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 my people;

Pour out your heart to the Beloved …

Let Silence be a refuge for you.

Selah

(From Psalm 62, poetic version by Nan C. Merrill)

Selah – 

In the Psalms we often hear this word, Selah.

It is a mysterious word, no one knows its precise meaning, 

And no translator of the scriptures dares to touch it.

They leave it to us to speak the sounds of this Ancient Hebrew word, 

Or to pass over it in silence

– Selah. 

The meaning of this word is unknown, 

But there is a good theory to its function: 

It is a musical direction.

The Psalms are sung prayers 

Supported by rhythm and simple droning melodies. 

Selah is a note to the musicians, telling them 

To Pause.  

Selah

Selah is a breath between phrases

Selah is a rest between tones

Selah is a lift of the pen between letters,

A dip of the brush between strokes of color.

Selah is the pause that gives birth to rhythm 

Selah is the deadfall that feeds new seed

Selah marks the pulse that animate the universe

The oscillation of all that radiates

Sound & light 

Electro-magnatism 

         All that vibrates through the void

         dancing through the dazzling weave of atoms

                  & molecules

Cells

Organisms

Ecosystems

Selah joins our prayer with the prayer of Creation

When Moses dared ask the blazing revelation of the Divine 

How on earth he could use words to speak of the Holy Being of all Beings

The response was no word, but the origin of all words 

A tremendous breath

         Y       H     W     H

To evoke The Divine, we are to 

Breathe in 

& breathe out 

Contract

 & expand

Tense

& release

Vibrate with the cycles by which life pulses and sounds

Diminishes

& dies 

& rises anew

Selah 

In the beginning 

When Elohim – YHWH creates 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. 

Selah

And with light there is darkness

With sound, silence.

That great first breath 

sets in motion the pulses of opposites

necessary for the forces of creativity 

That issue from the Source of all being.

The song of the transcendent 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 YHWHW rests 

Rests

And abides 

Rests and abides in the beauty 

of such abounding vitality. 

And it is good.

This is Sabbath

The in-breath 

Of the Creator 

After the tremendous outbreath

that gives birth to the universe.

The Sabbath pause

Is the beat God takes

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

Oh, how we get dazzled and distracted and dazed

In our wild lives through this wild world

We can get fraught and frightened

We can mistake our little 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.

Petty gods over petty fiefdoms where we try to control life and death

         But as the Psalm we heard sings …

Being of low estate is but a sigh, 

Being of high estate is misleading;

In the balance, either high or low, 

It is of little consequence – 

They are gone in one breath. 

Or as Psalm 46 sings:

Come, behold the works of the Supreme One;
   see what desolations God has brought on the earth. 
God makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
   God breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
   God burns the shields with fire. 
‘Be still, and know that I am God!

Be still and know. 

Selah

So let us remember the Sabbath and keep it holy

For the pauses between things are holy

The moments when one form passes away

To give rise to the next

The Sabbath spaces

Suspended between 

When all things 

Once again are possible 

The grave is empty

The rock rolled away 

With Christ we have died

With Christ we arise 

         Resurrected

People of the Jubilee 

Breathing free

In the peace of Christ that surpasses understanding

Selah

“In the Silence rests my freedom and

My guidance;

You are the Heart of my heart

My refuge is in the Silence.”

Selah, Selah 

Thanks be to God

(Delivered Sunday, August 14, 2022, by Rev. Nathaniel Mahlberg at the United Church of Valley Forge)

Image CC BY-SA 4.0 Anton Yankovyi