Psalm 131 is one of the fifteen Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120-134), pilgrim songs sung by Israelites on the road up to Jerusalem for the festivals. It is attributed to David, and at three verses it is among the shortest psalms in the Psalter. The pilgrim is climbing toward the temple, and on the way he is rehearsing what kind of soul he wants to bring into God's presence. Not an anxious one. Not an ambitious one. A soul that has stopped clamoring — the way a weaned child has stopped grasping at the mother's breast and has learned simply to rest against her.

From the writers we read together

Teresa of Ávila

Spanish Carmelite reformer and mystic (1515-1582), Doctor of the Church

Teresa wrote often about what she called the prayer of quiet — a stage in which the soul stops striving to produce devotion and simply rests in God's presence. She is careful to distinguish this from sleep or vacancy. The will is awake; it just is no longer thrashing. Psalm 131 is, in effect, the biblical caption to that experience. David has not stopped loving God; he has stopped trying to be God. The eyes are lowered. The heart is unraised. The matters too great for him have been handed back to the One they belong to.

Teresa would tell us that this kind of quiet is not a temperament some people are born with. It is a discipline, and most of it is the discipline of letting go of what we were never asked to carry. The weaned child in this psalm did not become calm by force of will; the child became calm by growing past the things it used to demand. Most of our agitation is unweaned wanting — an old hunger we have not yet outgrown. The path forward is not to suppress it but to let God ripen us past it.