PAUSE

Being in new environments, there is a plethora of fresh external stimuli that keeps me on high alert and my senses engaged. Since they are new and fresh, I can’t coast along like a pro, and understandably, while the stimuli are not overly exciting, they are neither pallid nor boring. One stimulus that begs my full attention is the movement and flow of traffic. (We are currently in Bandung, Indonesia as I write.) Due to the army of scooters not unlike busy bees buzzing around a flower garden from one flower to another, in addition to cars and buses of all sizes, in an already crammed and narrow streets often with no signal lights, one must be on full alert, especially for someone who is on foot. I heard that only foreigners walk around everywhere in town and that is us. As it is hard to walk side by side with my wife next to me, we often walk in a single file with me in front. As such, it adds an extra dimension of mindfulness on my part assuring my wife is okay behind me. I wish I had eyes on the back of my head. And no, I do not want you to imagine . . . 

While the external stimuli work overtime whenever we step out, my internal orientation is in deep peace and my soul serene. It is like watching lightning and thunderstorms and the whole works followed by a torrential downpour while sipping coffee indoors with a good book in my hand. This repeated scene has been etched in my mind in our Southeast Asia swing. Peace is not an absence of troubles or concerns. It is the peace and contentment of being in the right places at the right time, in step with the Giver of Peace. The inner peace allows us to lay a spacious foundation of listening to people we meet with. During our Asian trekking so far, our ministry is that of deep loving listening. We lean in to listen and create a safe and sacred space. Often, there is no fixing, providing solutions, or advising on our part. A few times we have offered “next steps,” we speak tenderly, using tentative and wondering language. And we couch our offerings based on our unique and personal journeys. Thus, they are invited to accept, mull over, or simply pass on. 

The people we have listened to range from younger to older, from singles to couples, from Protestants to Catholics, and from destitute to grateful, and from confused to clear. We have listened to people in cars, buses, in their homes, cafes, restaurants, while walking, and over zoom. Our ears are bigger and our hearts more capacious. The joy of listening blossoms as God encourages us when we share the joy of people discovering their answers to their own questions and finding their next steps, both big and small. Most of the time, I do not have answers. Even on the few occasions when I thought I had some clever advice, I pulled back largely because of my experiences of how I have grown and learned through self-discovery.

Looking back, I have grown the most at times through raising questions, and seldom through answers. Finding answers is one-layered learning whereas questioning forces multiple-layered learning and often burrows into deeper probing beyond the original question. Pursuing questions with questions allows me to dig deep and deeper. There has been a progression of learning in my life: from answering questions to questioning the answers to questioning the questions. (Tangentially, this trajectory of learning congrueres a great deal with the life stages of construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction. In the reconstruction phase of our life, we end up in a very different place from where we started, but it needed all our construction and deconstruction phases to get there. Nothing is wasted in that sense.)

While in Singapore, I realized that there is one more necessary element toward growth and maturity. In fact, it stands shoulder to shoulder with questioning; it is pause. Or Selah as the psalmists called it. While framed as punctuated insertions in poetic lines or songs, I think much of the Psalms is trying to grope with the reality of who God is and how God “walks” on the earth. The groping is questioning, questioning to understand what can be understood and what cannot be. Mystery is not mystery because it is unknowable. Rather, mystery is mystery because it is endlessly knowable, like endless-layered seeing, perceiving, and understanding. (I owe this insight to Richard Rohr.) In this vein, we see and grow in what can be known and understood in a series of depth in selah. Letting go or unknowing what we think are the knowns, we are positioned to know the unknowable layer after layer. Naturally, the deeper and more profound the questions, the longer the pause. The word selah in the Psalms, which appears 74 times, means “stop and listen.” While we can listen on the fly, deep listening to God, ourselves, and others is not possible without stopping. We stop to listen, and we listen to stop. 

Pause or selah is entering God’s domain, inviting us to relinquish our control or our need for control. Pause is the sacred space where God is God, and we are reminded we are mere mortals. Pause embraces confusion and feeling distraught without needing to fix or seeking untimely solutions. Pause creates the space where primal hope and faith reside. Pause necessitates our letting go of control. Pause is not pause when still holding onto control and our sense of clarity. Pause is because clarity isn’t. As long as one tries to maintain control and clarity, one cannot properly enter pause. Selah is an act of faith, the highest and the purest kind, that transfers our ownership of control to God and God’s timing. (The thought that we actually own anything is an illusion to begin with.) As God’s time is not our time, waiting for God’s time (which is waiting for God) stands as a repetitive theme of the entire Psalms. The repeated interplay of question and the selah provide the most perfect breeding ground for deep transformation. It is the holy ground where we are invited to “take off our shoes,” enter God’s domain (Kingdom), and properly align with God’s grace-filled sovereignty and mystery.