Rothko Chapel
We cannot know what silence is until we meet it. In such a noisy world as ours, where every empty space is filled with advertising or graffiti, we are imprisoned in such noisy minds that we cannot be still and listen. Silence becomes incomprehensible. We think it only means turning down the volume.
Early in my treatment here in Houston I was delighted to discover that I am staying just about a thirty-minute walk from the Rothko Chapel, a space for all where silence comprehends you. Over many years, previous visits here left an abiding sacred impression of its unforgettable spirit of place. I gave a talk here some years ago which I was worried might offend the profound, dense silence we were in but, perhaps because we meditated as well, I knew the silence was no match for my words.
I intend to walk here daily when I can and meditate here, something I have started to do. So perhaps I will write more about Mark Rothko’s last great work in the coming weeks. For now, I will start this new column as a fresh year comes out of its shell. I will try and fail to describe the tangible power, the invisible energy field, the sheer concentration of silence in this sacred space.
There are fourteen panels around the walls. As you first enter the space, illuminated with natural light from above, the panels seem black. But as your eyesight adjusts they become dynamically dark. In places dense mauve is seen below the skin of their surface. Thank God, what a relief, I feel, no images, no explanation. The pictures are so vast they are intimate and welcome you in as they envelop you. He painted them with four-to-six-inch housepainter brushes and the brush strokes are alive, like the inside of a dark cloud.
Surrounded by these paintings a force-field of silence is created around and inside you. This dissolves the veil between the inner and the outer. Pure silence is boundless and empty and so it also emanates a full, real presence. Either you quickly want to go back to your noisy mind and the world it generates, or you are pulled more fully into the waters of silence and want to drink it though it will never satisfy your thirst for it.
It is greater than me yet not threatening. Is this what the fear of God means? It is without coordinates or proportions because it is immersive in all directions and dimensions. Nothing to hold onto. Yet at the core of the silence is tenderness, a welcome. You are home.
In such deep silence, time is gathered into the present, into the presence of what is present now and everywhere. Of course, it is easier to meditate here because meditation is already underway.
