Quiet: Elijah's example



Elijah's Cave on Mount Carmel (by deror avi)

At Passover Seders, a place setting is usually reserved for the prophet Elijah.  Reverend Amy Zucker Morgenstern reports that this could consist of “a comfortable chair in place, the silver polished, the best plates laid out, the crystal goblet gleaming, for the Old Testament prophet…”

However, Elijah has ostensibly kept folks waiting for his arrival – year after year.  Is this because the world is not ready for his return?  Or is it instead because Elijah is already here – within the silence that only seems like an absence…

Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking helps today’s extroverted society to better understand what it means to listen for that “still small voice within” (a voice so compelling that it is “the only tyrant” that Mahatma Gandhi stated he would “accept in the world”).  According to Bernard Vaughan of Reuters, Cain contrasts industrial America’s “Extrovert Ideal” to America’s erstwhile predominant “values like self-discipline and stolid personal honor.”  Cain also references the “Confucian heritage of Asia, as seen in many quiet Asian students in the United States” - and explains that “Chinese high school students prefer friends who are humble, altruistic and honest,” whereas “American high school students seek out the cheerful, enthusiastic and sociable.”

Cain also discusses introverts from an individual perspective.  She suggests that “introverts may be born more than made” – and doubts whether Bill Gates would ever be a Bill Clinton, or vice versa.  During an Amazon Exclusive Q & A session, Cain discloses that she herself is an introvert who once feared that this would get in the way of her professional ambitions.  She instead found that it lent strength to her corporate-law career - due to her introvert abilities to quietly get a lot of work done, listen intently for important information, and build loyal one-on-one alliances.

She strongly recommends giving introverts the space, privacy and understanding that they need in order to

attend to that “still small voice within” (and Elijah may soon be raising his crystal goblet in silent assent).

Resources

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/02/13/us-books-introverts-idUSTRE81C20J20120213

http://www.amazon.com/Quiet-Power-Introverts-World-Talking/dp/0307352145/ref%3dsr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1329740499&sr=1-1

http://www.uucpa.org/sermons_06/sermon060409.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elijah

http://salemos.tripod.com/index-5.html

Copyright April 5, 2012 by Linda Van Slyke   All Rights Reserved