How silence conveys meaning.

    

South side of the abbey, the church and the monks' cells seen from Le Bec.

Bec Abbey  Abbaye Notre-Dame du Bec) in Le Bec Hellouin,^[Normandy, France, once the most influential abbeys in the Anglo-Norman kingdom of the twelfth century, is a Benedictine monastic foundation in the Euredépartement in the Bec valley midway between the cities of Rouen and Bernay.

Inisde the church at Bec Monastery I  kneel beside this  good woman, she is the one who makes me return here. Her belief is intact, she tolerates my constant quibbles of disbelief.

 

With affecting humility the monks bow to the small congregation before the haunting chant of the mass begins.. Interposed with chanting there are silences of a eerie intensity, forthese are not longeurs, where people shift embarassedly and cough nervously.  The silence is absolute. the memory of it will not be easily erased.   The experience of this silences as counterpoint to the chanting seems to invoke an almost cosmic significance.

I am not religious by the way, nor do I believe, brought up a  God fearing Catholic in Dublin, eventually
through a belief in science I disengaged from a belief in the metaphysical. One wonders why billions of others cannot do the same,ie appreciate what Religion has to offer as a performance.

 What I witnessed was the FORM of the performance, the bowing each time before the altar the dipping of hand in hold water the kissing of the cross, however beautiful and enriching it was to witness, I kept thinking there is a single mindedness to this belief that snuffs out like some candle any ambiguity.as it whole heartedly embraces the metaphysical. Wheras as I, in my current highly unevolved state wish to appreciate the aesthetics of this performance and in tandem deal with reality as best we can currently ascertain it by ever advancing science.

Appreciating beauty and engaging with scientific reality (that is alo replete with beauty) some might argue is having the best of both worlds..