It has always struck me as somewhat ironic that what we do when we construct a building is to put walls around what is not there, to put a roof over empty space. Of course, that's more or less what happened in the beginning, at least according to the book of Genesis. Before the heavens and the earth were created, there was present in the universe a formless void. To say that a formless void was present in the beginning may seem like another way of saying that in the beginning there was nothing. But a formless void is not necessarily nothing. A formless void is the presence of something that may feels like an emptiness, but it's an emptiness with a trajectory. It's an open space that awaits filling, a longing that awaits satisfaction. In the beginning, the universe was filled only with the potential of all that that it might become.
That is the way of beginnings: an emptiness with a purpose, an open space with a creation in view-a creation that begins by giving shape to the formless void. In other words, we take the formless void and give it shape. But, even when the void has a shape, the shape of this Sanctuary for example, it is nonetheless mostly walls and a roof around what is not here. What you and I call the Sanctuary is a void, an open space. But it is an open space with a difference. This open space has not been filled with apartments for people to live in or boxes for keeping our stuff. This is not a roadway for buses or a subway for trains or a storage tank for wheat or water. Wind is absent from this place, and rain and snow and cold are absent too. This is a sanctuary: a place that is sanctus-that's the Latin for holy. What makes this place holy is in part what is not here. The absence of the noise and bustle of everyday life takes us back to the very beginning, as it were, to an empty place where the spirit of God can begin to move.
But it's also the shape of the open space that matters, the texture at the boundary of what is not here. And what we discover when we look there is how carefully this holy space is marked off, how thoughtfully the vessel was crafted which bears the sacred void. The cornerstone of this building was laid in 1931: the Twenties had finished roaring, the market had crashed, and the long slump into what would become the Great Depression had begun. But then as now, people gathered here who needed a place in their lives that was empty of certain things-devoid of projects that needed finishing, and clothes that needed cleaning, and furniture that needed buying, and work that needed doing, and deals that needed making, and letters that needed writing, and bills that needed paying. They needed a space empty enough for the spirit of god to be able to move and big enough for hopes and dreams to be able to get free. They needed a sanctuary, a holy place.
And so they built All Souls. This is a building whose architectural style is mostly rooted in the classical design principles of ancient Rome, as developed in this country during the period from about 1700 to the start of the Revolutionary War. It coincided with the reigns of Kings George I, II, and III-hence the designation "Georgian style." Formal and dignified, with its steady symmetry and balanced proportions, this sanctuary bounds what is not here with reassuring calm. When I walk into this space on a Sunday morning, what I mostly feel is the presence here of a nurturing open space. I don't know exactly how that happens, architecturally speaking. Does marking the boundaries of the emptiness with fanlight windows and Doric columns and globe finials and raking cornices make the difference? The choices made by the architect matter profoundly, of course; you and I respond in different ways to different spaces depending on the care and imagination with which the space is bounded. But what we see at the edges of the open space are only part of the story.
It is also quiet in this place, relatively speaking. It probably seems more silent in here than it actually is. But silence is an increasingly rare-and increasingly precious-commodity in our world. The world may not be getting noisier, but it does seem that noise is more pervasive, what with pagers and beepers and cell phones and compact disk players that work in the shower and computers that speak and elevators that talk and cars that tell you when the door is ajar and white noise machines that mask traffic sounds. Our ability to propagate the sounds of civilization have become sophisticated and ubiquitous enough to ensure that none of us ever needs to be left in silence, without the distracting clangor of the world.
There is, of course, a place for noise in our lives. There is a place for roaring with laughter and crying out in pain, for shouting at a baseball game and talking with our friends, for singing hymns and saying prayers, for orchestras and applause. But, as Pico Iyer wrote several years ago in an essay in Time magazine, "if noise is the signature tune of the world, silence is the music of the other world, the closest thing we know to the harmony of the spheres." He goes on to say that it is no coincidence that places of worship are places of silence, where we can listen to something behind the clamor of the world. Silence is the tribute we pay to holiness; we slip off words when we enter a sacred space, just as we slip off shoes.
In our reading for the morning, God told the prophet Elijah:
"Go out and stand on the mountain, for the Spirit of God is about to pass by." Then there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rock in pieces, but God was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but God was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.
At its best, the sound of sheer silence is a harbinger of holiness, an open space filled with the presence of longing, of anticipation. Pico Iyer puts it this way: "Silence is something more than just a pause; it is that enchanted place where space is cleared and time is stayed and the horizon itself expands. In silence, we often say, we can hear ourselves think; but what is truer to say is that in silence we can hear ourselves not think, and so sink into a place far deeper than mere thought allows. Silence, then, could be said to be the ultimate province of trust: it is the place where we trust ourselves to be alone; where we trust others to understand the things we do not say; where we trust a higher harmony to assert itself."
The point is not that you and I should get ourselves to a cave in Tibet and take a vow of silence, although I do think turning off the cell phone and surrounding ourselves with some empty space is a good idea now and then. But the point is to recognize the value of living our lives with what Thoreau called wide margins-living our lives amply surrounded by those empty places and silent spaces in which the spirit moves in us and among us. Perhaps the simplest way of describing what I mean is by using a musical metaphor. Claude Debussy once remarked that music is the stuff between the notes. He seemed to be saying that almost anyone can eventually get the notes right, more or less. The notes only become music, however, when you also get the silences right on either side. The margins matter: the silence and the open space are what gives meaning to everything else.
In the May 1999 issue of Harper's magazine, Mark Slouka ("Listening for Silence") relates the story of Thomas Edison, who was left partially deaf by a childhood inflammation of the mastoid bones in his ear. His biographers agree that Edison throughout his life embraced the world of silence, reveled in its space, and allowed it to give him strength. Perhaps as much as anyone ever has, Edison recognized silence as the territory of inspiration. His deafness was like an auditory veil, separating him from the distractions of the world, allowing him to focus on what he called his business: thinking.
As Slouka notes, there is an obvious irony here, that a man so indebted to silence should do more than any other to fill the world with noise. Even so, in June 1911, hard at work on what would eventually become the disk phonograph, Edison hired a pianist to play for him as loudly as possible the world's entire repertoire of waltzes. And there, in the drawing room of his home, out of sudden desperation for the thing he had missed, the sixty-four-year old Edison got down on his hands and knees and bit into the piano's wood, the better to hear its vibrations.
The music was so compelling when it came to Edison because the margins of silence in his life were so wide. That's the point. The spirit can move only into open spaces that await filling, into a longing that awaits satisfaction. Without silence, there can be no music. Without empty places, we have no room to be filled with good things. Our task is to live with wide margins, amply surrounded by empty places and silent spaces. What does that mean for you and me, in practical terms? That's mostly your call, of course, but I do have a few suggestions that might point you in the right direction.
Most e-mail software, for example, can be programmed to reply automatically to incoming messages with something like the following: "I'm out of the office until Monday. I'll read your message then and get back to you as soon as I can." The upshot is that you do not have to take your laptop with you everywhere you go. Answering machines work much the same way. "Hi, this is Galen. I'm out of contact today and tomorrow. Please leave a message, and I'll call you on Thursday." Trust me, this works. The world will not end if you are out of touch for a day or two, and people will still like you on Thursday. They may even like you more on Thursday than they did on Tuesday. After all, in business as in life generally, value is almost always a function of scarcity.
And how about designating some time each day as quiet time for reading or meditating or talking with your friends and family: no television, no radio, no homework, no telephone calls? Just some margins for things that matter. Seven forty-five until eight thirty each morning, for example, or seven o'clock until eight o'clock each evening. We find time each day to attend to things that are urgent. Why not clear some space for the things that are important? It happens all the time at the office; that's why someone invented the "edit appointment" function in Claris Organizer. Who knows, if you and I create wide margins in our day and week, we might even find the time and energy to make the kind of difference that will endure.
In a world that is bombarded with noise and filled with stuff, there are no easy answers, of course. It's hard to find the empty places and the silent spaces where the spirit of life and love can get at us. But without silence, there can be no music. Without empty places, we have no room to be filled with good things. Copyright AllSouls 1999.