I share Sara Maitland’s reverence for “silence” and was therefore delighted by her hymn to the silence of her Scottish Easter experience (9 May) – “and closest to us”, she writes (it bears repeating), “intimately connected, inside our bodies and all around us, organic growth – ‘the force that through the green fuse drives the flower’ – is silent.” It was a joy to read.I only want to add, from bitter experience, that there are further dimensions and more embarrassing harmonies. During a recent echo test of my heart some sneaky microphone was placed where it could hear the comings and goings of, I suppose blood, through various chambers. Now I thought I was quite accustomed to the unbidden sounds my body produces;