Albert Mohler: "Where Do All the Colors Go at Night?" -- Children and the Need for Silence

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Excerpt:
Our culture now assumes noise and the constant availability of music, electronic chatter, and entertainment. In many homes, there is virtually no silence -- at least during waking hours. In some homes, family members live in isolated environments of independent sound, with iPods, televisions, radios, and any number of other technologies providing a customized experience of noise.

All this takes a toll upon the soul. Psychologists argue that the development of individual identity requires extended periods of solitude, reflection, and silence. The Christian tradition has honored silence as a matter of spiritual discipline and an intentional effort to flee the noise of everyday life in order to hear what that noise cannot supply.

If this is true for adults, it is perhaps even more true for children. But today's children are often subjected to a constant barrage of noise. Many are raised as to the soundtrack of the television or other form of entertainment. Some parents seem to fear silence and do their best to make certain that children are never without some form of sound.
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If children do not learn to focus and concentrate in a pool of quietness, their minds become fragmented and their temperaments irritable, their ability to absorb knowledge and sift it, grade it and evaluate it do not develop fully. Reading a book quietly, watching a raindrop slide slowly down a windowpane or a ladybird crawl up a leaf, trying to hear the sound of a cat breathing when it is asleep, asking strange questions, such as, "Where do all the colors go at night?" and speculating about the possible answers — all of these are best done in silence where the imagination can flourish and the intricate minutiae of the world around us can be examined with the greatest concentration.-Susan Hill