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Believing In Silence |
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written
by joeplumb / 10.24.2005 |
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| Silence and Belief |
1 of 1 |
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Assignment |
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Silence is a funny thing. There is the silence of a sunrise, the silence of the quite mind, and even the awkward silence after a rushed first kiss. Today I discovered a new type of silence, the silence of tranquility. Now I’ve been tranquil before, and it has been silent at the time, but this was different. This was a tranquility which rushes over you with waves of silence, as if pulling the mind down to the depths of consciousness. It was even stranger to me because it was confined to a place, and one I would never suspect.
This place of such calmness was not a babbling brook or a golden beach at sunset, but the cloister of Santi Quattro Coronati. The feeling poured into me as I walked in. Others noticed it too. The small rocks in the middle of the cloister had originally made a gentle clinking sound as patrons strolled over them. Then, somewhat unconsciously, they began to tread softer and softer, until receding entirely from the center, letting the soft silence dominate.
This was a contrast to the feel of many churches. Not long ago I visited San Clemente, which I took to be a typical Roman church: candles lit in memory on one side, just in front of a beautifully decorated chapel, of which the church had several, each complimenting the aesthetics of the other. But it was not a tranquil place, even for those resting their tired legs on creaky pews. It was a place of reverence, of beauty, but it wasn’t peaceful, despite the quite dove overhead.
The cloister of Santi Quattro Coronati doesn’t have a dove, but there’s never been a time I’ve been more at peace. I think its doors do more than keep the silence in, they keep out the world. Just as the nuns who tend to it do, it seems that this place takes a vow of silence. It vows to keep silent about the outside, with all the troubles and woes of humanity. Instead of San Clemente, which lets the world in to see the past, Santi Quattro Coronati keeps the world out to feel the past. It’s not really a visual experience as much as an experience of the soul. The cloister seems to strip a man of everything that has significance in the outside world and allows him to think, to dream, and finally, to sleep.
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