Switch off

This is the silence of the failure to speak out; and the silence of not knowing how to describe the sight of a baby’s dummy in the piles of belongings taken from the dead. The Chief Rabbi went further. ‘Walking through certain parts of Europe,’ he told us, ‘I hear ghosts...A whole murdered generation in a quite small space of time.’

The silence was palpable, resonant with feeling.

Back in the fastness of his palace on the Thames in the heart of London, the wail of a police siren broke into the Archbishop’s meditation. ‘Unless we’re prepared to be silent, to put aside some of our surface emotions,’ he pondered, ‘we’ll never really notice and respond truthfully to the whole of the world, to the suffering but also to the beauty and the harmony.’

I just wish the producer had given us the chance to practise this, by giving us five minutes of silence at the end of the programme. What a powerful message that could have been.

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JohnAnt

March 1st, 2009 12:31am Report this comment

After two minutes of silence on Radio 4, automatic tapes are activated playing 'Sailing by', telling the populace to look out of the window and see if world war has broken out, and trailing a programme about the slump of 1929 seen from an islamic perspective.

Ice Ko

March 4th, 2009 7:09am Report this comment

Obama understands the importance of silence, of not talking? You obviously haven't been listening. The fellow's a politically verbose Muzakman, empty, smug and irritating. Go on. Tune in, turn off, and spew up. 'Nuff said.

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