The Echo in the Void

By Carl Benjamin

The Weald of Kent – Samuel Palmer, (1833-34)

If I were to conceptualise how I feel about the world around me, what the spiritual tone of modern life is like and what my sentiments towards my own civilisation are, right here and now, I am forced to admit that I can only envisage that I am adrift in an endless black void. 

I have been floating here for a long time. I am occasionally buffeted by cosmic winds that blow hot or cold, and push me one way or another, and with what little agency I possess in such a place I grab what I can; my wife, my children, my house, my business. All of these things to which I cling with my love are also floating with me, completely subject to the inscrutable whims that pour forth from the deep darkness of the void. 

Naturally, this has hardened my heart somewhat. Around the sensitive areas of my soul has grown a tough shell that enables me to resist the difficulties that such a spiritual life imposes. I act because I know I must act: my actions have definite consequences and I am pleased with what I can achieve. But there is a certain thinness to my actions, an insecurity of being which underpins what I do because I must always keep some kind of barrier between the pitiless void and my innermost being. Although I might love my dependents with all my heart, the constant threat of the void prevents me from opening up to them completely. 

The void demands it. Without such self-protection, the void would surely eat me up and destroy me. If I am to be the dependable husband, father, and boss upon which the people attached to me rely, then I must develop a hard shell around my heart and ensure that I am not rendered weak and useless by unexpected developments. 

So we all drift on and the shell becomes thicker, tougher as I attempt to build something solid by which those who rely upon me can find something stable; to which they can orient themselves and find some sense of security in the pitch blackness. It is difficult but, with enough strength of mind, I can endure, at least for now. The vision of the eye of my mind becomes very small and narrow, focussed only on these modest things over which I have some measure of control.  

But somewhere, far off in the void, I can hear the sharp ting of a very small and distant bell. The echo of this bell resonates faintly through the emptiness, until I notice it on the very edge of my hearing. If I concentrate on it, I can hear its echo again. 

Ting. 

The note is strung out in a beautiful and clear pitch, but it is so far away and rung so long ago that it is barely audible. The note of the bell is a pure, unadulterated word which sings across time and space and stirs primordial memories far beneath the shell over my soul. 

Ting. 

I can hear what it has to say, but I don’t fully understand it. It is a message, a word, something calling, and it is calling to me. There is a time and a place, and I can hear it. I can feel it. Somewhere in the void, somewhere that isn’t perpetual blackness. 

Ting.  

If I relax my mind, I can hear and understand the single word that is transmitted by the ring of the bell. I can feel it and suddenly I am rendered almost helpless before the catastrophic implications of such a communication. When I realise what the word of the bell is, I almost dread to hear its echo again. 

I cannot stop hearing it. I go about my life as uninterrupted as before, but now every time I see the material degradation of this land, its occupation by disinterested strangers, the profanity of its customs, and the desecration of its sacred places, it rings in my ear. 

Ting. 

For now, when I hear the echo of the bell, I can understand its song and the shell around my heart turns to a bubble which pops and floods my eyes with tears. I can’t help it. It doesn’t matter what I am doing when it happens, I just have to hear the ring of that faint, far-away bell and in my mind the word forms like a precious note and a tear escapes my eye and rolls down my face. 

When I hear the echo of the bell, I remember that we weren’t always adrift in an endless void. It wasn’t always this way. Once, we were somewhere, we had a place and a purpose and we were happy. We had stability and prosperity and did not always carry the burden of a perpetual emptiness of heart. 

When I hear the bell, it comes upon me in a rush. More than any other thing, the message of the bell sounds in my heart and brings forth a concordance of feeling best described by Winston Churchill: 

“There is a forgotten, nay almost forbidden word, which means more to me than any other. That word is England.”