We sat in our silence, surrounded by sound: the burble of water running through the ditches, crows in the fields and songbirds nearby, the wind in the conifers. The sounds of our breathing, settling, staying dry. Rain, soft, dreich. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. Always hearing.
A dozen bodies in that place, resisting consent to the actions planned behind those fences. The body, in public, on the road, marking a truth onto that territory of unkind power. I had not experienced that silence before: a resistance that felt always to be moving into the future, not merely marking or remembering.
Members of the Society of Friends in Dumfriesshire, the Quakers, invited me to one of their local Meetings, a peace vigil, outside the Kirkcudbright Training Area on a November Sunday in 2016. They occasionally hold vigils there and everyone is welcome.
I am not a member of a faith group, nor do I have a faith-based or spiritual practice. I have respect for the beliefs and the non-violence of the Quakers. I have sat in silence with others in ecological rituals and performances that have borrowed from the Quaker Meeting, but I had never been to a regular Meeting.
I got there early and walked back and forth across the front gate of the base. The day was overcast. The fields and verges were still lush green; I found a clump of Nerine flowers in the tall grass, flashing pink. The high stands of conifers and leylandii that shield the periphery of the base were dark and impenetrable. It was lightly raining.
People arrived and parked up, cheered their greetings, unloading their folding garden chairs in bright summer colours. Banners were tied to the fencing.
A man came out of the base, white shirt, black trousers, to question whether this group had permission. They did; the base had been informed. The man said, ‘We’re just the tea-makers in there. No one tells us anything. As long as it’s you guys. You guys are welcome to be here’, and walked back to the base.
The folding chairs were perched on the uneven, wet verge, until a balance was found in something like a circle. Blankets and rugs were handed around.
We sat in our silence, surrounded by sound: the burble of water running through the ditches, crows in the fields and songbirds nearby, the wind in the conifers. The sounds of our breathing, settling, staying dry. Rain, soft, dreich. Eyes closed. Eyes opened. Always hearing.
A man in a car drove past, stopped, reversed, and got out to sit with us for a while.
I lost track of time. Maybe an hour, maybe more before everyone knew it was time to talk, not for long; it was cold.
The fundamental purpose of the military is to harm the human body. Elaine Scarry writes of this in Thermonuclear Monarchy. Any military must be able to harm the human body and to credibly threaten to harm the human body in order to justify its continued existence. All else follows, security, technologies, camaraderie, status.
A dozen bodies in that place, resisting consent to the actions planned behind those fences. The body, in public, on the road, marking a truth onto that territory of unkind power. We were welcome because we weren’t ‘activists’, noisy, messy, uncontrollable. But that is to misjudge the power of these silences, and their long stretch. I had not experienced that silence before: a resistance that felt always to be moving into the future, not merely marking or remembering. I thank the community of Friends for their attention and grace.