The Reverend Dr. Larry Williams is our Rector.
The Sounds of Silence … I am a member of the 1st wave of the Baby-Boomer generation. I recently sat down with my I-Pod and enjoyed Simon and Garfunkel’s “Greatest Hits.”
While listening to The Sounds of Silence, I was temporarily overwhelmed by the noise of my/our world –- Sporadic ringing of one’s phone from 6-7:30 p.m. with calls from solicitors,
- My wife and I stop picking those up long ago, but the rings still ring;
- The sound of my teen-age (and rock n’roll band member) son’s surround-a-sound system upstairs;
- The daily sounds of honking horns from drivers too impatient to; understand patience as others sit at traffic lights;
- AOL and other IP’s announcing, “You’ve got mail!”
- The countless, propaganda-like messages that come in more ways
than one can imagine by way of cable and dish satellite television,
The affluence and power of my generation celebrates the noise we enjoy; and yet, paradoxically we desire a return to silence. Whether or not we desire a return to silence in order to commune with the Almighty is up to each of us to decide. But something tells me that Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel had something else in mind, not the silence that comes from being alone with God, but rather the silence of social activism.
We live in a day and time, when the FCC will slap tremendous fines on a major television network for deliberate acts of indiscretion permitted during Super Bowl half-time entertainment; and yet, we don’t even blush when one of our impressionable sons or daughters walks through our den or great room only to overhear a commercial in suggestive ways describe the need for and benefits from drugs for ED. The reader will have to look that one up. How many of us would be willing to take to the street to object to such a solicitation. Probably no one!When was the last time that countless millions of Americans were willing to take to the streets to protest anything? We complain time and again about the soaring costs of modern health care. On the one hand, it is a Catch-22 situation, because how can one protest when we know just how far health care has come since 1950, but on the other hand, it is so-o-o-o- expensive. In our silent time with the Almighty, could it be that God is inviting us to become active in the world?
