大象传媒

Even before the Archbishop of York stood up to give his Presidential Address to Church of England鈥檚 General Synod a vote was called by those who didn鈥檛 want him to speak at all. A fifth of Synod voted for him to stay silent. It was slightly ironic, therefore, that when he did eventually stand up to speak, the first thing he did was to call for a period of silence. Churches do love silence.

Silence is such complicated stuff, an anathema on the radio, of course. The urban myth is that more than a few seconds of the stuff on this programme and a nuclear submarine commander somewhere is twitching his finger over a big red button. But in the church, silence is so often the default option. Silence as holy, silence as wise, silence as thoughtful and remorseful. 鈥淪ilence is God鈥檚 first language鈥� wrote St John of the Cross.

But silence can also be deeply manipulative. On Channel 4 news last week a survivor of clerical abuse finally felt able to speak up after years of having felt pressured into silence. And then there is the kind of evasive silence about, for example, clerical homosexuality that was so prevalent in the church that I was ordained into. They called it 鈥渄on鈥檛 ask, don鈥檛 tell鈥�.

There is good silence and bad silence. So what鈥檚 the difference?

In a sense, knowing the difference is extremely easy. Spend some time on the sofa with the person that you love and words are unnecessary. You don鈥檛 need to say anything. Then sit next to someone who really irritates you and the same silence is profoundly uncomfortable.

There is the tearful silence of the bereaved or the guilty silence of someone standing in the dock unable or unwilling to account for their actions.

In church, you might sing the hymn 鈥淭ell out my soul the greatness of the Lord鈥� or you might sing 鈥淟et all mortal flesh keep silence鈥�.

I suppose I鈥檓 more suspicious of silence than many others in the church. But notwithstanding my reservations, there is something about silence that is always worth attending to. When you make a radio programme you invariably record what is called 鈥渨ild track鈥�, that is, you record the atmosphere of a venue which varies considerably from place to place. And even when you think it鈥檚 silent 鈥� it never is - not totally 鈥� there鈥檚 always some background ambience. But it鈥檚 there, pervasive, it shapes things - and often un-noticed. And the reason silence might be God鈥檚 first language is that God, for me, is the wild track of our lives. Being a highly suspicious so and so, I will always resist the potential manipulations of silence and being silenced. But Pascal had a point: 鈥渁ll of man鈥檚 misfortunes come from one thing: not knowing how to sit quietly in a room.鈥�

Show less