Priscilla Shirer: Talk, don't text around dinner table.
Priscilla Shirer is extremely interested in her children being bored around the dinner table. You see, as a creative personality (author, speaker, etc.) who is also a mother, she’s had to think a lot about where one finds their creativity. However, she’s not only responsible for her own creative output, she also needs to foster creativity within her three boys as well.
It starts with boredom. See, Priscilla thinks that boredom is a necessary part of building the creative brain, that creativity and a healthy imagination spring from boredom. Boredom functions as a space for the brain to wander, and muse, and process.
One of the challenges the Shirer clan faces, however, is that there are immense amounts of external forces that work to eliminate any of that boredom, and nowhere is that more apparent than in the realm of technology. The Shirer family’s reaction is not to become anti-technology, after all, we live in a tech-connected world, so what is their preferred method for properly dealing with the influx of information and brain-numbing activities? How does a family utilize technology while still remaining creative and imaginative?
Enter the dinner table. The dinner table, for the Shirer family, is a cell-phone free zone, a space where a family can facilitate creativity, imagination, and closeness of family. As often as time allows, the Shirers cook dinner, and have everyone sit down at the dinner table, sans electronic devices, and has a conversation. The talking and engaging with one another is just as important as the fact that there are no distractions.
But the “bored dinner table” doesn’t just provide a space for creativity and closeness, it’s also a place where devotions can happen. Through talking, praying, listening, and worshipping at the dinner table, all sorts of marvelous benefits begin to appear: parents get to learn about their kids, kids get to know their parents, and the family draws closer together. And it is in this intentional space, the dinner table, that families (like the Shirers) echo the words of 1 John 3:18 by loving their family not only with words, but with actions and in truth.
The only question left now is...what’s for dinner?
INFO
