There is nothing so much about God as silence - Meister Eckhardt, a thirteenth century German mystic.
To avoid using the quotidian as a measure of how the interior of a Quiet Room should be furnished its important to re-state the case or criteria for its existence on a busy railway station where staff of a plethora of concerns, passengers and visitors, and local people intermingle, and how such a room can be used by everyone so extending the Station buildings appeal on a universal basis as community. In other words, in addition, how and why a Quiet Room can help to make this environment a better place to be overall.
So what is the reasoning behind creating a Quiet Room, what is its value, and why should visitors to it want to pass away time in silence? To begin with, we are not in the process of establishing a Chapel where services are held. There would be no point in replicating what local churches do so well, a dozen of them no more than three minutes walk away once you leave the confines of the Station, and whose co-operation and goodwill is essential for a project that may well involve their own loyal members. We do not have a room large enough for services but adequate enough to allow a few people gain access for private meditation and stillness, where the outside busyness is hushed, thoughts recollected, anxiety eased, in an atmosphere conducive to such feelings and emotions. The majority of institutions that have aims of evoking wellbeing in their staff and residents, prisons, colleges, hospitals, have rooms set aside to influence peace and calm, sanctuaries where people can go to achieve wholeness in broken or fragmented situations, or just to be. After all, we are human beings not human doings.
This Station is no different in that respect as I discovered last year when I flagged up the views of practically the whole Station on the feasibility of a Quiet Room that people can use for short periods, that can have an interior with the highest of standards thus reflecting the beauty and grandeur of the interior of this Gothic Revival building, and that interior communicating something special, wholly different from the rooms where we spend our waking hours, whether it’s our homes, our offices or the neighbourhood streets. That it should also appeal to people of all the major world faiths, to searchers of a spirituality that speaks of alternative, more meaningful values than we find on the Station, to people who do not belong yet desire somewhere to find themselves or their true selves, is a given but also needs to be emphasised. All these categories of where people are today is to be affirmed in a room that is silent; regardless of our backgrounds and culture, it is part of the daily search of who we are. This silent space owns the sacred, where there is not a void or any sense of suffering but as a means to discover a healing silence for the renewal of the human soul, where joy and beauty can be found, for better ways of loving and realising deep wells of compassion, and fulfilling ourselves in human relationships in the binding up of a fragmented community in reconciliation.
So we have drawn out the reason for a Quiet Room, why it’s important and vital for the wellbeing of the Station environment. In fact, the Quiet room provision will allow the Station to work better. However there are components necessary for its proper composition. The shape of the room is determined by the availability on the Station which is limited but is big enough to admit two or three people for what is essentially a private space. The location is ideal, situated in a quieter part on the upper concourse where people meet, dine and admire artistic sculptures such as the Betjeman statue. The other important elements are what we should focus our attention on, what the impact is on the person as she enters for the first time, and how a richer understanding can be gained by returning to the room repeatedly, a matter dependent on its aesthetical value, how it resounds via its symbolic resonance. We can respond to the last three issues by giving a brief description of the proposed interior designated for the room.
The students from St Martin’s, Holborn who responded positively and enthusiastically to the challenge of designing an interior for the Quiet Room were fed with as much information on Gothic Revival themes – light and darkness, loftiness and the arch- to illustrate their ideas of what should be an agreed premise to base their work on. The Revival movement rejoiced in the virtue of God’s creation as a moral force for goodness so it is no accident then that their decision turned out to be the natural environment which happens to a source of enjoyment and healing in catholic terms, where all faiths and none meet. Also, as we are constantly reminded, environmental degradation costs the human soul primarily. Faith concerns today highlight the need to preserve our world for future generations to enjoy. If we don’t, we all suffer.
Choosing students to carry out this project seemed to be the right way to proceed considering that businesses habitually use them because they are at a stage of being creative and imaginative to get a foothold on a career. Not only this, but the factor that it has cost nothing so far for the Station authorities in using their time and talents.
The composition accompanying this brief illustrates the daily cycles of creation that are fundamental to our existence, the charting of days and night formulating light and darkness cast in the images, lasting an hour, of the rising and setting of the sun and the waxing and waning of the moon. Call this a movement in nature before words were drawn up to describe this event which you could readily identify as a creation myth which all faiths prescribe as a fundamental to faith, a reason why Gilbert Scott designed this Station interior as he did. Matt Reed in his minimalist design, by his nuanced use of light shading into darkness encapsulate the mystery or secret of God, a Gothic tenet mirrored by the loftiness of the roof outside as containing everything in God’s creation. Notice how when you walk the Lake district fells, for instance, the landscape changes beautifully as the light transgresses through the day and how through the glass panels of the roof remarkable changes in vista occur to the walls of the building, a natural interpretation of the presence of the holy, the interplay of light and darkness, but also stressing that we are, in reflection of this, continually in the process of becoming. Tradition teaches us that using a space of this nature means that peace and calm can be brokered from chaos in one sacred space because the same process has occurred for generations. We are not inventing the wheel here but being solidly traditional in the interpretation of the modern.
Anyone who visit this room will need a guide to assist them into transferring quickly from busyness and movement into silence and stillness.. Volunteer guides are available who are accustomed to spiritual or religious concerns, who are experienced in encountering the public, They will be the eyes and ears of the place for security reasons as well as informing members of the public on how to use this room. Information, stuff to read, and short, inspirational literature can be given out and distributed to users because people now are not accustomed to being in silence so have to be aided in this. They are a point of referral to the Chaplain who can then deal with personal issues that arise from users of the room who maybe want to journey further in the realisation of spiritual awakening.
The cost of this project could be in the region of £25,000 and more. Matt Reed has already achieved substantial sponsorship from manufacturers and suppliers of material to be used in the infrastructure of the interior. The money will have to be raised publicly or by external means. This is the reason for forming an Advisory Team with trustees, forming a basic constitution so we can apply for grants from specific sources. The main reason however for an Advisory Team is to draw from every corner of the Station people willing to assist in the Quiet Room being a reality, with the important overall objective of the Station itself owning this project which will improve the chances tenfold of it actually occurring as well as impressing authorities into realising this venture is much needed, and erected to the highest standards, as an integral part of the Stations daily life.
The new University College of the Arts building is slowly taking shape across the way on the Kings Cross Central Project site. A continuing partnership with students will prove to be beneficial to both Station and College, especially for the future design of the Quiet Room, which could benefit from being transformed in appearance incrementally, over time, to keep alive and interest the regular users who seek silence and meditate there.
As a postscript to this, a reminder of the importance of a separate prayer place for our Moslem friends must not be forgotten. I think it is impossible to dream of one place without realising the other and you can witness how good it is to see them in co-existence down the Euston Road at the Chaplaincy Centre at the University College Hospital. To do both effectively, we do require a significant amount of creativity, imagination and risk to enable them to come to fruition, a counteraction to the energy wasted in resourcing a defensive bureaucracy whose task it seems to be to protect and be fearful of if challenged. Where would we be if that originally had been the case once this valuable public space and its inception had been dreamed of and realised? How would we promote reconciliation, hope, et al which are vital for human flourishing?
The Revd Jonathan Barker. May 26th 2010.
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