This I believe

You may or may not have heard of the new phenomenon known as This I Believe, but it has been around for quite a long time. It began in the 1950s with Edward R. Murrow, the famous news anchor for CBS who helped bring down Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare of the 40s and 50s. Murrow created the This I Believe broadcast in order "to point to the common meeting grounds of beliefs, which is the essence of brotherhood and the floor of our civilization." You can read more about the history of the broadcast at NPRs website here.

For the internship I was involved with last year at Mercer Creek Church, Ellensburg, Ken challenged us to write a This I Believe once a quarter. The goal of the challenge is to get normal, everyday people "to write about the core beliefs that guide [their] daily life." For instructions on how to write one yourself go here.

Here, now, is my favorite of mine. Hope you enjoy it.

Speak Only When Spoken to

Daryl Schie

I believe that silence is golden. When I was a little kid, my grandparents would tell stories. I loved their stories. They'd talk about how when they were kids they could only take a bath a week, about what it was like being a real-life cowboy, how they'd known the people who started Fred Meyer, and of course, the prom date where my grandpa made my grandma push the car so he could pop the clutch. They had known each other nearly their entire lives so they had some very interesting stories.

My grandparents had this rule for their kids, a rule that, my mom, when she was younger, obeyed to the T. The rule was this: Kids are meant to be seen, not heard. My mother would sit in the living room with the adults for hours listening to their conversations. That was the only reason she was aloud to be there, she never talked.

I inherited this trait from my mother and I think it has been one of the greatest things she has given me, as well as an awkward curse. But I love listening to people's stories. I get to hear about people's experiences in the armed forces, that they helped make 100,000 Easter eggs, about somebody's crazy happenings in North Bend or that one of their star students had just died to cancer. It is one of the best gifts that a person can give someone else I think: their time, just to sit and listen to what they have to say.

When I was in high school I was standing in the counseling office waiting to talk to an advisor about which college to choose and how I could get into it, and I read a little poem framed on the wall about listening. I don't fully remember the poem in its entirety, but the gist of it was that sometimes people just need to let things out, to be heard, and that that was why praying was so important.

What if that's all that God wants? Just someone who will hear what he has to say. Some people who would love nothing more than to just sit with him in silence and let him share his stories. I think that he would like that. That is why I believe that silence is golden.