the culture, engender swaps and exchanges of people and information, visits both ways to both countries and suchlike stuff.
flio_4_worldB) Financial aid sufficient to motivate the commitment should be, say, around $6,000 USD per year--considering that one should gain some help by getting a job that brings a person into necessary regular speaking exchanges contact with native people. Such jobs might be low-paying near-volunteer type, jobs linked to one's religious choice of Sabbath-keeping or equivalent; they could even be into work allied with other assistance programs already active in the place, even if they are USA sponsored, similar to peace corps, Jesuit Volunteers, Lutheran-Baptist-Methodist-Whatnot charitable distributions.
C) We think that financial assistance from families might only interfere with the financially lonesome individual to rely largely on genuine immersion benefits in truly coming to the levels of language-culture Solidarity in true friendship and sharing with the people in wholesome generous far-extended family-type living.
D) Other programs that have attracted young members . . . compare their lives e.g. in work, with dedication and sacrificing for their commitments---to a life-style much like that of a good monk--type (only without monastery or vows). Still, the togetherness of a truly dedicated person portents falling in love with the people, liable to learn their ways and come pretty close to the kind of disciplined life that makes a man a man and woman a woman. The corporation should: * be a non-profit, educational * definitely loosed from any specific rreligion or faith, be separate and distinct from SCOLA * make possible various services to assist SCOLA, e.g. services by FLIO partakers To assist in links with entities in the Country they are living in . . . . * allow payment to FLIO's for services like marketing SCOLA, doing custom jobs like video-filming etc.
The Board of Directors should: * have between 12 and 24 members. * be made up of people prominent in prospering corporations capable of contributing to the FLIO Foundation; wives or husbands of such people should be equally recruited. * recruit other likely director candidates. * establish department-functions needed. * name directors each as a guide to a specific function. * Research fund-raising GLOBALLY. * Determine support functions in involved countries.
Departmental Tasks of the Foundation: * attract every young American who reaches their time of "WanderLust" through broad dynamic advertising, making paid volunteerism attractive as ideal solutions for "between periods" after e.g. a BA and before MA or Ph.D, or simply as a pre-linguistic period objective. * Determine requirements for accepting applicants: maturity, independence, creativity, etc. * Decide which countries make the list: highlighted? Encouraged? Dangerous? * assist in fund expansion, budgeting. * Selling the "story" of FLIO pan-usa. * helping with business contacts in target countries where jobs and aid for "flippers" can be had. * Create support spots or people onsite in some countries? Locations of FLIO Direction: * headquarters in Omaha, Nebraska? * Possible "filials" in other countries popular with "flio's." E.g. Paris, Egypt, Yemen, Niger, Ghana, Berlin, Moscow / Tobolsk etc Introduce Benefits re: global trade, for many young Americans knowing partner languages Well, motives for non-usa business and Private fortunes to support FLIO. * Create up-to-date info on countries. * Establish a policy of preferences? Small. "Poor," less spoken languages.
Why do I think That this program is crucial? (Lee Lubbers, S.J.)
Well, as founder and CEO of SCOLA for its early formative years til 2004, and all the personal contacts and friendships that has meant over the years, and now witnessing intimately as the SCOLA Chief Global Strategist under the most solid and dedicated personally nominated team at the helm (Francis Lajba, CEO, and Chairman of the Board U.S. Senator David Karnes, and dozens of specially gifted persons doing great things harmoniously every day) I think that I have seen close-up the languages needs of the Nation from umbilical viewpoints; all the great teachers and language programs at superb colleges and universities, of course, but standing out as well, loud and clear, are the astute observations of the dedicated people of the Language Training Programs of all the Intelligence Agencies Operations of the USA (and Canada, as well). In the inevitable germane topics arising constantly in my close working with all of these people and trying to hone SCOLA to the tune of their basic needs, one theme has always gnawed its way to the surface: How can Americans be motivated to learn languages?
There was even an invitation-only hyper conference sponsored by our Defense Department in Adelphia, Maryland, as a part of the University of Maryland. SCOLA people were invited for sure, even to demonstrate our video streaming etc. The scheduled opening speaker was Wolfowitz (no-show) himself--to underscore the importance. At the end of course was the inevitable small group decision-making narrowing things down: my impression, generally accepted there and everywhere, was, that THERE IS NO WAY ANY AMERICANS WILL LEARN ANY LANGUAGE TO BILINGUAL LEVEL UNLESS THEY ARE PAID TO DO IT; A job, barring some obvious ethnic-related exceptions. My friends, mainly at the Intelligence Agencies talked up a plan close to how I describe it here: We will see enough Americans learning the critical languages of the world only if we entice adequately fresh young Americans who have arrived at the itchy age of nest-flying, or good old Wanderlust to pick almost ANY language or country that pops into their punkin' heads, and are PAID to GO THERE and STAY for at least THREE YEARS immersed in the language and culture; then return to America to serve the PEOPLE, no matter what your work-- Because you know ANOTHER LANGUAGE near-bi-lingual, You are a citizen of the world.
The following skeletal outline for a Foundation of sorts, hopes to be a start. A start from nowhere, because even though the U.S.government recognizes best the veracity of this reasoning, IT IS TOTALLY INCAPABLE OF DOING THAT. As for a foundation needed to amass enough lucre to get this job done, I think it must build an Herculean vastitude in order to effect a totally new twist and spin in our slice if the planet. So, I think that by its very nature, billionairish money sitting around fallow AND WHICH is lonely and dying to fructify the yearning TO MAKE A MARK.
FINANCIAL RESOURCES that have lost the life force needed for intercourse with the world have been stacked so high and mighty as to collapse upon themselves. It's that kind of money that is needed in globs to do the job well and cover the earth with young dynamic Americans capable of gobbling up the warm spirits of the world's hospitality to all the ends of the earth. Of course the topmost priorities do and ought to do the obvious cleanup of vast life-threatening diseases and starvation, but the long-term groundwork for the primal substructure for amenities, cures and growth will be the only way to build solidly for present visions of solid futures.
More important than money (but not without it) are the disciplined savvy people whose advice and support can set the chassis of our engine into the best stage for orbit. A Board of Directors of top notch civic and national leaders to inspire one other dynamic partner person at a time until we have a continuing constantly revolving body of responsible agents, answering to a call to back and support the young pioneering Americans who are bold and courageous enough to knock down the invisible barriers to face-to-face economizing the planet. Early on I see it mandatory to prepare a short (20 min.) video movie, deeply inspirational, about the lives of dedicated linguists, translators and bridge-making language-savvy people; perhaps using students in the process: * grade school-Hi-schoolers in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Chinese classes * shots from operations at DLI Monterey, CA. * scenes in language applications in every-day actions: courtroom, College ESL classes, music, church, theater, citizenship helpers, etc. * scenes especially of Ami students abroad with much lingo accomplished already shown mixing t up with a group of the language and other Americans as well . . . .
******* Primary scenes--show Americans in a vast variety of countries--ones who are there on their own already and incidentally match more or less the objectives of the FLIO. (Cf. Creighton U. alumnus Paul Connor) ******* Show short interviews with students abroad.
Why aren't existing Youth programs enough? Because the focus for learning language in all the other service programs make achievement of quality language accomplishment secondary at best; and even though the environment for learning regular usage with cross-section of the populace,
I THINK THAT VERY OFTEN THE OVERT ALLIANCE OF "HELPERS" IN UNDEVELOPED LANDS WITH ORGANIZED RELIGIONS OR PROGRAMMED ORGANIZATIONAL ALTRUISM SOMETIMES FIND THEIR EFFECTIVENESS STUNTED OR RESENTED OR EVEN COUNTERPRODUCTIVE.
Still, the lingo will tend to be a narrow segment of specialized usage, and never really demands a breadth of ability across the board of disciplines of the culture and all its aspects. However, in some cases I think a person might be able to combine the two objectives, and it would be our aim to assist this choice with the same services as for the others, especially since we are ++ encouraging our option as learning the language broadly mostly by self disciplined seeking all the broad sources of learning: talking with citizens regularly from every walk of life, every kind of simple low-paying work, arts, theater, music, universities, libraries, markets, sweat work, leisure, sports and relaxations.
Quite aside from the worldwide celebration this week of the jubilee celebration of the awsome mathematical "cracking" of the Poincaré conjecture, whereby, "To a topologist, a rabbit is the same as a sphere. Longitude and latitude lines on the rabbit allow mathematicians to map it onto different forms while preserving information." (NYTimes, Tues. August 15, '06, p. F1; holy day of Assumption of the BVMary into Heaven. And the formal initiation of the FOUNDATION FOR FREE LANGUAGE IMMERSION OPERATION. HERE FOLLOWS A LOT OF MY EARLIER ATTEMPTS TO OUTLINE THIS VENTURE. PLEASE BE PATIENT AND READ AS MUCH AS YOU NEED,
)This is the startup outline of the bilingual plan for complete immersion paid for by concerned billionaires around the world; universal international concern motivated by wise people in all other lands seeing that the brain blindness of northamericans helpless to understand the minds of foreign linguophones is an intellectual straightjacket for the various cooperative developmental global projects like world trade and democritization.
The world resents rightly the disastrous unfair pitch and tilt of the playing table. Beyond the enormous admitted benefits of English as a world language, it only makes more stark that the honest mutuality plus give-and-take essentials for the repartee nature of working together on the same planet are selfishly wanting.
Inheriting oddly the fate of all great powers like Rome when Latin was official “world-wide” or when French was mandatory for effective world communication, Spanish for coonization, English speakers currently are bullying their way to domination without ever a clue as to what the others are trying to mean; without wide bilingual capabilities the world is destined to grow more unfair with even the best ESL negotiators being talked down low under the table with ever widening gaps in the wealth that by the nature of its production can only be bargained into somewhat balanced equity by literate players.
The world is angry with those who flee from them by the nature of their mock-mute stance. “Me no savvy” has many pseudo-literate synonyms like “We can get this done elsewhere.” Throwing money at the most susceptible population will not make the treasurer-producer loved. Those projects initiated “man-to-man” even in casual banter-palaver and helping hands have fed the hearts and souls of neighbors and "a pari" contributed to the amelioration of those snafus of distribution that hassle existing assistance programs in all critical areas liable in such things to gobbled self-helpings from the goodies lavished.
THERE IS MORE (but I will be editing the junk out furiously in the coming weeks. I promise.)
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THE WHOLE WORLD CAN'T BE WRONG SCOLA MOTTO
Blogging along totally in a reminiscent fog, I was sure that I was dutifully, as founder and leader till relatively recently, writing the plain objective story of SCOLA, presumably as only I could do it; that’s what I was commissioned to do, after all, by my friends who do all the great services provided now: growing before my very eyes into a one-hundred-twenty country Digital babbleTower of Television taking their daily pulses in more than eighty languages:
>http://www.scola.org<
This project is my first experience blogging however, and I was nervous about getting enough pages posted before opening it even to SCOLA people for necessary team input. But then, a bit frazzled, I finally halted, paused for the first time after a few “postings,” to read for myself what I had written so far; and Lo! And Behold! I woke to the cold fact that I was blogging a blooming personal apologia of sorts.
I thought of SCOLA‘s story initially in terms of peoples or countries coming together as a sort of communitarian Locus for seeing, knowing and digesting what everybody else in the world is up to. Like a TV SPECTACLE of the passing scene--an on-going motion picture show gallery archive for . . . historians? . . . antiquarians? . . . obituaries?
But no! The dynamics of living pulse- monitoring on any fraction of this scale means participation in the most personal and intimate ways. You learn and live the languages, the nuances of all that signifies and conveys information. It is about the conglomerates and totality of all the individual people who as a solidarity live and have ever lived in the Universe—all coming together in the grand convergence of mankind—one great unified flock come together at the point of “home at last” to the
Sense of being surrounded by the elements that make us comfortable with the otherness, cozy in the cosmic.
This stretched-out perspective, more realistic, I think, makes SCOLA’s place look terribly tiny, but in better ways more important as a coded icon for the cosmo-genic glue that melds all people into one by dousing the spectacle, jumping “cold” into otherhoods, new idioms, get-up-and-go participation in the action of what is real. SUCH THINK-AGONIES underscore the urgency of language learned to the limitless. What that means is that SCOLA RESOURCES REQUIRE THAT YOU WARM UP TO A COUNTRY AS THOUGH YOU WERE GETTING READY TO DO A LEAPING LEARNING ENLIGHTENMENT. which in turn requires that you ready for a complete metastasis of lingua culture, temporary turncoat metamorphosis in a born-again learning plunge.
The Great Holy Spirit at the loins of all communication, languages and babellings thereof, is the Source of what the threads of life say to us, say what is the Meaning of life, what is the binder of all Solidarity of the human race from the beginning of soulful life to the mountain where Salvation lies.
E.G.:
In this direction I hope to point out all the elements of our lives where the services of SCOLA (AND SHORTY: FLIO) do help immerse us in the grand family of mankind. This is in no sense of denial or discouragement in the rich ethnicities of the human race nor in the importance of patriotism in the ever more democratic civil polities of the world. Rather in this story I invite readers to help point out how in their most perfect forms they assist all peoples to greet every sunrise in every clime that we are all children of one God who put each of us here.
Evident, these days, rising increasingly almost out of the stones of the earth are signals from hearts starving for some—almost “any”—signal that Some Really Significant Meaningful-in-Life ONE is out there, the God of Creation. Tell me about it.
What holiness experts seem to be trying to say (more or less) is that since our Creator made us with the full intention that even after a sometimes rough trip through life, we should definitely succeed, make it, “be saved; and, as impossible as it seems in the many awful cases we can all think of, “Nothing is impossible with God.” Check it out yourself:
(http://www.medaille.com/hope.htm)
My point in using one theological model (which, I’d say, is pretty crucial to the lives of all of us) is to clinch ultimately the place our primal native languages play in the “coming together” of all mankind. I risk repeating in a thousand different ways the existential reality that it might be easy for me all alone lonerwise to get lost, but togetherness in solidarity with all God’s children succeeds. Unless I join the Human Race I’m dangerously on the wrong track. Reader: you can easily think of a parallel model from your own paradigmatic childhood.
Back in the Dark Ages (say, about until 1962-65 0f this era) wussie voices in the night had bad night-blindness in the face of various noble faith-positions now seen to possess full moral and spiritual goods for a good life. In fact, the “otherness” from the hitherto deemed “mother-faith” can clearly from evidence of centuries of Provident action claim intrinsec value sufficient to stand firm as genuine Revelation for specific cultures in different times, and, a pari, even today.
Realist thinking like this began, as most of us know full well, with the stark actuality of many religions in existence, and, we may conclude, providentially raised to bring your typical othernesses closer to His Providence. Christian as well as non-Christian; and, as for the non-Christians, most all do “match (we add as a sop to some of us [my emphasis]), Christianity in terms of the practice of virtue which they engender, the profundity of the spirituality they inculcate.” (Terrence Merrigan, p.61)
If any of you Westerners are still out there, it might interest (or surprise) you “that most people in the world are not and are never likely to be Christian . . . .” (ibid. p.60) which perhaps has crossed many minds in reading histories touching relations with Islam. Link:
( http://www.rctr.org/pastblogs/july2004.h
DIALOG
Then on what basis is the what kind of unity or solidarity ever to be wrenched out, may we look in the direction of dominant instincts today towards DIALOGUE which must in part be interreligious and lead all of us down unfamiliar paths for “experience of the other,” (link: ), At this point it is good to remind ourselves that at some not too distant future we are KARMA’d to be at the very least perfectly tolerant, if not buddy-buddy actually, Arab Muslim with Irish Catholic, Pope with Imam, Fundamentalist with Flaming Liberal. So what the Heck.
One of the areas of dialog has to be in the functioning of globalism through world trade. In a market scenario where workers in a small poor land churn stuff under tight budget contract out and are pittance paid, the customers-buying profiting are thieving staight out. The contracting logo product managers are the triggers of the robbery. There will never be a time when the small country at such a pace can partake of the pie and taste the good life.
Maybe the contractors should be obliged to speak the native language of the small contracting country in negotiating foreign-site production.
Note well that the small contracting countries have sometime long since abandoned their pride of unique native language and culture and even made English the official tongue of the nation in order, they think, to allow everyone to participate in the big business money pot. Perhaps a return to self-assertion of the national richness of tongue and native genious will Bring it back into legitimacy in the swirl mondial of values and services of importance also to others around the world.
Reportedly the Pentagon has drawn its own peculiar new map of the world; In it is a delineation of a “core” of countries that are “functioning; that is, they are economically stable such that a comfortable life for the citizenry makes for a dependable labor market, good customers for traded products, and continued cultural development.
Outside are found the “Non-integrating Gap.” These countries faced the roaring Information World that invited all to the party of worldwide prosperity of products and connection with the rest of mankind. Leapfrogging into coveting all that the world had to offer and was bandied about constantly before their eyes; all without giving the means, the education, the training, the capital and the motivation to build a society capable of participation. The world finally awakened to realize that a new disorder of the world was in the making; demands for crisis response around the world multiplied, the military decided it had to design a different sort of army—one part which could jump to snuff sudden crises here and there—and draw a new map of the world, spotting the “disfunctioning countries where jobless jokers slouch around the corners of mischief markets.
Current goals, I guess, are primarily zeroed in on helping more of the non-integrating gap countries into the Functioning Core; a good and necessary thing. There are many books poking around the fringes of this subject these days, but none of these point one word to the pride of culture and language at catastrophic risk in the excessive one-way streetism of current world trade methods, practices and policies.
Reduced to one specific example, imagine a product called X-BOOTS. HERMAN is the name of the production and manufacturing company in New Rockland. One bright day Herman needs to lower prices on X-Boots drastically in order to compete and make more money. He finds a potential sub-contractor group in Sweetonia capable of making boots for a song. The Sweet company makes the boots and even ships them to the various markets.
Indicated by the contractor. The Herman company now fires its worker in New Rockland, since the company now needs only a skeleton office to make contracts with foreign workers, negotiate salaries, specify markets, keep books and count money.
The Sweet workers now want a bigger share, salary raises, for their work. Herman says “No!” and Sweet objects. Herman then reminds Sweet people to take it or Herman will move the whole kaboodle to Sloponia. End of Story.
The situation is a Hybris event of overweening bully, economic threat, linguistic runaround and total cultural bankruptcy.
Of course these situations could gradually disappear if wages’ standards equal to those in the contracting country could be applied; profits would again be the result of more genious, efficiency and competition. Gradual ability of more bilingual people involved would certainly help mutual cultural togetherness foster a better business and indeed a better product. All this would certainly contribute to better people, a better society etc etc.
I’d hate to put my finger on the real language problem; it seems so negative, Instead, let’s just say:
• scads of products originate in the USA
• most of those are manufactured in Gap countries
• most core country people are multi-lingual and include english
• Most other countries’ people learn English and make English official
• Few Northamericans are bilingual
• Spanish/English bilingualism is creeping into the USA.
The best story and analysis of the strains to which the overwhelming adoption of English as International language of choice subjects us, is an article ([pdf] LANGUAGE LEARNING, GLOBALISM, AND THE ROLE OF ENGLISH) , by Humphrey Tonkin. (GIVE ALL THAT TO GOOGLE, AND PRESTO.) It is not really a total blessing, this omni presence of English in the world, its common official international use.
I suggest you read the whole article, (PLEASE!) but let me feature a couple of segments:
“We know enough about the world to move around it with relative ease, but our limites knowledge confuses response to economic stimuli with what Americans call life, liberty and the pursuit of hapininess. Those great ideals ring increasingly hollow in our conflict-ridden world. A major cause of our confusion before the globe that we have created is our inability or our unwillingness to go beyond the boundaries of our elite universe to engage the people at its fringes and beyond, in terms, and in languages, that they understand, The very seductiveness of the welcoming world of technology and mobility and the English language, its very openness to all who qualify, may blind us to what lies beyond. We need languages to reach beyond the envelope of wealth and privilege in which we find ourselves,”
“We can perhaps recognize . . . that we have the feeling that English is the lingua franca
of international education, but we who are locked in our own linguistic house, no matter how commodious its rooms nor how broad the surrounding parkland, do not have the means to understand them. Furthermore, having a single language for global communication may have its advantages, but it comes at considerable cost to the diversity of cultures. Indeed it makes doubly imperative that we learn how to communicate effectively with the rest of the world in a spirit of reciprocity and openness.”
for
strategic discernment*
Needs, visions, futures:
church, Society, world.
SCOLA (languages)
GLOBALISM
As Chief Global Strategist of SCOLA, and a devoted Jesuit, currently dedicated to writing SCOLA's story from its startup in 1980, and tentatively entitled "The Whole World Can't Be Wrong," let me lay out some of the "phantasmas" we are wresting from our entanglements with sundry countries globally. (please see >www.scola.org<) Because, some disparate interests have very mutualizing objectives--with fine tuning in some cases. E.g.: Just as the broad tantalizing tentacles of capitalism reach out so generously, inviting every sort of trade and cultural participation for greater growth of Globalism's core panoply of suitably prospering economies, so, too, has VATICAN II resurgence reminded us dynamically of what precisely it means to "Go out to ALL THE NATIONS …."
NEEDS OF SOULS
It of course has been impressive that disciples of Christ have truly been actively ensconced in practically every nook and cranny of the ends of the earth, Sorry, but simply being no matter how active in all those populations has not in the most critical cases touched the faith-nerve at the deepest abysses of the souls of peoples already for centuries responding in their kind to God's kindred summons and signing in blood cosmic covenants of consanguineous sorts.
Great disciples on the road, many great Jesuits especially, have transmogrified to become the "others," in a cultural metamorphosis in genuine empathetic identification inside the souls of those with whom they shared the Good News. Li Ma-dou (Matteo Ricci comes to mind; in our own times, De Lubac and Danielou lived among the East Indies peoples immersed in languages riches, as did Dupuis who lived, worked and taught in India for 22 years. The point being that these men, because of their own capacity of immersion into the missiological drama have been able to pierce revelations cloudy for coarser tongues and minds and awaken for us the directions and intents of revelations God has been trying to blast through to us for eons. Make no mistake that we are talking simplistic trading of one palabration for another; but rather the whole theater of meaning that another world-set achieves on this particular mountain-top.
Core countries, of course, being those already neatly functioning enough to fit into the world trade picture with no fuss. Outside the core are the small, poor, less important lands that bear nursing unto sufficient maturity status for playing with the "big" kids; or else . . . their neglect, joblessness or resentment might trigger big "problemas mondiales." These countries put together are numerous; they are in fact "the nations." Recall that in 1983 the American and British Governments withdrew in a huff from unesco because the un-super powers united against them in defense against the overwhelming one-way information communications highways totally dominated by the super-powers raining down upon them, they felt, gross destruction of their cultures, values, languages, mores and all they held sacred. (This was the NWICO in unesco at this time.) And as a result the rich developments potential of the various educational, scientific, cultural works of unesco have been for the past 25 years completely stymied. (SCOLA has been a member of the Int'l Film and TV Council of unesco since that time, 1983, in the Conseil internationale du cinema et de la television et toutes autres moyens de l'audiovisuel.)
LANGUAGE
Language sensibilities are again, and even more now, critical to understand the world's needs today. Alarming even more than the post-deregulation-of-satellite communications period when American movies and all else was delivered willy-nilly to vast earth-footprint areas without so much as a howdy-do; thus portended the triumphal arrival of the English language as the almost exclusive idioma-fawcet imposed, like-it-or-not upon the globe. International business and foreign affairs notwithstanding, it is understandable that some lands of babel conditions need a lingua franca, but please be startled that some of the non Anglophone big boys are marketing classes and their own prestigious educational programs in English--in order to attract greater numbers of students from around the world, whence vast hords come ready English speakers, too slow to try local languages even when they represent really commonly spoken important literary, cosmopolitan, and used in world diplomacy.
Hence the realization of the lesser-lingo speaker that he never really feels the deeply human gratification that "someone out there knows what I think and feel." This may make tremors not only for locals, but around the globe where profound human solidarity multiplies geometrically to nth power any slight suffered by "our brothers.". Frustrations so deep are a terribly foolish thing to ignore. As an American, my frustration is kindred, but is partly also a slippery feeling of loss; loss of friends whom you can really understand; loss of any secure feeling that in all the "talking" I never really get all the savvy , sense, feel or aura of what my foreign friends are saying. Or what is even worse, all the communicating on all sides and in all subjects has perpetually been Englished on all sides, so that now even the most sacred source materials are in English, in Anglophone places "translated" into "Id." So, no brain will ever again have a breath of fresh air.
ANTIPODES
Try this on: "America's curse is the englishing of the world." Unless Americans do dip into other lingos even to near bilingual status . . . any language at all, for starters, can we open our souls for other-cultural other-lingual germination. This is more true for the Jesuit world, I reckon, than for the business one. Early Jesuit training in other (any other) country is a baptism into the vast "Other-dom" of "The Nations" that Jesus sent us out to THE ENDS OF THE EARTH. This challenge for young potential candidates is the elixer of Olympic quality novices. Must reading for novices for today's needs of the church: (Jesuit author-theologians whose themes helped create the Vatican II Council:
In days o f yore we'd imagine all the missionaries going all over the earth, verily to the antipodes proclaiming God's Word to all the nations. We would in history find that much ambitious missionizing took place alongside equally purposing empire building of pious Christian polities. So maybe thus quite naturally they saw religious life in new places needing conversion to the absolute cooky-cutter stamp of their own ginger bread world flat out, plain, pure and in every detail. So a little culture rubs off on the natives, but what if . . . ? Admit, then, that enculturation comes before talk in the big scale of values in the sky, but then why did the chicken cross the road? Admit language. How describe soul functions? And how they express individuality along with primordial human solidarity, antipodal easings simultaneously with "theurgical" brewings of stark magical inspiration from God knows where; exactly. Then how preach Verbum to those born deeply in Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, saying "Dominus Vobiscum?" Making like an orphan and having to live with your Aunt Bridgette who is really nice, is the only way to know where you came from and where you are. And talking her talk starches each tread to strong
Fullness of daily life.
CHURCH?
The Church's needs are explicit in the plaintive and generous invitations of the GAUDIUM ET SPES conclusions of VATICAN II. Like awakening to the vast outstretched world, triggering the limning of a theology, not of a billion Catholics, not of 2 billion Christians, but of eight billion people existing at any one time on the planet; and like with enthusiasm inviting them indiscriminately, come one, come all. Come, no matter what . . . don't believe in God? Nor in Christ? Sinner? Come here where you belong. Peace. Welcome. The big bad world is where Jesus has always sent us out to. That very mass of humanity has, precisely by eventuations in our lifetimes we are witnessing been prepared as never before for their confrontation with the direct Word of God. Pain and suffering has been enough. Maturity of common human thinking and experience has primed us all. The appetite for any kind if unity and peace is strong.
The liberalism of Vatican II is beginning to look more like classic fare long overdue. The ultra-conservative are fairly forewarned of the dangers of going off their edge into fundamentalist pits. Conservative Right, fear not; the cruel world is not the your enemy, it is your laboratory and studio.
Cf. also NOSTRA AETATE The Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions.
SCOLA's objectives center around the afore-mentioned poor countries, the ones whose main languages no one outside the country wants to learn, or even in it fewer speak. Our mission statement, independently formulated by our brave mixtum-gatherum of Christians (an occasional muslim, Turk, other) is in no way antipathetic to the finest Jesuitical ambition. It is understood with an incredible faith, that, of course, even those of Islam will with charity and love be nurtured (anon?) into suitable neighbors, co-workers, friends and if God wants, Christians. We are confident that just as Capitalist Globalism and Catholic Missiologizing to the Nations proceeds, we proceed with languages and the linguistic catalyst for Unity, because for no other reason than that everyone seems to be omitting this link.
FLIO: FREE LANGUAGE IMMERSION OPERATION
Some SCOLA visions see all young Americans, when they arrive at the age of WanderLust, being given the wherewithal to pick a country, any-which country, off the top of their punkin’ heads, go there to live until they achieve a good near-bilingual level, and then come home and continue contacts forever, visiting second home country and entertaining second foreign family among us from time to time, Such will create a leavened bread of life for all our citizenry. I can see Jesuit recruiting attracting ever more spirited and brave souls to the Society alerted by the breadth and expansiveness of the church's vision and our place in it. Options as to countries for novice training? Many different nations. Pick the one the Spirit moves you to. Any one will train as good as any, because it's "other."
WANDERLUST
INCLUDING THIS PHOTO OF THE "FRAMED" EXERCISE BALOON is a continued educational audiovisual trinket done to help visualize thesimplicity of the home-made satellite reception antenna. It is the concave surface of the INSIDE OF THE SPHERE WHICH REFLECT TO A RICH AREA THE SIGNALS COMING FROM THE TRANSPONDING (retransmitting on a different frequency) SATELLITE. The area where you locate your receiving "antenna" is located at a floating space at a distance from the spherical concave surface roughly half the radius of the imaginary sphere. That "antenna" in reality is NOT those big "dishes" you see, but a small brass (usually) "T" form piece of metal the size of the wave-lenbth of the transmission involved; that would make it in our transmissions and receptions, the wavelength of 6 gigaherz, about 4 to 6 mm. This woould warn you that if you would like to use a screen surface antenna (reflector) the size of the open space must be smaller than that, otherwise the signal would just fall through rather than reflect to the amplifier cum "antenna." 
AL-JAZEERA