Ce qui se Trouve Derrière le Silence

It is a scene encountered a hundred times in Asia, of a woman sitting on her haunches on the floor, feet spayed out sideways to the left, her body contours hidden by flowing cloth.  She is sitting directly before the idols lined up on the other side of the room, sitting in complete stillness, the perfect manifestation of the message written on the sign on the door, a single word: Silence.  
 
The woman looks a part of this room, as if she has grown out of this stone which was laid here 900 years before.  The chairs that flank her were a later addition of course, as was the custom of sitting in them.  And the idol that those chairs face is far from the crowded riot of colors found in the bustling temples of Asia. Rather, it is a single simple figure of Christ on the cross, carved from a single piece of wood and of very subdued colors, a Christ gaunt and be-ribbed.

The angularity of the Christ matches that of the trees of the hills outside.  The woman at prayer would have passed thousands of them on her way here, a journey of some effort, along a road that sinuated its way through the oak and chestnut of the Maures, a road that clung miraculously to the hillsides, a road transformed with the coming of feet, of hoof, of tire.  After that long winding almost metaphoric road, this woman would have had to undertake the final part of her journey alone, on foot, over the dust of sunburned trail.  And finally, the silence would welcome her, as would the cool.     

We leave her be and step outside into the light.  The paths are lined with lavender bushes humming with the throb of bees, and every step brings us deeper into their scent.  More arched doorways await at their end, leading us into another stone chamber, then another, and another.  Chartreuse de la Verne is a labyrinth, with all passages leading eventually to the chapel.  It is the largest chamber of all, bare but for simple wooden pews, a container built for silence. For silence is the real work here, not the baking of bread, nor the grinding of olives for oil, nor the chanting of female voices high sweet.  In the beginning may have been the Word, but words have all but transcended this place.       

Some words do remain of course, as this is an abbey founded on the law of God.  But as I walk around I feel that that law is a mutually agreed upon vision of a shared existence, one based on faith rather than externally-imposed precepts.  Faith can take many forms, and like snowflakes, each is unique and personal.  I lie the idea of that.  And though I am far from the Catholicism of my childhood, I feel that faith resonate within, in the form of silence.  And despite the cliché, silence doesn't fill; it empties.


On the turntable:  (---------)