The Language Of The Heart Poem by Mohammad Younus

In the houses of God, worshippers gather, their hearts alight with devotion, yet their tongues speak languages they neither know nor understand. The sacred verses flow in Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, English—each syllable recited with reverence but rarely with comprehension. The prayers rise like smoke, unanchored to meaning, as though the divine has decreed the native tongue unworthy of sacred communion. Even the sermons, meant to guide and inspire, are delivered in foreign cadence—Urdu to a Kashmiri congregation, for instance—a melody of words that struggles to reach the heart.

One wonders: how can this bridge of borrowed language connect the soul to the divine? How does a prayer, recited but not understood, ascend to the heavens with purpose? Does the divine not dwell in the language of the heart, in the simple, unadorned words that spring from the depths of our being?

A prayer in the native tongue, where every word is alive with meaning, is like a river flowing freely, unimpeded by foreign shores. Each syllable carries the weight of understanding, the warmth of familiarity, and the intimacy of truth. To speak to God in one's own language is to invite the divine into the inner chambers of the soul, to weave a connection as intimate as breath, as enduring as faith.

Let the houses of God resound with native tongues, with prayers born of understanding and sermons that speak to the heart. For a single heartfelt whisper in one's own language is worth more than a thousand foreign proclamations. The divine, surely, does not demand chanting words not understood or comprehended, but rather seeks sincerity, the pure offering of a soul laid bare in its own voice.