Tag Archives: selah

5. Two More Days

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5

It just occurred to me that there are two more days in this week – this week of quiet and nothingness… We’ve done a lot of reflecting, thinking, and listening. We’ve done a lot of evaluating, clarifying, and maybe even some deciding.

I’ve been thinking about spiritual breathing this week – thinking about how God is the giver of life, by giving us breath. By lowering Himself to a very intimate degree of presence, and breathing life into us. Maybe that’s why the infant cries the most important cry of his life in that first breath- maybe it’s because his baby lungs have just been filled with a God-sized inhalation. Maybe it’s more than he can take in. And so he cries.

I think life does that to us sometimes. In order to truly live, we are taken through different God-sized moments. These moments usually come with intense emotion and discovery. And, well, sometimes the only way to react is to cry – to exhale with the deepest intensity of emotion.

So, in the last two days of this Selah – this pause to take a deep breath – I think the proper ending is a moment of exhale. Release what is in there. Journal it out. Talk it out. Blog it out. Cry it out. Whatever it takes for you to process the God-sized inhalation we’ve experienced this week.

Selah, friends.

1. Solitude

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12

If we’re going to Selah, we have to be comfortable being alone. We have to find ways for our conscious thoughts to merge with our subconscious thoughts. This is best achieved when our minds become more inwardly focused than outwardly focused. To be inwardly focused, we must find time to eliminate external distractions. In short, we must find time for solitude. Real solitude:

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Pause

Posted on
11

Some of you will remember the topic of “Selah” coming up in the comments a few weeks ago. And you’ll remember there were a number of you who asked if we could do a type of facilitated Selah around here. You asked in response to these words:

And these days, I’m blind to reasons why I’m not as introspective now as I used to be. Why I’m not as self-aware. Why I can’t tell you what I think or feel about certain things.

Maybe I should just sit more. Away from the laptop or cell phone or to-do list. Away from productivity and information overload.

Sit.

And listen to my own soul tell me its secrets – tell me stories that I haven’t heard in a while – or stories that I haven’t heard told before. Maybe then I will know myself again. Maybe.

I haven’t forgotten.

In fact, I probably think about that every week – trying to find a way to help this bloggy community (which I dearly love) quiet down from the chatter for a moment. I even asked my Biblical scholar husband what this word means: ”nobody knows for sure what this word means, but it most likely indicates some sort of pause or key change in the singing.”

So… Here’s what I’m gonna do. I’m going to pause for a breath – a long inhale. I’m going to “change keys” on this blog and in my life, and I’m gonna sit. And listen. And try to dig down deeper into my own soul. And I’m going to think about ways we can “selah” together.

And, we’ll start our “Selah” on Monday August 23rd.

See you then.