1 Learning to play the rests (the irony of talking about silence is not lost on me) Tim Miller, Gateway Fellowship, Feb 1, 2015 Psalm 131 A song for pilgrims ascending to Jerusalem. A psalm of David. 1 LORD , my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD — now and always. – Learn to Play the rests . A rest is an interval of silence in a piece of music. Music is organized noise and silence. Both of those. Not just organized noise. Phrasing . It’s like musical sentences. The period at the end of the sentence or the separation of two paragraphs should indicate that a complete thought has been shared and we can take a breath and let it sink in. “Selah” is the Hebrew way of saying, “Now stop and silently ponder what we just said while the guitar keeps on praying.” Momma’s Advice: I read a music teacher say that his momma taught him 1) to be quiet while others are talking, 2) to only speak when you have something to say, 3) to wait for the appropriate time to speak, and 4) to contribute to the overall conversation. 1 2 Musically, this means , recede into the background when another instrument is saying something important, only play your instrument when you have a contribution worth making, make that contribution at the right time, and contribute in a way that strengthens the song. Guitarists call self indulgent, unceasing, thoughtless playing "noodling." Tangled, going nowhere, in a pile, forgettable. Filler. Blah. It's what players do at the store or when they want to flex their technical biceps for others to oogle at. Art in service of ego is humorously petty. It's comedy. It doesn't bring life to the hearer or the noisemaker. There's a life lesson in that. Silence IS music. To bring it out of the metaphor in life, there are times that our sheet music calls for a rest. That’s not the absence of music. The silence IS a form of music because we’re not the only instrument. We need to learn to play the rests. Silence is golden. Silence can be prayer, listening, adoration, attention, meditation, focus, rest, mindfulness. Silence can be so many healthy things. You don't need to fear the silences. I fear silences with strangers , which is why I am a bit intimidated by strangers for fear that I'll say really dumb things or the wrong thing or even worse, responsibly endure the awkward silences of misunderstanding and nonconnection. Not seeing each other quietly is almost worse than trying to fill in the gaps poorly. Relationships that grow eventually reach a place where shared silence is a form of communion and friendship and even communication. Shared journeying with occasional shared observations becomes the settled happy place we normally reserve for mates, family, and very best friends. Enjoy the silence. One of my favorite Depeche mode songs is “Enjoy the Silence.” Here’s some lyrics, “All I ever wanted, All i ever needed is here in my arms. Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm.” I understand the sentiment. It’s good to develop a quiet soul . It’s okay to go through seasons where you don’t have much to say. It’s okay, and sometimes, it’s healthy. When the things that are coming out of you are making matters worse: negativity, fearing the worst and lamenting it anxiously in advance, angrily lashing out at those who hurt or you are afraid will hurt you, incessantly crying and whining to those closest to you and expecting the universe to make it all better by revolving around your ideal version of things ...then it’s really healthy to learn how to develop a quiet soul. Inner quiet. The thing about the soul is, it can be wailing and railing inside while on the outside we stuff it down and act a totally different way. David isn't saying he learned how to grit his teeth and not give in to his tantrum toddler soul. He's saying his inside self, his soul, has learned to hush. Psalm 131 2 3 1 LORD , my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD — now and always. "Wean" definition: to withdraw from dependency upon some habit, object, or behavior of comfort or enjoyment (i.e. pacifier, blanky, breastfeeding) and to lose the need for that object or comfort. Growing up and down . David is talking about being “weaned” from the need to understand, weaned from the moaning and groaning about not understanding what is happening. His soul has been weaned from the infantile, selffocused bemoaning of the circumstance. It has also been weaned off the adult selfassured awareness and preparedness thing. Comprehension is not a necessary prerequisite for cooperation in the kingdom. The childish thing must grow up, and the adult thing must become as a child. In the same act of quiet surrender. Road Trip Run On. Imagine being on a road trip with someone across the continental U.S. and they never stop talking. They never just take it in. They never just enjoy the ride and take in the sights and just “be” with you. They are compelled to narrate the journey and fill in the silences and grant commentary and explanation to everything. That’d be okay for a while. But all the way across the U.S. and back? Dude. Seasons of the soul. Ryan Adams , the singer/songwriter, recently talked about being in a season where his soul is bursting with songs. But other times, he’s in seasons where, these are his own words, “my soul is quiet.” And for a songwriter that’s a scary thing. It’s like, "I have nothing to say. I’ve said what I wanted to say and I have nothing else. Is this permanent? Because if it is, I’d better get a different job!" I think Ryan Adams is really onto something when he called it a season of the soul. He described songwriting as "having songs 3 4 wash up on shore, pulling them in, cleaning them off, and then presenting them to the band and the world." I like that. Songwriting . As a songwriter myself i know that you don’t fabricate songs in a factory. Your soul brings them to you half formed with emotion and direction but not all the specifics. A feeling and a melody and a snapshot in color, saying, "Sing me! Write me!" It's a force of its own. It seems like you don't write a song as much as learn it or approximate it from some lost memory and then you scramble to paint it while the image and feeling is still fresh…I think one of these years I want to spend some time talking about the soul of an artist, because the soul IS the thing that makes art, prays prayers, crafts songs, romances your lover, fellowships with God, enjoys beauty, presses toward the work as a calling not just a job, and so much more. The soul of the artist. And that would be aimed at everybody, not just artsy people. All of our souls have something to say to us and through us . And I think Ryan Adams is onto something when he talks about active seasons where his soul is bursting with ideas and melodies and he needs to “get them out.” I relate very very much. I also relate very much to his phrase of "times when it's quiet." Where nothing seems to spark. Nothing gets off the ground and trying to make something happen feels flat, dull, and pointless. At best it can feel contrived and even irreverent. You know, what we don't often see is that the quiet seasons are secretly busy. Things germinate and take root invisibly, underneath the surface of things, which then spring forth in the active seasons. I really believe that. Isaiah 30:15 "In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength... “I don’t get it. And that’s okay.” And here’s David saying, “My soul has learned that I don’t get it. I don’t understand. And I’ve learned to accept that. I’ve learned to accept that I’m not always going to understand what’s happening. Trying to figure it out is adding worry and frustration and spiritual exhaustion to the already hard enough situation. So I’ve learned to NOT. I’ve learned to not figure everything out. I keep it simple. I come back to basics: I’m small and weak and need love. God is big and strong and full of love and mercy. So I’m here. With him.” Psalm 131 1 LORD , my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. I don’t concern myself with matters too great 4 5 or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD — now and always. Verbal Processors Get Stressed . To a verbal processor not knowing what to say, or not having something to say can feel like something’s wrong with me. “What’s wrong? Have I lost my passion? What if I have lost my first love? I have no need to prove myself to God or anybody is that okay? I feel like I just don’t know!” “I have no sermon. What’s wrong with me?” One time I was outside pacing and praying in the dark on a saturday night because I still hadn’t had anything pressing or clear on my heart for the congregation that week. Oh, did I mention that it was Saturday night? Yeah. I’d like to be a lot more ahead of the curve than that. Tuesday would be ideal. Then I can meditate and pray and study and write notes and edit them and make a powerpoint and feel very faithful to God by not misprioritizing my time so that God’s people don’t lack for a quality sermon come Sunday. But it’s Saturday. Saturday NIGHT. LATE. And I have literally no desire whatsoever to stand up and turn on the microphone and talk to God’s people. None. So I went through a troubleshooting checklist to see if I had sinned in some way by doing something wrong. Or perhaps I didn’t do something right. Well, I wasn’t perfect, but nothing really came to mind. I had done what I believed was God’s will all week long, each day. And on no day did I feel led to work on sermon. I repented of vague lukewarmness and asked God out loud what was wrong with me. He said something about, “It’s okay. You got this. It’s fine.” Then sunday morning somebody shared and went long and then ministry happened and I never preached because God moved. God and I had this conversation this week : Me: I have no pressing need to say anything. G: Remember last time that happened? Me.: Yeah. Sharing took over and I didn’t preach. G: So it wasn’t something wrong with you. It was something right with you. 5 6 In Scripture, people know how to talk to their soul. Have you learned to talk to yours? And God’s people know how to listen to their soul. Have you learned to listen to your soul? A prayer. “Stillness before You, Lord. Not accomplishing things for You. Not impressing You. Not performing. Not posturing. Just here. You aren’t talking. I’m not talking. At this point I feel like my words are me filling the space, and right now, it’s okay to leave the space. Teach me to be still.” St. John Vianney noticed a peasant come to church everyday and sit on the last bench, doing seemingly nothing. One day he went up to him and asked him, "My good fellow, what are you doing here? Are you praying? You seem to be doing nothing." And pointing to the Blessed Sacrament, he said in reply, "I look at him and he looks at me." At it’s essential core, prayer is communion with God . If words help you be with Him, then speak. If words get in the way, then don’t, but whatever you do, commune with God . It’s ok. Things aren’t ok. The world is not ok. I’m not totally ok. But I’m ok. And I’m here. It’s not a sin issue. It’s not an unbelief issue. There’s nothing wrong with me. I just have nothing to prove. Nothing to fix. No cause to champion. No great battle to cry over or to solve or to lament. I mean, I do, but it’s over my pay grade. And I’m okay letting God be God. Simplicity . Not high and lofty. Not needing to fee in order to validate something insecure in me that I’m unsure about. I’m not unsure. I know I’m known. I know I’m claimed. And though the fight is real, I’m here. He’s here. And I’m waiting for the answers to the other stuff, but I’m not concerning myself with all that for now. I’m staying in my lane. I’m not worried about stuff that’s above my pay grade. Brad Jersak’s “Waypoints on his Journey” 1. Triumphalism/Messiah Complex 2. Failure, Frustration, Anger 3. Grief, Bewilderment, Astonishment 4. Forgiveness, Acceptance, Peace 5. Basic Faith, Hope, Love w/ the conclusion that God’s goodness isn’t proven, it is trusted. Psalm 131 1 LORD , my heart is not proud; my eyes are not haughty. 6 7 I don’t concern myself with matters too great or too awesome for me to grasp. 2 Instead, I have calmed and quieted myself, like a weaned child who no longer cries for its mother’s milk. Yes, like a weaned child is my soul within me. 3 O Israel, put your hope in the LORD — now and always. 7