Sep 13.97: Light For The Day - "For The Chatterbox Kid"

"...... a time to be silent and a time to speak"
- Ecclesiastes 3:7b

"For the Chatterbox"

Father,
one day, several years ago,
this child said his first word,
and so far the novelty hasn't worn off.
He's not a bad kid, Father.
He's not even all that noisy.
He's just so incessant
chattering away to anyone and everyone
and on and on and on and on.
I've moved his seat so many times,
his desk should be on casters,
In desperation,
I banished him to the far corner of the room,
where he struck up a conversation
with the gerbils.

Father, I pray for peace and quiet.
No, not just for my sake,
but for his sake, too.
For there is a time to speak,
but there is also
a time to listen,
a time to reflect,
a time just to be
still.

So, Father, I don't ask that you take away
his gift of the gab.
But rather I ask
that you quiet him with your love
and let him receive, sometimes,
the gift of silence.

- E.C. Murphy

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"Train up a child in the way he should go,
and when he is old he will not depart from it."
- Proverb 22:6 (RSV) 
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Teaching is not a lost art,
but the regard for it is a lost of good tradition.
- Jacques Barzun

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