World Cup Blogs 3: Belgium

Continuing to blog reflections on the 32 nations represented at this summer's World Cup in Russia I come to the first, alphabetically, that I have set foot in - Belgium.  

We are driving to Belgium this summer and it is very striking that it is less miles away than when we drive to Liverpool.  In this year Belgium figures in the great commemoration of a hundred years since the 1918 Armistice Day. Beneath its soil lie thousands of remains that testify to the madness of the 20th century wars.  It is not surprising that Belgium (which also had post-colonial connections to the Congo Crisis in the 1960s and the troubled lands of Burundi and Rwanda) should have a strong official bent toward peace.

Belgium, moreover, is an amalgam - or rather an accommodation - of two very different cultures (Dutch and French) with even a little of Germany added as a result of the First World war settlement.  This duality (plus the German corner) makes for a strangely divided yet relatively historic country - they have a a fine football team at the moment so they might have plenty of reasons for unity as the World Cup begins.

So the more successful they are, the more often we'll hear the Belgian National Anthem.  In its National Day form it has alternate lines in Dutch, German and French.  The last three lines of the verse usually sung is a repeat (Eng. King, Law and Freedom!).  After a very brief look I think you will guess which of the three languages this line was first written in  . .

Voor Vorst, voor Vrijheid en voor Recht!

Gesetz und König und die Freiheit hoch!

Le Roi, la Loi, la Liberté!

Today, on Pentecost Sunday this perfectly illustrates the difficulties of translation, and this is very relevant to the coming of the Holy Spirit.  Jesus promised Him in John chapter 14.  Jesus spoke Aramaic, a form of Hebrew but the New Testament was penned in Greek and the word used was paracletos.

And in English?

Advocate (New International Version)

Comforter (King James Version)

Helper (English Standard Version)

Companion (Common English Bible)

Counsellor (Revised Standard Version)

Paraclete (Douay-Rheims)  [which of course is not English but a transliteration]

If the Belgian National Anthem is a clue that its nation is very varied, then perhaps the attempts to translate paracletos are a sign that the Holy Spirit is God with us in amazing and varied ways, something to be celebrated on this Pentecost Day by people of every language, tribe and tongue.

Happy St Patrick's Day!

What could be more Irish than this Old Irish poem-turned-hymn?  This hymn has grown in popularity while many previously better-known hymns have disappeared under the flood of Contemporary Christian Music.  This seems partly because of the growing popularity of Irish culture.

But I, for one, have never heard this hymn in Gaelic.  The words I think of as 'Irish' are owed to a Victorian lady born and deceased in England whose love of Irish literature led her to translate this and countless other Old Irish works.  Next time you hear this song in a worship experience it is worth sparing a thought for a lady of not specially noted spirituality doing her 19th century translations in love of the Old Irish language unwittingly being used by God to create something for worship in the 21st century. 

You never know what God's up to . . .  

Para-translation

The Paralympics are a great tribute to Great Britain which seems so much more able to celebrate diversity and integrate disability than many other cultures.  I suspect this has much more to do with its Christian Heritage than the Big Bang that the opening ceremony lauded but, hey.

Samuel Sherechewsky was also suffered from becoming largely paralysed.  He was in the process of  translating the Bible into Wenli Chinese so paralysis was apparently terminal to that task.  Yet he had a typewriter made to construct the characters necessary and with his one useful finger continued the task.

He sat for twenty years.  Of course this is not what was to be expected of the Bishop of Shanghai.  His life that had carried him to China from Lithuania via the United States had certainly not been sedentary before. "It seemed very hard at first", he reflected, "but God knew best.  He kept me for the work for which I am best fitted."