"In the end, the criterion for institutional discernment is noise. God's Word comes out of Silence and brings us to Silence. Institutions of any kind, when they can no longer coerce and deceive, tend to retreat behind deafening, shattering, trammeling, numbing noise. On the Eve of Pentecost, 1987, according to Rowan Williams, 750 people gathered at a United States Air Force base in Britain. It was an open day at the base, which meant that visitors were streaming in and out to watch the big planes display their power. Outside the fence, the motley group of protestors could not have an 'official' Eucharist, but they prayed prayers of thanksgiving and they broke bread together. During this and other liturgies of the day, the prayers and hymns were dimmed and drowned by the roar and thunder of the bombers flying low over their heads.

"In the backwash of the jets' howling, the prayers seemed themselves to be silence. Hour after hour, mile after mile, the procession continued through rain and hail, lightning and thunder, as its members tied small white crosses to the fence posts around the base. Hour after hour the display of two kinds of power did battle, each in its own way: one overwhelming by the sheer force of violence, the other coinhering by the self-outpouring of the Love of a humble Christ.

"At the end of the day the machines of war grumbled into the distance, and the tired marchers handed a cross of flowers through police lines. And suddenly in the silence, being of one mind and heart, they burst into the joyous chords of Ubi Caritas."