Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

一树一树梨花开，春在枝头，更在心上。

Another batch of elite higher education professionals are teaming up with us for the advanced English training for government-sponsored overseas academic visits as we embrace the gorgeous spring season. Language is kind of a huge deal. It is the entire reason that humans evolve, it is the basis of our cultural identity, the warehouse of knowledge. Language facilitates human connection and intelligent conversation.  We hope that this SISU learning experience will not only facilitate our scholar students’ international academic exchange competence , but also empower them to better appreciate and respect the artistry of language and humanism.

在这明媚的春季，我部迎来参加2022春季全日制国家公派出国留学高级英语培训的青年才俊们。

语言堪称伟大。它带来人类的文明与进步，赋予我们文化身份，让知识得以积累。语言让人心相通，智慧共享。 相信川外的学习之旅不仅能提升学员们的英语国际学术交流能力，亦能提升学员们对语言文化的艺术之美、人文之美的品鉴能力。段俊晖老师在开班典礼上精彩演唱的奥运歌曲Imagine，让我们内心充满感动，愿我们一起成为地球村的peace makers。

让我们再次品读Robin老师与我们的精彩分享。

Good morning!...                                      

I’ve been mulling over two words.  Just two words, in particular, have led my thoughts on what I wish to share with you all this morning.  The first, the word ‘spirit’, came to mind on February 4.  I had sat down to watch China’s opening ceremony hosting the Olympic Winter Games and that word ‘spirit’ popped up and took hold in me.I had to sit with it awhile, wondering why.

To be honest,  this word is easily overlooked just by virtue of its overuse in English. For just one example, consider how relentlessly the words ‘Olympic’ and ‘spirit’ are thrown together to sell something.  Where I come from politicians and advertising agencies work together cheapening and hollowing out the sound of it.  This word – used to name that spark igniting how & why we live has been worn out to such effect, I had to sit with it for weeks before being sure I could follow it somewhere.  I chewed on it day after day until I was just about out of time to come up with a better idea. Having left myself no choice but to try to breathe a bit of spirit back into the word itself, let me begin the attempt with a definition.

The idea of ‘spirit’ enters into French directly from the Latin – ‘spiritus’, meaning ‘a breathing into’, and ‘breath’ as in ‘breath of God’.  Old French then gives us ‘esprit’ which finds its way into English as ‘spirit’, meaning ‘soul’.  So then, ‘spirit’ – ‘the animating or vital principle’ – is that light of life within driving a body toward something more than meat and bone alone can reach for.  It’s a word for something so encompassing – so much at the core of all we conceive and do as human beings – we are bound to find it everywhere.  Rather than merely passing it by in mirrors reflecting shallow talk, we may also look for the real thing – inside ourselves.                                        

What is ‘animating’ you? What ‘vital principle’ within you brought you out on the road, to arrive here, to study English...?  Beyond just eating and sleeping, what light is inside you, giving shape and colour to your work here? What spirit is there in you to be shared with people around you?  Is your spirit enjoined to your purpose?  Does your purpose here arise naturally from your own spirit’s direction and inclination in the world?  Answers to those questions can make the work much easier.  

I began by mentioning two words, so what about the other one?  As if the whole world weren’t already overburdened with entirely avoidable suffering and conflict, yet more events have recently overtaken us.  Suddenly, as such events do–and not without their own chain of causation– not without extraordinary complexity, but suddenly, after years, months, and weeks of anxious talk, comes the grim spectre of war again in Europe. As I often have, since I first figured out what war was, I suddenly found myself again sitting quietly with the word ‘peace’.                                      

For a whole afternoon I wondered if I should shift focus and let go of the word ‘spirit’ altogether, but by evening, the two were tied tightly together.  To my ear at least, ‘peace’ also has a worn out ring to it.  Its power seems very nearly exhausted by people claiming to pray for it in total ignorance of how they profit from its opposite. After all, in the far-western world where I was raised, mine is infamously a generation of cynics, and middle-age has not sweetened us much. I’ve seen enough of those who talk of peace while lighting a thousand wild-fires with matches behind their backs, lying about every last one.  Even so, I thought, if the word ‘peace’ has come to taste like so much dust then I should let my ‘somewhat better’ nature give ‘peace’ another chance. So, I sat with ‘peace’ in one hand and ‘spirit’ in the other.                                        

From the Latin we find ‘pacem’ – ‘peace agreement; tranquility; absence of war’, giving us the French ‘pais’ – ‘peace; reconciliation; silence’.  Dig deeper and we find the proto-Indo-European root ‘pag’ meaning ‘to fasten’, giving us the Latin ‘pacisci’ – ‘to covenant or agree’, leading us at last to the English ‘pact’ – ‘a binding together’ by treaty or agreement.  Peace, both sacred and a precondition for the wholeness of ‘spirit’ in and among people, is so very hard to find these days.  

That we go about ‘looking for peace’ everywhere suggests to me we ought to invest at least equal energy in the making of it – which brings me back to you all – gathered here.  I have said this to another group of people sitting in your place before, and I’ll say it again–with even greater urgency now.  What you do here is prepare the ground of your spirit for the work of making more peace in the world.  

War is what happens when talking for the sake of real peace stops.  Violence is unleashed when talk is empty to begin with and abandoned in the end.  To choose to listen and speak is the work of those who make peace.  To choose peace is to invite the mutual understanding that comes from hearing others and being heard.  That peace, that which reconciles and saves the world is absolutely the purpose you lend yourself to when you choose to speak another language and engage in good will with others who also speak it.  You thought you were just coming here to prep for a little CSC exam I suppose ... but I am quite serious.  

Did you watch that opening ceremony in Beijing just a month ago...?  What all those who invested so much SPIRIT in producing it were trying to say – and what too many people who don’t know this country at all chose to hear – were miles and miles apart.  That this is so painfully true is only because such an effort, however thoughtfully and wholeheartedly done, cannot bridge language-driven manufactured perception gaps in our understanding of this world.  Bridging that gap must absolutely happen, but what makes it possible only happens when people get together, work together, and speak together.  

While the games were being held, at least three members of the US winter Olympic team made international news that proves this point.  What they’d heard before they came to China – what they were led in bad faith to expect – fell away.  They made news simply for praising China’s efforts and the genuine warmth and kindness with which they were received.  They came, they were made welcome, and together with all those people they met in Beijing –at least among themselves– they bridged the awful gap that hangs over the whole world and keeps us from working together as one family. This is what you are here preparing yourselves to do, and that is why I call you peace makers.

Now reaching the end of what I want to say, a third word comes to mind – ‘inspire’ – from the root word ‘spirit’.  From the Latin ‘inspirare’ meaning ‘to breathe upon’, down to the 14^th century  English ‘enspiren’, meaning ‘to fill – mind, heart, words, actions ...’.  Be inspired.  Be an inspiration to those around you.  May you find your way with words that make peace, may you inspire greater understanding, and long may you grow the spirit of friendship and cooperation in the world.