Many years ago I shared a long silent retreat, in the Ignatian tradition, with a group of twenty or so people I’d never met before or seen since. I remember many of them well, and with affection, though we never spoke to each other. In silence we were shaped into a little community by language other than the spoken word we more usually rely on.

Gentle, slow moving, silent gestures gave one to understand perfectly a request for salt and pepper, or bread, or one of the beautiful fluted white china coffee pots. A slight smile, wave or bowing of the head communicated pleasure, or prayer, or recognition, or thanksgiving or tiredness. Silence affords opportunities for shared recognition of cosmopolitan human individuality, preference, respect for others’ space.

This week we’ve kept company with many others with whom, once we’ve managed to pass the customary greetings in (more or less!) each other’s own language, everyone comes to rely on similar, non-verbal forms of communication. What fascinates me is the warmth that can be thereby conveyed. Nothing short of a quiet friendship has ensued between ourselves and a neighbour with whom the only spoken word we share in common is “snow”.

Daydreaming, I’ve been wondering how a (hypothetical) day’s silence, one day a week perhaps, might change the way we twenty-first century humans relate to one another – in continents and nations, in factories, government buildings, homes, hospitals, hotels, libraries, offices, places of learning or worship, public parks and transport?

Useful and uniquely human as they undoubtedly are, could it be that sometimes our verbal communications, the million and one things we say every day, just get in our way? What kind of world-uniting future might be shaped and formed in the (even very occasional) sound of a generously attentive and cosmopolitan silence?

The BBC reports today that British cinemas have declined to show an advert featuring the Lord’s Prayer, and that the Church of England (well, its director of communications, actually) is “bewildered and disappointed”, speaking of the decision as “plain silly” and likely to have a “chilling effect upon free speech”.

Now, I’m a lifelong Christian and an advocate of prayer but I wonder whether I’m alone in feeling neither disappointment nor bewilderment? There has never been a moment in my life when I’ve thought of prayer as advertising material. A form of address to God, yes. Forms of celebration, contemplation, intercession, lamentation, meditation, reflection and thanksgiving, yes. But didn’t Jesus of Nazareth have something to say about standing on street corners as though parading one’s piety?

Better a cinema “advert” that celebrated people of every race and nation, and of all creeds and none, living together in peace and harmony. This week of all weeks there’d be nothing disappointing, or bewildering, or plain silly, or chilling about that.

We usually have a little competition: who’ll be the first to spot the goats? Camouflaged well, the colour of the volcanic rocks and scrub they’re seeking sustenance amongst. Where will they find water? Hundreds of them, bleating quietly. They’ll never know the satisfaction of a square meal. 

And it’s brought home to me keenly that I’m pampered, for in days past and present I know it’s not only these goats that must nose and scrape amongst unforgiving rocks for the simple privilege of staying alive. What appear to me to be intolerably dangerous and inhospitable territories are just ordinary, everyday life for millions. 

I pray that present need to improve the security of the nations does not turn privileged human hearts and minds against the legitimate needs of those who hunger and thirst on oceans and amongst dust and rocks.