I haven't rushed to write anything on the Paris Attacks. I’m always reminded, at times of great tragedy, of the early wisdom of Job’s friends, who after he experiences horrendous loss, come and sit with him in silence, “because they saw how great his suffering was”. Saying anything risks descending into “performative signaling purely for [our] own selfish benefit….simply for the sake of making noise”. (Ironically, once they’ve finished being wise and empathetic, Job’s friends begin trying to explain why such terrible things have happened to him, and conclude he’s brought it on himself).
The trouble is, most of us don’t know anyone who we can go and sit in silence with. We've felt at a loss, this week, to know what on earth to do. This is not, for most of us, a tragedy afflicting an individual we are in relationship with, but a great national disaster, a wound on a people group, possibly on a whole continent. Perhaps the projecting of the Tricolore onto monuments and the mass red-white-and-bluing of facebook profile pictures is our large scale equivalent. These gestures fall far short of the human presence of Job’s friends, but for most of us, it will have to do.
As the world has grieved with Paris, and struggled to process the shock and fear that we might be next, big stories have emerged. Explanations soothe our destabilised selves, they give us relief from the overwhelming sense of helplessness. As Naomi Klein says, in Shock Doctrine: “without a story...we are intensely vulnerable… As soon as we have a narrative that offers a perspective on the shocking events, we become reoriented, and the world begins to make sense.” You don’t have to agree with her broader conclusions to recognise something that feels true to human experience. It is why so many comment pieces have been written, and probably why I've read so many- searching for the one which has the answers.
These pieces take different angles in attempts to make sense of the Paris attacks (and those in Beirut, and Sharm El Sheik, and….). Is it simply about refugees and borders? Sorting good guys from bad? Which freedoms we are prepared to sacrifice on the altar of security? Is it about religion, or economics, or foreign policy?
The truth is of course, we don’t yet know- and perhaps we should resist the temptation to try to. Rowan Williams, in his Writing in the Dust, written after he experienced the 9/11 attacks at first hand, reflects on the emptiness felt after trauma. He writes beautifully about the importance of resisting the urge to “ease the tension” by filling this void with actions and explanations. He argues that this is important “breathing space”, needed to grieve, to let our collective heart rates slow and the adrenaline dissipate, before anything else happens. Before we do things we might regret or tell stories which might harden into accepted facts. Silence, and solitarity, and sitting still. Hard, isn’t it?
Elizabeth Oldfield is Director of Theos
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