A Time To Sing... and a Time To Be Quiet...

My earliest memories involve music. Before rock music was invented, I rocked and sang. (I'm really smiling to think about it.) When I was three years old and we lived in the shot-gun house on Mill Street in Kosciusko, Mississippi, we didn't have a rocking chair. I used to sit on the end of our couch with my little arm up on the arm rest, rock back and forth (hard!) on the couch and sing to the top of my lungs' capacity... I remember the rather pleasant feeling of the texture of the couch arm against my skin. Rocking on the couch was probably my most vigorous exercise in those days.

As I mentioned in the previous post about the Good Old Book, I sang in church, too. In those days they didn't have "Children's Church" or "Children's Ministries" in a separate place. Music was my favorite part of church. When the preacher preached, it was usually hard and loud and long, too long to keep my attention. I remember enjoying the music, but getting very restless for the rest of it. Mama would be up at the front playing the piano for the "congregational singing" with Jim on the piano bench beside her. Sometimes she would return near the end of the preaching, to play the piano again for "altar call," when people would be invited to come to the altar to be saved, sanctified, and filled with the Holy Ghost.

By that time I would be getting pretty restless, for altar call music was not the hand-clapping, foot-stomping country gospel that prevailed at the beginning of the church service. I wanted to talk to people or get out of our area and play. Aunt Berl's job was to keep me from disturbing nearby adults who might be considering going down there to the altar to pray. I remember once she picked me up, turned me around, sat me down in her lap facing her. I started to cry, and she "thumped" my lips, her face inches from mine, barely whispering, "Don't you cry, girl. Don't you cry."

I thought Aunt Berl was really mean that night. When I became an adult and had children of my own (in the '70's and '80's), I thought it was a great idea to have children's ministries in a separate place, since children could learn about the Lord noisily. On the other hand, looking back now from a grandparent's perspective, I believe children in my generation learned there was a time to sing and laugh and talk... and a time to be quiet. If you couldn't be quiet without going to sleep, so be it. Fold a quilt on the floor for a pallet, and have a nap during the sermon.

When I grew up, though, all the way to seventh grade, along came... Elvis. But that is another story...