- Reflections by Bob Garbett
Be Still: and Know
“Be still and know…” Most are familiar with this quote (from the Psalms), yet many are not familiar with its meaning. Many feel that to “know God” means they must always be busy being busy - as “doing” creates the impression of movement and this mostly always feels like progress. Yet in truth, it is mostly regress dressed up - just ask the mouse as it spins its wheel.
The Japanese bullet train (also known as Shinkansen trains) reaches speeds of well over 300km’s an hour. The trains travel through some of the most beautiful parts of Japan, yet those on board describe these same views like the man seeing the sun for the first time, while looking at it through a keyhole, it is mostly a blurred and flurried image.
Any explanation of knowing God is at best partial, incomplete and unfulfilling. Filled with hints, suggestions and the promise of things seen but “not yet seen”.
To “be still” means slowing down. Like an exporting business we give away our busyness. It’s about speed reduction, taking the foot off the accelerator like an importing business. We trade it for the nothingness of silence and solitude. This takes practise. It means developing a practise such as centering, contemplative prayer or meditation.
When our inside states merge, or match with our outside, we begin to see life “as we are”. We take out the key, we unlock the door and God’s life-giving brightness illuminates those darkened rooms, recesses, passageways and corridors - exposing our unloved and unlived fears and all our childhood insecurities, but it’s always the safe-searching light of love. Like a candle bringing the soft embered light into a darkened room that only ever wanted to be bright.
This is not easy. It’s our 'ground zero', from which great things will emerge. It becomes a new space filling up with unimaginable possibilities. These possibilities belong to God in the very best possible meaning and intention of God.
This is not the place where you will feel the need to import your well-worn stories. This same story will begin to change, to assimilate, like water to cordial. Into something so much bigger, so much more beautiful and always better.
God is now your story teller. It’s your always scripted story waiting to be told. To be spoken forth by the best ever story teller. God speaks life and light into all your dreams, visions of greatness. Hidden and crouched in all those unlovable and unliveable dreams.
Within this same sacred space, the truth of this verse begins to unfold. To merge in with our now founded, hidden reality “… that I AM God”. You see, the truth is you can never ever say 'I AM', without also including yourself. God’s 'I AM'-ness flickers and fires our own 'I AM'-ness into being.
