How To Be An Agnostic
Religious silence might be said to be like the silence following
the performance of a great piece of music too. After the fi nal
notes of a Mahler symphony, Bach’s B minor mass, a Mozart
opera or other great music, there is, sometimes, a brief pause.
It is as if the audience and musicians hang together, indetermi-
nate, like quantum particles, between the universe portrayed in
the music and the world they normally inhabit. It is a moment
that cannot last; a moment that collapses with the fi rst ‘Bravo!’.
But it is one that can only be arrived at having been sated, even
exhausted, by the music that preceded it.
It is perhaps also like the silence that is the mark of certain
close friendships. It has been said that the measure of a good
friendship is not how much or how often the friends speak, but
how little the friendship demands they speak even though they
are together for much of the time. They say they are comfort-
able in the silence. If friendship can be summed up as the desire
to know someone and be known by them – as opposed, say, to
erotic love which is the desire to have and be had by someone –
then friendship will move towards a togetherness in silence as
the friends come to a kind of knowing that is beyond words.
Another positive evocation of such silence comes from reli-
gious life, not the churchgoing variety, but the community
variety of monks and nuns. At the end of every day, they say
or sing the offi ce of Compline, from the Latin completorium or
complete. Literally, that refers to the completion of the offi ces
for that day. However, each liturgical day also symbolically rep-
resents everything that can be said about God – in scripture, in
psalmody, in symbols in sacraments, in praise. So Compline also
marks the point at which the monk or nun must turn to silence.
This is literally the case too, since after Compline the so-called
Greater Silence begins – the silence through the dark hours of
the night. After the fi nal part of Compline – the Salve Regina,
the traditional Latin hymn before sleep – cowls are turned up,
lights are turned off, and the community leaves the church in
silence. From my experience of staying in religious houses for
retreats, it is the most powerful moment of the day. The silence