Silence with children or without?
There are, at least, two types of silence one in which no children can be heard and the other in which children can be heard.
Quaker meetings for worship are silent unless broken by what is called vocal ministry (that is when someone feels there is something worth sharing beyond ego). Silence means that voices and noises are heard that don’t normally get noticed. You don’t get to hear the grass grow though you do get to hear children grow and indeed adults as snoring may indicate that someone is in need of more sleep or prolonged coughing tells you all is not well.
I heard a two-year-old ask her dad, “What’s wrong with the baby?”. The baby to who she was referring was likely wanting to be fed and was communicating with her cries. It wasn’t that long ago that the two-year-old was a baby herself making some noise for the same reason though her question told me she had moved up the line and the new baby had taken her place.
Other kids are a bit restless as it is not easy sitting in silence for 15 minutes for many. The kids only stay for fifteen minutes before going to their group for the remaining 45 minutes where they can make as much noise as they wish.
My point is that because of the silence we can hear the children whereas normally they would be drowned out by music or a speaker with a mic. I sense for some the noise generated by the children is a distraction but then so too are the lawnmowers of the neighbours and the birds with their songs. Silence is not about the absence of noise indeed it is about hearing or listening to the noise and integrating it. There comes a point where you no longer hear it.
Indeed it is the auditory that works with the imagination and produces stories and images or whatever happens to people sitting in silence.
Someone stood up and spoke about the challenge for children to understand the point of silence and six more followed continuing the theme of considering children in life.
My mind went back 25 years. I was in Northern Ireland and visited a person in a housing estate ( government housing). It was as I left their home that I noticed the street was silent and empty. This was a contrast to my own childhood street where almost always it was filled with us kids playing street games or just ‘hanging out’.
The street was in transition. The estate had been largely Protestant ( I use the word Protestant in an ethnic sense) though gradually the protestants were moving out as more Catholics ( ethnic sense) from a neighbouring catholic estate were moving in. It may not explain the silence in the streets though it was the theory that went through my head. It was as if the street was not yet a safe place to play.
My mind then returned on the noises of children I could hear in this present moment and I thought the noise of content children is something to be celebrated. Celebrated because the healthy noise tells us that we are growing and representing the fullness of life.
I recalled the stories in the gospels which included children such as Jairus’s daughter and the boy of 2 loaves and 5 fishes fame. Indeed the most well known is when the followers of Jesus tried to keep away the mothers and their children and Jesus rebuked them and went to the kids.
It was the parables and miracles of Jesus that I absorbed as a child that have remained with me throughout life. Maybe that was the point of miracles to make it exciting for children!
The Hebrew Bible begins with Genesis and the story of Adam and Eve perfectly formed adults whereas the Christian New Testament begins with the story of a baby. Adults, we may be but we were all once children and it is in the presence of children that we are reminded of innocence, of not caring what people think and smiling regardless of who is looking.
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