‘Be Still and Know’

I AM PART of a network of Christians in Philadelphia who come together regularly to practice contemplative prayer. As part of our practice, our group moves into silence with a simple chant of “Be still and know that I am God.” Especially when repeated quietly with gentle breathing, I find in those words a beautiful invitation—to stillness, to knowing, to being.

The phrase comes from the Book of Psalms and can function as a touchstone of living a grounded spiritual life, a common theme for many journeying on the path of contemplation. But I recently had a startling experience of those very words.

Our church, a Mennonite congregation, has an annual Peace and Justice Sunday, connecting our call to discipleship with liturgy and worship. This year one of the texts was Psalm 46, with its many familiar and moving lines and images. What made it appropriate for this service was its evocation of the God of peace responding to the military madness of the nations: ceasing wars, breaking the bow, shattering the spear, burning the chariot—a full-fledged divine disarming of the raging nations.

And then, verse 10: “Be still and know that I am God.”

As familiar as much of that psalm is, never had I seen this startling truth: This divine call to stillness is part of a psalm praising and exalting God for bringing an end to war.

The core of Psalm 46, in fact, conveys an almost mythic violent tumult—raging, tottering, destroying, burning, the earth melting. The futile violence and madness of arrogant imperial militarism—the perverse human compulsion for power and domination—meets its match in God’s holy desolation, whose ultimate end is the ceasing of human violence. Then God asserts that it is God the Creator who deserves glory and exaltation, not the puny and petty human-wrought kingdoms. And then these startling words, addressed to the nations who would seek glory and exultations themselves: “Be still and know that I am God.”

A little midrash: “Shut up! Silence your vapid proclamations and paltry propaganda! Cease your craziness and destruction! I am the Mighty One, not you! How dare you claim the glory that is mine alone! I’ll show you who is in charge!” The nations, their tools of power demolished, their supposed might disgraced, are chastened into muted humiliation. But they are also invited to a liberating, healing, and salvific awareness: Know the truth of God. Submit to the true order of creation.

In their original context, these beautiful and compelling words are not addressed to an individual spiritual seeker. They are not a beckoning to the contemplative path. They are not a portal into mystical silence.

When we gather for centering prayer, are we misusing this text from the psalm? Are we, as the Western church is so apt to do, commandeering a biblical assertion of the shalom and justice of God in the world and defanging it into a tool for individualist piety? Is this a version of the troubling ecclesial tradition of promoting “spiritual practices” at the expense of living out mercy, compassion, justice, and peacemaking in a world of suffering and violence?

It strikes me that the militant nations of the world referenced in this psalm would be more than delighted for God’s people to engage in such misreading and misdirection. If God’s people are busy contemplating in silence, the nations might feel empowered to continue in their violence and plunder with less concern about facing the authentic power of God.

Those are genuine concerns. But the psalms, as with most of scripture, are not confined to one meaning. While we can grossly misinterpret and misuse biblical texts, they can often speak to persons in many ways and at different levels. What is most compelling is the very point of tension between these two readings of Psalm 46. The psalm can be understood as a dual invitation: Each spiritual seeker is invited to a deep knowing of God, and at the same time, the hearers of this exultant psalm are invited to join in the nonviolent power of God in our world and our history.

The contemplative path—all prayer, in fact—is a journey toward knowing God. As people of faith, we are provided with many signposts as we undertake the journey—including God’s self-revelation in the biblical tradition. The God we yearn to know more deeply is the God of Jesus, the God of the prophets, the God of the two testaments—a gracious, loving Creator, a God of shalom and justice, a God who intervenes in our history, who shatters the weapons of war and foils the power of nations and empires.

In this sense, the stillness and knowing of Psalm 46 takes on a more powerful message: The God we seek to know better through our spiritual disciplines is the same God the nations are chastened to know. The peace that passes all understanding, as Paul puts it, is both the peace of our souls resting in our own belovedness and the peace of human communities that have foresworn the way of weaponry and oppression.

Within the Christian tradition there is a longstanding tension (or an apparent tension) between action and contemplation. But some of our wisest spiritual voices have urged us to transcend this tension and see rather a powerful spiritual symbiosis. “Be still and know that I am God”—these words contain just such an invitation. It suggests that the way of stillness is also a tutelage in being a peacemaker in the world. Ultimately, it is only by glimpsing and experiencing something of the heart of God that we are fully equipped to be present in the violence of history with an alternative vision of shalom. By spiritually surrendering in contemplation (even our fumbling efforts to do so), we can come to a deeper vision of politics and a new energy for activism.

As I undertake the disciplines of contemplative prayer, the knowing of God that I experience within myself is a knowing of God I want to bring to the world—through relationships, through community, through an engaged discipleship committed to peacemaking and justice-building. That is, if I can be still enough to learn and to know.