"It was the sixth hour and there was darkness over the face of the earth until the ninth hour.
One is silenced before the agony of the century.
One is silenced before the portents, the political method of
Messrs. Nixon, Mitchell, Agnew, the Generals, the State
Department.
One is silenced before the heroism of prisoners, the sick, the old,
the defamed, the poor.
One is silenced: 'This (prison) gives me a perfect opportunity to
seek my own truth and build myself on it . . . '
From the sixth to the ninth hour, there was darkness over the
face of the earth . . . and the accompaniement of such darkness is
the silence of Jesus, the silence of the nearby dead, the silence
of outraged love, the silence of all those whose lives pass beyond
words to the climate of genesis, or of apocalypse. One is silenced.
Can you imagine the silence of a prison toward dawn; from the
cell, a cough, a groan, as those men languished under a
primordial burden, dreams lost, hopes shattered, faces whose
pressure even in dreams is an agony.
It is not to be thought that faith lifted that burden; if it came as
comfort, it was cold comfort indeed. No; for a few of us who
were almost entirely disconnected with the way 'religion' was,
pandered and huckstered in prisons, faith was still of import, of
enormous import.
I would say it offered workable symbols, connections, hints and
signs, entrances, welcomes, modes and moments of freedom, the
Withdrawal of veil upon veil of clouded understanding . . . 
News of the planet, news from a distance, the upbearing of
conscience, the deepening of good reasons for being who we were,
where we were . . . "