From the archive

Ad lib notes by Major Joy Webb (R)

IGUESS most of us have been following ‘The Questionnaire’ in Salvationist each week. Have you noticed something rather interesting – how many of those questioned have said that if they were not a Salvationist they would like to be a Quaker? Even the territorial music secretary said he would like to belong to something quieter.

Well, you will notice when you read mine that I too voted to be a Quaker. I guess that caused a laugh in some quarters!

I wonder what has driven us to this. Are we starved of silence in the Army? If so, why?

Surely there must be moments of contemplation that we share together regularly, or do we rely on our music for this? Certainly some of our music does engender the deepest silence in me.

Could the problem be the very nature of our buildings? They do have to serve the most practical of purposes and I love all the bustle that parent-and-toddler groups and the kids in the Sunday school provide. Let’s have more of that, I say. But I suppose the average Army hall is not the quietest of places as we assemble for the holiness meeting on Sunday morning.

Our world is full of noise. Yes noise, not merely sound. Police sirens, ambulances, motorbikes, pneumatic drills, pulsating bass sounds from passing car stereos – all contribute to what can only really be called noise.

Often in the midst of all this noise we miss the actual sounds of everyday life. The other Sunday morning I went out onto my balcony to throw some food down for the birds. Suddenly I stopped and listened.

On the still morning air I heard the stunning sound of a robin singing. I was transfixed. I live on a main arterial road and the background to my life is always the sound of traffic. I actually like it, sometimes it is almost comforting, but this small bird edged out that dull noise and filled my world with its bright, high-sounding song.

I often think we are unaware of the high noise levels to which we subject ourselves. I have a big bone to pick with the TV stations. One moment you are listening in comparative comfort to a programme, the next moment on come the ads and you are reaching for the remote control to turn down the level of sound. Have you noticed? Maybe we should start a society for the encouragement of constant decibel levels on TV. I would be a founder-member.

On a summer evening I sometimes stay on my balcony until long past midnight just looking at the stars, looking into the infinity that is space. Somehow my soul gains strength from looking infinity in the face.

I remember going to the south of France some years ago with friends and spending time in Pomyrol, a community of Protestant sisters near St Remy.

When we arrived we discovered our accommodation was in the House of Silence. It was quite an experience for us, getting used to reducing our noise level.

I often think with nostalgia about those calm, ordered days: eating our meals under the grapevine; the pleasant, homely food grown and prepared by the sisters; the Mother Superior taking us under her wing as though we were novices. It was rather as if time were suspended.

Is this, perhaps, what we need so desperately? The sense of the cessation of the onrush of time. Maybe this is what silence seems to allow us.

This is the feeling that surrounds me when I stand in front of The Virgin on the Rocks in the National Gallery. It is not just the absence of noise, it’s that in the silence I find a focus that has nothing to do with physical surroundings.

Underneath the great church of St Martin-in-the-Fields is a crypt. Most people know there is a restaurant there, and a book shop and a brass rubbing centre. But few people seem to explore the tiny prayer chapel that is dedicated to Dick Shepherd. I love to sit and meditate there.

Despite the constant coming and going of feet on the stairs outside, I always feel a deep and profound silence there.

I realise this is possible because of an intense focus within me, as I go there when I have some special need of grace, when I’m troubled or upset.

Could it be, then, that our longing for an expression of faith quieter than our own could really be a longing for time and space in which to experience that focused, inner silence that so many of us too rarely achieve in the hurly-burly of Salvation Army life?

If so, what does that say about the next generation of Salvationists who are growing up in meetings whose fairly hefty doses of praise choruses make many people unfamiliar with the more contemplative songs in our song book?

John Oxenham’s sublime hymn ‘Mid All the Traffic of the Ways’ [SASB 777] is surely a part of our Christian heritage we should pass on, confident that such a potent prayer will be at least as life-changing for them as it has been for some of us:

No Strings No Strings

The sound of silence

Come, occupy my silent place, And make thy dwelling there! More grace is wrought in quietness Than any is aware.

This article was first published in the 17 January 1998 issue of Salvationist. We reprint it today in celebration of Major Joy Webb’s 90th birthday.