"Be Still and Know"

Psalm 62.

I.

            Psalm 62 begins, “For God alone my soul waits in silence.”

            We Presbyterians do not do silence well.  Were we to add more intentional silence to our worship, I suspect that we would have to do it very gradually with a lot of explanation and preparation.  And even then, I would have to anticipate the anxiety to build after about 20 seconds, with the requisite coughing, rustling, shuffling and so forth.  If we persisted, I imagine complaints would invariably start rolling in.

            It is not completely our fault, this aversion to silence.  Our whole culture hates and fears silence, avoiding it at all costs.  There is virtually no public space – except maybe for libraries – that does not have some kind of noise going all the time.  Not just the sounds of people going about their business, but some piped in music or radio, or a TV going on the wall.  We are bombarded with human-made sounds incessantly.

            Most mornings I do my prayers and meditation, if the weather is at all cooperative, outside on the back patio.  I try to do this even through the winter, if it is not ridiculously cold and icy, which of course this past winter was.  But all through the year and all day long there is one sort of base-line sound under everything else, which is this dull roar coming over the ridge from the traffic on 287 and 22.

            But, of course, even if I were in the middle of some expanse of wilderness, it would not be completely silent.  There would be sounds of nature – the wind, birds, insects, moving water, and so forth.  There is no pure silence on the living earth, and we should give thanks for that. 

            Even in a sensory deprivation tank, they tell me, that a person hears the sound of their heart pumping and blood rushing through their veins.  From one perspective, silence is death.  Perhaps the vacuum of space is silent, but there is very little life out there. 

            The Psalm does not say that the world is to be silent; the silence has to rest in one’s soul, one’s being.  It is not telling the world to be quiet, but the person.

            It is unquiet, noisy people that often drown out and prevent the silence of the soul, and silence of the soul is necessary if we are to hear the presence and Word of God, from whom comes our salvation.

            The Psalm goes on to address this in a kind of oblique way.  “God alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken.”  Our silence is an act of trust in God.  Which at least implies the opposite, that our chronic lack of silence, the fact that we habitually generate noise and seem to need to have human-made noise all around it at all times, is an expression of our lack of trust in God.  Something about silence scares us.

II.

            The next two verses complain against human violence.  Reading these verses reminds me of what goes on in my mind when I do sit down to be silent and wait for God’s voice.  I start off with an ambitious affirmation about silence, trusting in God, and never being shaken in that trust.

            But invariably my mind wanders.  And the most toxic and draining places to which my mind wanders is anger, resentment, and fear, about people and difficult situations in my life.  Sometimes I just start thinking about my to-do list for the day, and that is relatively easy to put aside.  But when my mind commences to dwell on people’s unfairness, injustice, violence… how they attack the ones who are already weak – the “leaning wall” or “tottering fence” – or when they gang up on someone trying to make a difference – the “person of prominence” – or when people are disingenuous, liars, and hypocrites… then that is a lot harder to push out of my mind any thought of them.  The anger simmers, the adrenalin flows, and all hope of interior silence is lost in the rush of indignation.

            Until I collect myself, and refer myself back to the silence I seek, and, like verse 5, repeat the original affirmation of verse 1.  “In God alone my soul waits in silence.”

            Commentators on this passage sometimes talk about how we have to remove the bad stuff from our soul before it would do any good to cultivate the good.  I think they are interpreting silence as a kind of emptiness which results from banishing bad thoughts and quieting the negative narrative.  Then, into that clean, clear, empty silence, God may speak.

            So, this little repeated phrase – “In God alone my soul waits in silence” – may have the effect of doing just this.  It gets rid of this little rant, and refocuses on building interior silence, expressing trust in God, and waiting for God’s voice.

            When we do wait in silence, which is to say, when we do quiet that interior noise, what happens?  For me it means hearing once again the world around me.  I do hear that traffic noise in the background, and aircraft overhead… but I also hear the various sounds of nature, and my mind comes out of its resentment and is able to be present once again.  I am able to be where I am, which is the only place God can speak to me because it is the only place that is real.  As long as my attention is somewhere else, as long as I am dwelling on some past event or anticipating some future one, I am not present. 

            So silence, interior silence, an intent listening and openness to what is going on around us right now, is one important way to hear God’s voice.  Silence connects us to the living present, the here and now.

III.

            This kind of waiting in silence is an expression of trust and openness.  Thus we get to verse 8, about trusting in God and pouring out our hearts before God, who becomes our refuge.

            The next few verses are a kind of reflection on why it does no good to dwell on the things that people project as of ultimate importance.  Our estate, our status, where we fall on the wealth scale… none of this matters.  Questions like that are immaterial because whether we are rich or poor, compared to God we are lighter than air. 

            And the strategies and tactics that people use to obtain wealth, like extortion and robbery, are not trustworthy, and neither is the money gained by them.  Money and the things people to do get and keep it are about the biggest distractions of the human mind, and the loudest interference of our interior silence, the most powerful thing keeping us separate from God and cutting us off from God’s voice.

            Once we can get out of your head that just sitting in silence is utterly unprofitable and a waste of time as far as the rat-race is concerned, we can be open to God.  We have to get over the fact that people resent this kind of useless behavior, and the world would much rather us spent our time listening to advertisements and the news.

            Only when we are free of such distractions can we really listen and trust in God enough to hear God’s voice informing us of God’s power and steadfast love, as the Psalm says.  That is important because listening and presence are not about being somehow neutral or objective.  There is no unbiased listening, and if we are not careful we will hear our own fears or our own desires.  We listen for something we know is there, which is the power and love of God.

            So when we do quiet our minds and wait in silence, it is not for whatever, but for God.  Therefore, when I listen in silence and I hear bird calls, I am not trying to distinguish the crows from the blue jays and cardinals, for whatever reason.  No.  I am hearing evidence of God’s power and love.  That is how Jesus sees nature.  The birds and the flowers are manifestations of God’s power and love in caring for and sustaining creation.  When I feel my own weight on the ground, or my own breathing, it is evidence of God’s power and love.  Even when I feel my ears or toes freezing, it is because of God’s design of this planet, shaped by God’s power in love to be the perfect space for the emergence of life.

            Perhaps my favorite Christians of all time are the Irish monks of the 6^th century, who worshiped and prayed outdoors all year round in all kinds of weather, as a celebration of God’s creation and the privilege it was to be a part of it.            

IV.

            The final words of the Psalm – “for you repay all according to their work” – is often taken as a general statement.  But in the context of the Psalm I wonder if it doesn’t really mean that God rewards the one who invests some energy and time into being silent, banishing distracting and negative thoughts, and listening for God’s power and love.  For it does take considerable work to be silent in our souls and wait for God.

            So, now we’re going to do something different and unusual.  We are going to observe a time of silence.  It won’t be long, say 3 minutes?  Can we handle that?  Not even a normal commercial break?

            We’re going to sit in silence.  Listen to whatever is happening.  If you find your mind wandering, I want you to say to yourself, “For God alone my soul waits in silence,” and go back to just sitting in silence and listening.

            After two minutes, I will bring us back.  I want anyone who wants to share say what they heard.  And we will reflect together on how what we heard expresses or witnesses to God’s power and love.

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