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| (Queen’s House, Greenwich II by Ben Johnson) |
“Ben Johnson has taken as his special theme the way light shines on emptiness. The Queen’s House, Greenwich is utterly still, utterly bare to our gaze. We are presented with a silent vista, not so much an invitation to advance through the arch and onwards as to stand motionless and simply contemplate. There is almost tangibly no sound, and what Johnson manages to suggest, implicitly, is that the richness is in the standing still, the non-acting. Just to be there, to take our smallness into this classical poise, is to become more potentially our true selves; it is not outer reality that is revealed, but our own innerness. Contemplation is essentially a surrender to the holiness of the divine mystery, whether we use these words or not. An atheist, calming his or her spirit in the peace of silence, is irradiated by the same mystery, anonymous but transforming.”
~Wendy Beckett
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