The Power of Silence
Life's lessons are taught in varied classrooms and by sundry teachers so vast in variety as to defy categorization. One might conjure an image of a mystic guru in lotus position sitting atop a Himalayan summit dispensing wisdom; while another pictures a favorite coach instructing in the fundamentals of a particular skill set; and still another might see Jesus bending the minds of His listeners as He delivered the Sermon on the Mount. Suffice it to say that there are nearly as many potential laboratories and teachers as there are lessons to learn!
One of the first and most memorable/influential lessons that I learned featured my parents in a team-teaching effort that was delivered in the confines of our family car, with two of my sisters and myself as the educatees. Though unannounced, the lesson of the day was "The Power of Silence" with my mother as the lead instructor on this occassion.
My dad loved sports. He was quite an athlete in his day, followed whatever game was in season, and passed those traits on to his seven children. Like I said, he loved them all, but baseball was something special for him. I can't tell you why, or that I ever recall him putting that in words, but it was apparent to me, at least, that baseball was special. He relished a game of catch where he could bedevil you with his unorthodox submarine delivery and "burn leather" with his still potent "stuff".
About once a month, the family (however many were around at the time) would make the 80-mile drive to visit my grandmother and spend part of a day with her. At one time, the family car seated nine, but by this time the crowd had dwindled to five, as I recall. My dad, mom, and I in the front seat and two sisters in the back. Having had made one such visit, as the day waned, we headed out of the small town where Grandma lived.
Leaving Lincoln that night, the lights at the city ballpark announced a game and beckoned any apple-pie American guy to come out to the old ballgame...and my dad answered, "YES!" Discretion being the better part of valor (though admittedly not one of my father's stronger points), he proffered a magnanimous, "Hey, let's just stop and see how the game's going!" His enthusiastic invitation was met with the one word cutoff, a barely audible, but no less definite, motherly reply, "NO!" Ah, but dad was persistent and this was a baseball game, so he cajoled, "Ah come on! The kids will love it and we'll only stay a little bit, I promise." Again, "No!" the one-word reply. Two down now...no runs, no hits, a couple of errors , but the Mighty Casey had not laid down his bat!
As we drew almost even with the park, Casey (er, Dad) gave one last wild swing at convincing mom, but alas(strike three and a beauty!), mom countered with uncharacteristically verbose, "No! We need to get home!" That's all she wrote! That's the old ballgame folks! We were headed home. No ifs, ands, or...but wait, not so fast now! Dad must have missed the signal because he turned into the parking lot and it seemed we would be stopping after all (or was that in spite of all?). Whichever! I remember thinking, even at the tender age of ten that that was a pretty bold move that old dad had made in that moment of who wears the pants! (Only time and experience would later introduce "foolhardy" into my burgeoning vocabulary.)
So we're rolling to a stop and the atmosphere has become very heavy...there's definitely tension in the air...it seems we are teetering on the precipice of something significant, but no one can be sure how it's going to fall. The consensus hovers that it probably won't be pretty, we're just not sure of how it will come down. Still, I'm thinking, if we could just get out of the car and into some little lighter air, maybe the storm would pass; the mood could shift; and bloodshed might be avoided! And what I'm thinking, I'm guessing dad is fervently praying at that very same moment.
All of that to bring us back to life's lessons and teachers. A good teacher will often use visual aids to grab a student's attention or bring a point home. Skillfully weaving ideas, characters, and facts together in a intricate tapestry of learning, she draws the young mind into her work of educational art. Years of experience allow her to spontaneously incorporate even outside events and stimuli into the fabric of her work.
Our old car, so heavy laden with drama and negative vibes, had not yet arrived at a full stop when the aforementioned outside events and stimuli presented a spherical visual aid of the foul ball variety and literally deposited it right in front of our lead teacher's face. What a cosmic convergence of educational opportunity it was. And even as the innumerable fingers of broken safety glass spiderwebbed out from that wayward baseball, my mother, ever the ready teacher, seized that moment of truth and delivered the point of the lesson. She did not orate; she did not pontficate; in fact, she never said a word! No, she just slowly turned toward my dad and gave him a very meaningful look! Nothing more. The sheer economy of that movement in tandem with the utter clarity of her message came together in perfect synergy in that moment of educational nirvana.
We didn't stay for the game that night. In fact the car never did come to a stop. We were gone almost before we had even arrived. And it was a very quiet ride home. No one talked. I don't even remember the radio being played. The only sound I recall was the monotonous droning of tires against the pavement. I don't know for sure what anyone else thought about that night, but I pondered the Power of Silence. I wondered at how my mother had taught and brought home such a powerful lesson without the aid of even one word. Now, some fifty years later, that lesson remains.
GRIZ
GRIZ
