My family is, in many ways, emblematic of America in the 21st century: multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious. I am a Muslim from Iran. My wife is a Christian from western Pennsylvania. That may seem an incongruous coupling. But when we first met, we realized almost immediately that we shared the same values and worldview, even though we expressed those things in a different spiritual language.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s all religion is, really: a language made up of symbols and metaphors that allow people to communicate, to themselves and to others, the ineffable experience of faith. I already spoke my wife\u2019s spiritual language (Christianity); I taught her mine (Islam). And now we are a spiritually \u201cbilingual\u201d\u009d household. Actually, we are multilingual, considering we are committed to teaching our children all the spiritual languages of the world so that they can choose for themselves which ones, if any, they prefer in communicating their own individual faith experience.<\/p>\n
But that is also the reason the prayer was tripping us up that first Christmas together. We were having a difficult time understanding one another\u2019s spiritual languages, let alone coming to a consensus on which language to use.<\/p>\n