The unusual power of silently remembering together

The collective silence of remembrance acts is unusual. Listen to its powerful lesson.

Christie Gilfeather

Christie Gilfeather writes about the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible and its relevance to culture. She has a PhD in Biblical Studies from the University of Cambridge and is a parish priest in Hertfordshire.

Princes and army officers walk away from a war memorial while others look on.

Then Prince Charles at the Cenotaph war memorial, 2017.

Number 10, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Every year on the 11th of November at 11am, people across the UK stop whatever they’re doing and keep a two minutes silence in honour of those who have died in war. This collective silence provides the opportunity to reflect on the loss of life and cost of peace. It gives us the chance to consider the conflicts raging around the world today.

Collective silence is an unusual thing in our culture. There are few, if any, other opportunities for silence which are as widespread as the tradition at the centre of Remembrance Day. Silence is, however, a powerful tool in relation to suffering and death. It acts as a reminder that in the face of some horrors, there is simply nothing to say. Presence becomes all that we have to offer, because words simply cannot capture the depth of the sadness to which we bear witness. And we must bear witness to them.

No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.

Remembrance Sunday is one part of the wider season of remembrance in the church. This season begins with the feast of All Soul’s, when the church gathers to remember by name those who have died.

A powerful tradition lies at the heart of All Soul’s services: the priest reads out a list of names of the dead. If you are grieving a loved one, it is a great relief to hear someone else say their name. Grief can be intensely lonely and easily forgotten by others. But the church promises not to forget, honouring the beloved memories of those missing from our communities on the feast of All Souls. In many churches, after the list of names is read a silence is held in which the congregation comes forward to light a candle in memory of their loved one. No words are said. People stand alongside each other and bear witness both to the grief and to the light of hope represented by the flickering candle.

The value of silence is easily lost in this world which prompts us to rush to speak about everything that is happening. The Bible, though, offers us examples of the power of times of silence and the wisdom that can emerge from them.

They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it.

At the beginning of the book of Job in the Old Testament, we find the protagonist in the midst of disaster. Job has lost everything, his home, his livestock, his family and his health. When Job’s friends hear about what has happened to him, they seek him out to be with him amid his suffering. The story tells us that

‘They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great’.
There are no platitudes here. No hastily put together explanation of why this might have happened or what Job needs to do about it. The friends saw that Job’s suffering was ‘very great’ and they allowed their presence to be enough. They did not speak, because this was not a place for words. They remained with him to bear witness to his suffering without trying to resolve it. In the story this silence eventually gives way to unhelpful words, but it is striking, nonetheless.

We find another example of silence during grief in the New Testament. John’s gospel recounts the death of a friend of Jesus. Lazarus becomes ill and quickly dies, and upon hearing the news Jesus makes haste to join Lazarus’ sisters and bear witness to their pain. There is some dialogue in the story, but the most striking part of it comes when Jesus reaches the grave of his friend. The shortest verse in the Bible is found here. It simply says,

‘Jesus wept’.

At this point, Jesus doesn’t say anything. He simply weeps, moved as he is by the death of his friends and the grief of those around him. Jesus weeps, even though he knows that before long Lazarus will rise from the dead.

But Jesus does not rush to the surprise and joy of resurrection. Jesus’ silence and his weeping is an example of what it means to grieve well alongside others when they are hurting. In what is perhaps one of the purest expressions of the human condition, Jesus responds to the weight of loss and the fragility of life in his silent bearing witness to the loss of his friend.

When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us.

Within the Christian tradition there are also many examples of protest and speech in response to injustice. Silence is vitally important, but at some point, it must give way to speech and action when questions about human dignity are at stake.

But in order to know how to engage in resistance to that which diminishes others, periods of silence are necessary. When we bear witness to the suffering of others without seeking to fill it with our own explanations or opinions, we honour the loss that is before us. That is at the heart of the national two-minute silence for Remembrance Day. In remembering those who have died in war, and considering the conflict that marks our world today, we bear witness to the fragility of the human condition. Out of silence, comes the resources to know how to speak with wisdom.

Explainer

Creed

Seven Deadly Sins

Sin

28 August 2023

7 min read

Sloth’s languid lack of passion

In the appropriately last in a series on the Seven Deadly Sins, Graham Tomlin looks at what’s lost to life when sloth sets in.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Sloth is the most perplexing of the seven deadly sins, and the one that is hardest to define. Most people would probably think first of laziness when they think of sloth. On the other hand, sloth is often related to the older Latin idea of ‘accidie’, which is sometimes translated ‘spiritual weariness’ or ‘despair’. But these two definitions indicate the problem we have with sloth. If it is just sheer laziness, it might be considered as a slight moral failing, but most of us would hardly classify a little idleness as one of the great threats to human life. Sleeping in just a little longer in the morning hardly promises to bring western civilisation to its knees. On the other hand, if it is defined as ‘despair’, that sounds very close to ‘depression’, and we know that depression is usually an illness that afflicts some people without their choosing – it is not a freely chosen pattern of life, an act of disobedience to God or anyone else. By this understanding, sloth hardly counts as a sin either. Sloth is either too trivial to worry about, or too involuntary to blame.

Clinical depression is an illness that can hit people for no apparent reason and for no fault of their own. The symptoms are similar, but it is important to distinguish depression from sloth. Depression can be caused by genetics, a traumatic event or the misuse of drugs. Sloth is not depression – it is another form of despair that starts with small things, a deliberately chosen shrug of the shoulders, a turning away from someone in need, a switching off of something in the heart. Sometimes it can be caused by disillusionment with life, but it sets in a pattern of allowing yourself to drift towards a languid ‘couldn’t be bothered’ approach that in time becomes a habit of life.

Once sloth, or spiritual weariness, gets hold of you, it is hard to shake off, and it can lead to disaster. Sloth is essentially a giving up on life, and it leads to finding no pleasure in it, a dull, steady torpor that expects nothing new, nothing exciting, nothing worth getting out of bed for. Dorothy Sayers wrote of sloth:

“It is not merely idleness of mind and laziness of body: it is that whole poisoning of the will which, beginning with indifference and an attitude of ‘I couldn’t care less’, extends to the deliberate refusal of joy and culminates in morbid introspection and despair.”

When we lose the passion for life, goodness, laughter and joy, then it may be a sign that sloth has fixed its grip on us.

Our culture is the most over-stimulated in history. Only a generation or two ago, children had to make do with a football, a doll, a game or two and a few friends. Then black-and-white computer ping-pong was born, closely followed by Space Invaders and we all thought the ultimate in entertainment had arrived. We were never to be bored again. Those games now look stone age. Yet with the arrival of unlimited information at the click of a mouse, games with graphics enabling you to fly the world, fight the Second World War and create your own civilisation, have we eradicated sloth or boredom? If anything we have increased it.

Peter Kreeft comments:

“how do we explain the irony that the very society which for the first time has conquered nature by technology and turned the world into a giant fun-and-games factory, a rich kids’ playroom, the very society which has the least reason to be bored, is the most bored?”

The problem is that however intricate the technology, however scintillating the entertainment, it soon gets superseded by something else. Hence, it’s hardly surprising when we turn our noses up at the triumphs of yesterday, as we have something better today, and when we even get disillusioned with today’s wonders, knowing they will soon be consigned to history as well.

But to dig a little deeper into the origins of sloth, Thomas Aquinas describes it as “sadness and abhorrence or boredom regarding a spiritual and divine good”. He refers to what happens when through numerous small choices and turning points, a person becomes incapable of being stimulated by anything good or beautiful or wise. Or worse, when goodness, beauty or wisdom evoke a response of disgust or a cynical smirk. When we lose the passion for life, goodness, laughter and joy, then it may be a sign that sloth has fixed its grip on us. It happens when there is nothing left, outside ourselves, to really believe in.

Looking at the other sins, we might be forgiven for thinking that they are a long list of restrictions, a denial of some of the fun things in life, a restriction on our pleasure-seeking, a dampener on passion. It is the inclusion of sloth on the list that gives the lie to this once and for all. Sloth is precisely a lack of passion, a settled laziness that for whatever reason fails to get worked up about poverty or cruelty or the threat to life on earth through climate emergency. It is a dullness that fails to wonder at green rolling hills, brooding mountains, an act of sheer unexpected kindness, the birth of a baby, Botticelli, Mozart or Taylor Swift (take your pick from the last three, or add more – beauty is naturally subject to taste). It is the spirit that reacts to cruelty, injustice and pain by shrugging the shoulders and switching the channel. Christianity encourages a passion for life and all that is good and beautiful. That is why it is fundamentally opposed to sloth, and puts it firmly on the list of habits to be shunned at all costs.

According to the Christian account of life, we are beings created with a capacity for immense joy, passion, wonder, inquisitiveness and emotion. The world was created as an arena for all this enchantment. It was made so that we might regularly sit back in amazement at the fact that we get to live this life, this physical/spiritual life on this planet that is our home, a place of sheer beauty, the majesty of a lion, the speed of a hummingbird, the taste of pure water. We were intended to take delight in such things, to explore them and enjoy them, yet most of all we were intended to delight in their Creator, the author of all this goodness, the one from whom they (and we) all come, the most beautiful and desirable one of all.

In his great autobiographical reflection entitled ‘Confessions’, St Augustine says of the human race: “they choose to look for happiness not in you, but in what you have created.” Now Augustine himself was never quite sure whether taking pleasure in created things was a good idea or not, however, he did at least make this one point supremely well: that our ultimate joy was to be found in God. The joy we find in sunsets, friends and apple tart are tasters, anticipations, to give us a taste for the very best, which is God himself. And conversely, when we lose our taste for God, we are likely sooner or later, to lose our taste for other good things, or even to develop a taste for things that are bad for us, like hallucinogenic drugs or the thrill of theft or even cruelty, that try to imitate the ecstasy of a close connection with God.

I remember my first taste of Guinness. The dark, swirling Irish drink had always had a fascination for me growing up, and I remember the first time I plucked up courage to look older than my age, and bought a can in the local store to give it a try. It was foul. I hated it – it tasted sour, bitter and unpleasant. It didn’t help that it was a hot summer’s day and the beer was warm, but that didn’t matter – it was the kind of experience that might have made me never touch the stuff again. It wasn’t until later on, a few years older, after a bit of perseverance that I began to appreciate the hidden flavours, the rich, full wheaty taste. I learnt that just because it didn’t taste like lemonade did not necessarily mean that it was bad. As I learnt to appreciate and enjoy it, Guinness soon became a favourite drink, something I would choose above all others.

If it doesn’t sound too irreverent, for many people it is a bit like that with God. The idea of enjoying God is about as appealing as that sip of Guinness was for me aged 16. Yet in time, we can learn to appreciate things that have a deeper richness, a more profound taste. Guinness is a trivial example, but the same can be true of God – an acquired taste can take a while to come, but when it comes, it is the richest of all.

The great past masters of the Christian way advise us that the surest way to combat sloth, the turning away from all that gives life, is to cultivate not just a zest for life, but an unlikely but deeply satisfying desire for the one who gave the gift of life in the first place.