Editor’s Note: We are very excited about the release this week of Doug Brouwer’s book The Traveler’s Path: Finding Spiritual Growth and Inspiration Through Travel. This is the first of three books the Reformed Journal is publishing in 2025. The following is excerpted from chapter 10: “Revisiting Babel.”

The first language I attempted to learn (after English) was Latin. I was in high school at the time, and students at my school were required to choose a language. I think the other options were Spanish, French, and German. I am no longer sure why I chose Latin, except that it seemed impressive to me at the time. My parents had no preference and saw no advantage in learning one language over another because everyone we knew spoke only English. I suppose they, like the parents of my classmates, wondered when we would ever be able to put this knowledge to a practical use.

Of course, no one speaks Latin anymore, except in traditional celebrations of the Catholic Mass, so I had no idea what use Latin would serve. As it turned out, the unexpectedly happy outcome of learning Latin was that I understood the basics of English grammar for the first time. I had never quite grasped the relationship, for example, between subjects, verbs, and direct (or indirect) objects, until Latin made all that clear to me.

I even continued with Latin during my first year of college—mainly to fulfill the language requirement in my liberal arts degree. And then, almost as abruptly as I started, I was finished with language-learning forever. And to be honest, I was not at all sad about it. Soon after turning sixty, however, living in a village near Zürich, Switzerland, I found myself once again in a language class, this time to learn German. Not Schwiizerdütsch, the Swiss German spoken by people in the north central part of Switzerland, but Hochdeutsch, the standard German spoken by as many as ninety-five million people around the world.

If I had wanted to become a fluent German speaker, I should have started before I was ten years old, which seems to be the best time in life to learn a language. But I didn’t know that one day I would be living and working in a German-speaking part of the world, in a country where a work permit requires proficiency in one of the country’s four official languages.

So, every Tuesday evening, during that first year, I found myself in a small classroom, in the village language school, with a young schoolteacher and two or three other beginner German students like me. The teacher, who spoke excellent English, used only German during classes. She always spoke clearly and used simple language, but she was nevertheless speaking a language none of us knew. The strategy made sense, of course. How else were we to get used to the sound and rhythms of the German language?

In addition to language classes, I often sat with other expats at lunch time, and our agreement for the hour was that we would speak and respond to each other only in German. We took turns introducing ourselves—“Wie heißt du?” (What is your name?)

“Ich heiße Doug!”

“Woher kommst du?” (Where are you from?)

“Ich komme aus den USA!”

Generally, the experience was fun and filled with laughter. I quickly learned that one reason children learn language more quickly is that they aren’t afraid to make mistakes. Adults, on the other hand, tend to speak self-consciously and are often embarrassed by even the smallest grammatical mistake. So, in language groups with expats, we made lots of mistakes and enjoyed ourselves in the process.

Beyond the classes and the lunchtime language groups, I read a daily German-language newspaper and on my train ride each day to Zürich listened to German-language podcasts produced for beginners like me. In my spare time, I even made use of language apps like Duolingo and Babbel, though I discovered early on that the value of these apps was mostly supplemental to other ways of learning. (Learning words and phrases—like “good morning” and “thank you”—before visiting another country is certainly commendable, but my experience is that full immersion is the only effective method to master a new language.)

The truth is, I heard German all around me—every single day. In the grocery store or the pharmacy, a clerk might say, “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?”

And then, seeing my puzzled expression, the clerk would invariably switch to English—“May I help you, sir?”

This happened more times than I can count and always produced some embarrassment. I don’t like to feel so helpless. However, asking for help when traveling to other parts of the world is, I have discovered, mostly a good thing. It puts the traveler or newcomer in the position of depending on the kindness of the host. And that tends to produce humility, though of course not always.

The striking thing for me about living and traveling in Europe is how many people speak not only English, but two or three other languages, as well. This is especially true among younger people. Some of the older people in our Swiss apartment building were not English speakers, and our conversations were sometimes difficult and occasionally humorous, usually involving lots of gestures. Younger people, we were told, learned English out of necessity, because it is one of the most widely used languages in the world. It is the language of international business, for example, and to a surprising extent it is also the language of academics. The two major universities in Zürich—the Federal Institute of Technology Zürich (ETH) and the University of Zürich—both offered classes almost exclusively in English.

Whenever I would express embarrassment at not being able to speak the language of my host, I would invariably hear the explanation that “it really isn’t necessary for you.” Which is true enough. At a practical level, there is no need for Americans to learn a language other than English, and as a result few of us do. However, each time this conversation happened, I realized that Americans are virtually alone in the world in expecting others to speak our language. What my years of living in Europe taught me, among other things, is that Americans might occasionally learn a few things from Europeans.

In his book Reaching Out: The Three Movements of the Spiritual Life, Henri Nouwen explains that, in our interactions with others, there is often an undercurrent of fear, suspicion, prejudice, defensiveness, and self-absorption. And importantly, this undercurrent prevents us from genuine connection and intimacy with others, an important step in getting to know other cultures—and essential for curiosity. So, for example, to move from hostility to hospitality (one of the three spiritual movements that Nouwen identifies) requires a conscious effort and considerable self-awareness. It requires, as he puts it, a deep desire to encounter and celebrate the humanity of others.

In my own travels, pilgrimages, mission trips, and living abroad, I have not experienced “hostility,” as most people would define that word—in fact, just the opposite. But I have recognized in myself some reticence, even distrust, when I am with people who are strangers to me. I am nearly always curious about them, of course, but I am nevertheless aware of some fear on my part. I find people from other cultures harder to know than the people I knew back in Michigan, for example. I had years of living there to observe and parse the smallest nuances of language and facial expressions, but when traveling, that confident way of interacting has almost always been absent. And so, I found that I had to be deliberate and attentive. I had to make a conscious effort to understand. I had to ask questions of strangers, therefore putting myself, as I mentioned, in a more vulnerable position.

I have come to see language learning as part of the movement from hostility to hospitality. David I. Smith, a member of the faculty at Calvin University, has written persuasively about language learning as a critical component of hospitality, of creating “free, friendly space” (Nouwen’s words) with strangers, shifting the focus, as Smith puts it, “from mastery to encounter.” Smith started his career teaching French, German, and Russian in public secondary schools in the U.K. He now works with Christian college students and teaches them that learning from the stranger is more important to Christian discipleship than imparting our knowledge and wisdom to them.

In nearly every pastoral encounter I had in my work abroad, I found myself asking, “What is it about this person’s background and culture that is leading her or him to speak and act in this way?” Frankly, it can be exhausting work. The habits and attitudes I understood and took for granted in my U.S. churches were not easily transferred to my new pastoral settings. I found that meetings lasted longer than those in the U.S. and were occasionally exasperating, but always the intent was to discover what the other person meant to say. I wish I could say that my mastery of German always helped me to understand the people I met, but occasionally a word or phrase took on new meaning. Occasionally I would have an insight into a conflicted situation because of a concept I had learned in my weekly language class.

More than anything what I take away from Smith’s work, especially his book Learning from the Stranger: Christian Faith and Cultural Diversity, is his notion that “learning from the stranger … is a necessary component of genuinely loving one’s neighbor.”

…

An unexpectedly happy experience of language learning occurred one Sunday morning at my church in Zürich. It was Pentecost, and during the previous week I had arranged with a few members of the church to call out “Come, Holy Spirit” at the beginning of worship—not spontaneously, and not all at the same time, but one at a time and at my direction. The idea was that, with each voice, a different language would be heard and that we would be reminded of the miracle described in Acts 2 (when suddenly, after the sound of wind and the sight of fire atop the apostles’ heads, everyone seemed to understand what the other was saying).

I found about twelve to fifteen volunteers who agreed to participate, and so at the beginning of worship I stood at the front and gestured toward the first person, who called out “Come, Holy Spirit” in French. And then, on and on it went—remarkably and beautifully, I thought—until it was over. Or, I should say, when it was supposed to be over.

Instead of ending where I had planned for this creative opening of worship to end, however, I heard more voices speaking in still other languages. Our church proudly claimed that more than two dozen nationalities and language groups were present on any given Sunday morning, and on that Sunday we heard more of them than I expected.

The voice that drew unexpected laughter turned out to be the last one. An older man, a native Swiss and a person well known to all in the congregation, rose from his usual seat in the second row, turned to face the congregation, and spoke “Come, Holy Spirit” in Swiss German. That turned out to be a more appropriate and much more spontaneous end to that part of worship than the one I had planned. Of all the languages I thought to include that morning, I had somehow forgotten to include the unofficial language of our host country. I still think of the moment as a remarkable one, even a holy one. And as with all holy moments, it produced in me both wonder and tears.