SIMPLICITY & SILENCE:

Won't You Be My Neighbor?: At the center of Mister Rogers' cheery songs and smiles lies a God-ordained mission to children. (Wendy Murray Zoba, 3/18/00, Christianity Today)

Mister Rogers says that those in television "are chosen to be servants to help meet deeper needs." Life isn't cheap, he says. "It is the greatest mystery and we all only have one life to live on earth. Through television we can demean or cherish it.

"Life is deep and simple, and what our society gives us is shallow and complicated," he says. At its worst television can be "degrading, reducing important human feelings to the status of caricature or trivia," and even "encouraging pathology," he says.

"Television started out by attempting to bring cultural riches to its viewers, like NBC's Opera Theater. But that was before there were millions and millions of viewers. Then it became a tool for selling. I wish I knew how we could better point to all the riches of our society and how the media—television, radio, computers, magazines—could take an assignment to do our best to make goodness attractive. We're so caught up in glorifying the opposite. It is so unfair for parents to have to be so vigilant. They have so much that they have to do besides being police people."

But Mister Rogers still believes that human beings are God's vessels of mystery and beauty and he refuses to give up hope. "I have seen in my life too many indications of what is wonderful about human beings. I think the accuser would have us be so despairing that we wouldn't do anything. You know the effect of one little candlelight in great darkness. That sounds simple, but it's true.

"The older I get the more impressed I am with simplicity and silence," he says. "I do believe that that's where we can be inspired. Whenever I give a speech now I give a minute of silence for people to think about all those who have helped them to become who they are. Invariably, that's what people will remember—that silence.

"That leads me to a fishing-pole story.

"There was a conference on children and television at the White House, the East Room. The Clintons and the Gores were there. We all sat at this huge rectangular table. Different people were asked to present short thoughts. I guess mine was about seven or eight minutes. But for one of those minutes I gave a minute of silence. And when I was going out of the room I heard this voice say, 'Thank you, Mister Rogers.' I turned. It was one of the military guards, dressed in white and gold.

"I said, 'For what?'

"He said, 'For that silence.'

"I said, 'Who did you think about?'

"He said, 'I hadn't thought about him in a long time, but I thought about my grandfather's brother who, just before he died, took me to his basement and gave me his fishing pole. I've loved fishing all my life and that silence reminded me of that today.'

"The words thank you are probably the greatest words in any language."

Thank You, Mr. Rogers. Posted by Orrin Judd at February 27, 2003 1:25 PM