Where silence is truly golden

A conference or a church is a place where one needs to be at their most attentive. Unfortunately, there are those who will not allow you this pleasure. Fine, a speaker might be boring once in a while, but this is not an excuse for one to disrupt him or her. Others will do this by booing while other will openly engage in their own conversations thereby disrupting other listeners. Churches are most notorious for these kinds of disturbances. The day’s preacher might be the most charismatic ever, but this is not a reason for some members of the congregation to disrupt others. During the sermon you will hear them shout, “Amen, pastor”, “Preach it brother, oh yes”, “Glory to God” and then they will stand and clap. “Oh yes, glory halleluiah,” they will shout so loudly that they will distract others from listening to the sermon. It is good as a sign of appreciating the preacher, but when it hinders others from listening to the sermon it becomes a vice. Fine, the preacher might have mentioned something that really touched the individual, but this is not a license to disturb others. Such people will scream their heads off during prayers to the extent that their neighbours cannot even hear themselves pray leave alone hear God. Others at, say, a conference will be so busy poking holes in the speaker’s presentation they will learn nothing. “Did you hear the way he pronounced that word?” someone will ask those seated next to him. Or ‘What did he say?’ This is an inconvenience to someone who wants to follow the speaker and to the speaker as well as he will get distracted from what he is saying once he sees people not paying attention to him. If in a way you happen to lag behind from a speech, you don’t have to panic, just continue following and eventually you will catch up. And if a speaker happens to have a funny pronunciation of words it is always advisable to try to concentrate on what the speaker is saying so as to avoid distracting the audience or making the speaker feel uneasy. When someone attends a church service or a conference session, he or she is interested in what the speaker on the floor is saying and the setting of these places should be truly silent in order to avoid distractions. Otherwise the person would be somewhere else. dedantos2002@yahoo.com