Tall, Dark, and Silent

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If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?

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The first thing that comes to mind is something someone said about me years ago: “Tall, dark and silent.” It was meant playfully, not cruelly, but it probably caught something true about how I occupy a room.

I’m naturally reserved. I don’t speak to fill space. I’ll speak when I have something to say.

One colleague once tried to prepare a new staff member for me: “One thing you need to know about Peter is that he’s very comfortable with silence.” He added, “It can be disconcerting at first—until you get used to it.”

I’ve thought about that line more than once, because it names something that can sound like a social weakness. Silence can be mistaken for distance. Or disinterest. But for me, it’s rarely that.

When I move around a room, it isn’t because I’m trying to make an impression. It’s because I’m interested in the people in it. I want to know who they are, what matters to them, and how they’re going. I’m not looking for a stage. I’m looking for a person.

Years ago, during a psych hospital chaplaincy course, the chaplain stepped away briefly and I found myself sitting next to a patient who was withdrawn and silent. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t try to coax a response. I was simply there—close enough to be companionable, quiet enough not to be intrusive.

After a while, they began to talk. Not small talk. His story.

When the chaplain returned, he later asked how I’d managed it. He’d never been able to get a response out of that patient. I told him the truth: I didn’t do anything. I just sat there. He decided it was safe enough to speak. And then he did.

Another day, another room.

I once attended an Indigenous conference while I was ministering in a large regional town. I read about it in the paper, cleared my diary, and arrived at the start. The workshop didn’t begin for hours—they were waiting for people to arrive. I was the only white person there.

So I did what I could do. I waited. I listened. I didn’t try to make myself known with questions or commentary. I wasn’t there to put my stamp on things. I was there to learn.

At the end of the day, a man approached me and said he was also a minister. He asked if I’d like to see his church. I said yes.

We drove out of town and stopped in front of a plain garage with a roller door—nothing to mark it as anything other than ordinary. He lifted the door, and inside was a small, simple church. A hidden sanctuary in an unremarkable place.

It felt like a gift: not only the church, but the trust it represented. And I don’t think it would have happened if I’d tried to force myself into the day, or prove myself with words. I had simply arrived, stayed, listened—making room rather than taking it.

That’s the thing about quietness. It can unsettle people at first. It can look like absence when it’s actually attention. But sometimes it becomes a kind of hospitality. It creates space for other lives to come to the surface.

So yes—tall, dark and silent. That’s who I am, in public and behind closed doors. I still sometimes wish I was wired differently. But I’m learning to accept this as a strange kind of grace: a way of being present without pushing, listening without taking over, and letting the ordinary moments carry more weight than they first appear to.

And if there were a biography about me, the title would be: Tall, Dark, and Silent.