A riot of sirens and horns blared as tourists look the wrong way amid a dozen double deck red buses. A plaintive girl sang sincerely of Jesus beneath the gaze of massive bronze lions. And behind the lions a highly microphoned deep voiced man repetively shouts alleluia; could be Hebrew or Arabic (528 Palestinian protesters were arrested here in April). I’m guessing he’s a Nigerian evangelist going for YouTube. Another day in Trafalgar Square.
It would easy to overlook one silent person. But a thousand silent people snaking through the chaos like a spiritual conga line? That’s hard to miss. Dressed in white except for the scatter of bright blue “Quakers for Peace,” they shouted nothing. Didn’t really have to say anything once you read “Quaker” (…”for peace” is like Baptists for Baptism). But the organizers had warned us to be silent only about peace; save our many affiliate enthusiasms for later; only Quaker and only Peace.
It is impossible to find a place for 1,000 silent people in London that is not over-arched by statues honoring somebody who killed strangers to extend an ever-sprawling empire of territories. We gathered for silent worship beneath the bronze gaze of the Queen’s perplexed Royal Engineer who died in Khartoum. His pedestal boasted that “right fears no might” which all Quakers (and the Taliban for that matter) would agree means the exact opposite of what he thought.
Walking with a thousand silent Quakers through the chaos of Trafalgar Square tunes one to the irony—even absurdity—about collective action of any kind. Why would we think that any protest could be heard by anyone who matters? Especially one without words.
The whole point of Quaker silence is so we can put two coherent thoughts together, then maybe a third. We hope for light, but not some mystical beam splitting the clouds—more like a flashlight so we can put one foot in front of another on a path to peace. You can walk a long way one flashlight beam at a time. Imagine a thousand of them!
A thousand Quakers asked for exactly that amid the din. We were, of course, silent amid a cacophony; almost—but not quite—overwhelmed by the Nigerian ompha ompha Jesus fellow. Given the ugly history of British slaving, cotton, sugar and oil theft, Nigerians should be free to say anything they choose in London.
But I think the actual Jesus would have been quiet, too.
A small island with a big history watches America make a “dog’s breakfast” of proper imperial power against tyrants such as Putin and Xi. The Brits subdued most of the planet, but what they have actually learned is humility. So they can hear the silence of Quakers who never give up asking about the things that make for shalom—the same things that made Jesus weep over Jerusalem, Tehran, Khartoum, London and Winston Salem.
You might say there is little evidence that silence “works.” But what else does? London is littered with statues testifying to the futility of violence, extraction and domination. All these proud “HighT” men as silly as our current pathetic Pentagon poof. A thousand failed empires in a row. Tutu was right; anything war can do, peace can do better.
What works is collective action that emerges from the humble-spirited silent question, “What is the next right thing we can do now?”
We ended our moving worship march behind St. Martin in the Fields church. People have gathered on this site to worship since 1222 hoping for a clue to God’s work. Most of those 293,553 days people did find a clue and it was always about healing and helping someone else. Many of us went in after our worship to see that from the inside where there is now an oddly beautiful window that replaced the one blown out in the second world war. In that most sacred of all places was a few tables about a ministry that focuses on homelessness.
That’s the clue.
Find some people with whom to shut up and stop thinking about yourself. Ask a question worthy of your breath and then go do something with your one and only life, per Mary Oliver.
It’s not hard for an American to find some things worth doing. Make sure you are properly registerd to vote with a literally bulletproof plan to get that vote counted. Vote early and in person. Dr. Barber is organizing a thousand marches to the polls, probably not in silence, so walk along and lend your courage to others. If you fail to vote, you wil not be able to look your grandchildren in the eye on your deathbed. Do it.
On the other side of the election you may need some more silence to figure out where to give your treasure and time. But don’t think too hard; it’s only a life after all. The whole point of it is to give it away to something that matters more than yourself.
The afternoon before the silent witness, Jim and I met with Craig Stewart, one of the Leading Causes of Life Fellows who, with his wife Liesl, try to live relationship-sized efforts to meet global scale challenges. He works for World Vision, responsible for helping 40,000 churches around the world do the same thing. She has quietly built a web of 60 farm-to-table cooperatives in Cape Town. And they figured out how to buy and operate a small apartment building to be available affordably for black and brown people with more to come. It happens.
It doesn’t really matter exactly what you do, since every good seed enables the other seeds to grow, too. Shalom isn’t the name of a magical beanstalk but the garden, watered with Jesus’ silent tears for shalom, so that our hearts might be tender enough to love what is still possible in this beautiful world.