For You alone my soul waits in silence …

In the Silence rests my freedom and

My guidance;

You are the Heart of my heart

My refuge is in the Silence …

Trust in Love at all times, O people;

Pour out your heart to the Beloved …

Let Silence be a refuge for you.

Selah

– From Nan Merrill’s poetic interpretation of Psalm 62

In the Psalms we often hear this Selah. 

It is a mysterious word, that no translator of the scriptures dares to touch.

It is left to us to speak the sounds of the Ancient Hebrew – Selah. 

Its precise meaning is unknown, but there is a good theory to its function: 

It is a note to the musicians who are to sing the Psalms 

And play the droning melodies that support our prayer:

Selah directs us to Pause.  

Selah

A breath between phrases

A rest between notes

A lift of the pen between letters

A dip of the brush between strokes of color

Selah

Pauses give birth to rhythm 

Lulls give rise to vibration

Deadfalls feed new seed

Selah

Breathe in and out 

Contract and expand

Tense and release

The cycles by which life pulses and sounds

Diminishes, dies, and rises anew

Selah 

In the beginning 

When Elohim begins to create the heavens and the earth,

The earth is formless and void

Darkness covers the face of the deep

In the beginning 

A wind from Elohim wings over the waters 

The ripples growing into a sound

The pulses pitching into a radiance.

There is light,

This is good. 

And with light there is darkness

With sound, silence.

Selah

That great first breath 

sets in motion pulses of opposites

unleashes the forces of creativity 

That issue from the source of all being

The transcendent Godhead

The song of the Creator brings forth 

Dazzling forms in doubles and shadows

Fresh lifeways glorying in God-given vitality

Great multitudes of being
Giving birth to great multitudes of being 

Rising, falling,

Uniting, dividing,

Dancing, dying

Multiplying through the kaleidoscopic wheeling 

Of generations upon generations.  

And it is good.

Selah

With this pulsing torrent of existence

Churning on with a ceaseless flow

Elohim rests 

Rests and abides 

Rests and abides the beauty 

of such abounding vitality. 

And it is good.

This is Sabbath

The in-breath 

Of the Creator 

After the outbreath

that gives birth to the universe.

The Sabbath 

Is the silent pause

The beat taken 

To set the rhythm of creation.

Selah

And so are we to keep Sabbath. 

So are we to remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. 

So are we to breathe out and breathe in

And abide in what is. 

Know that it is good.

Be still. 

And rest, 

Rest in the silence. 

For in the silence we can draw near

To the immense source of all being

The holy wellspring

Of the very rhythms of existence. 

Selah

We can get dazzled and distracted and dazed

In our wild lives through this wild world

We can get fraught and frightened

We can mistake our petty selves 

And the little things to which we cling 

To be all there is and all that can be.

We can take ourselves to be the measure of all things.

So, we must pause in our striving.

We must remember the Sabbath

And keep it holy.

Remember that in-breathe of the Creator 

After the great note that sounded out creation.

Selah

The pauses between things are holy

The moments when one form passes away

To give rise to the next

The Sabbath spaces

Suspended in air 

When all things

Once again are possible. 

Selah

“In the Silence rests my freedom and

My guidance;

You are the Heart of my heart

My refuge is in the Silence.”

Selah

(Image: “Rippled Water” by David M Strom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0)