1 Kings 19, from the King James version


     1: And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, and withal how he
had slain all the prophets with the sword.
2: Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto Elijah, saying, So let the gods do to
me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to
morrow about this time.
3: And when he saw that, he arose, and went for his life, and came to
Beer-sheba, which belongeth to Judah, and left his servant there.
4: But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and
sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might
die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not
better than my fathers.
5: And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel
touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat.
6: And he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a
cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again.
7: And the angel of the LORD came again the second time, and touched him,
and said, Arise and eat; because the journey is too great for thee.
8: And he arose, and did eat and drink, and went in the strength of that
meat forty days and forty nights unto Horeb the mount of God.
9: And he came thither unto a cave, and lodged there; and, behold, the word
of the LORD came to him, and he said unto him, What doest thou here, Elijah?
10: And he said, I have been very jealous for the LORD God of hosts: for
the children of Israel have forsaken thy covenant, thrown down thine
altars, and slain thy prophets with the sword; and I, even I only, am left;
and they seek my life, to take it away.
11: And he said, Go forth, and stand upon the mount before the LORD. And,
behold, the LORD passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains,
and brake in pieces the rocks before the LORD; but the LORD was not in the
wind: and after the wind an earthquake; but the LORD was not in the
earthquake:
12: And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and
after the fire a still small voice.
13: And it was so, when Elijah heard it, that he wrapped his face in his
mantle, and went out, and stood in the entering in of the cave.


See also the temptation of Saint Anthony.



At 05:35 PM 11/26/2005, you wrote:
>Mark Weiss wrote:
>
>>Just to be clear, I'm not trying to be prescriptive, just puzzling over
>>this. There's an alternate tradition of solitary silence, practiced by
>>religious hermits and various Indian subcontinent holy men. It's also
>>recorded in the bible--Elijah's forty days in the wilderness. In Tibetan
>>Buddhist practice adepts sometimes pass three days in silence in total
>>darkness--sensory deprivation as well as silence. American Indian vision
>>quests also were both solitary and silent. So the question is--in what
>>way, and for what reason, the communal or the solitary methods?
>
>I have taken far too much time from what I should be doing. That said,
>the last question defeats me. Except that maybe there is a time when
>silence forcibly separates you from a group of people and you are thrown
>back onto You and whatever you think you believe in? I believe Judy also
>noted the Quaker "lonely crowd" form of silence. I have sat in a meeting
>house with 20 other people and listened to my own heartbeat, felt my own
>terrors, found my way to my own (for the moment) healing. I am in a
>beehive where society stops for an hour, where we're all in our separate
>cells of the hive, alone together.
>
>It seems as though the tradition of solitary silence crosses cultural
>boundaries--the Tibetan total darkness practice is frightening. It
>reminds me of the dreadful punishment-imprisonment of John of the Cross,
>whose own Carmelite order locked him in a dark underground cell for nine
>months before he was able to escape. Out of that ordeal came one of the
>great spiritual poems, "The Dark Night of the Soul," which Juan de la Cruz
>allegedly composed in his head to save his sanity--writing it down was a
>matter of transferring what was in his mind to paper.
>
>I wonder what stages any adept--Juan, the Tibetan Buddhist,
>anyone--endures before he (or she?) comes to acceptance...which I am
>starting to believe is the goal of any spiritually-based ordeal. "This is
>where I am and now. My feet are here, so is my head. I am starting to
>know what I must do...or I trust it will be shown to me when it must
>be." I do not recall whether Elijah in his 40 days in the wilderness was
>shown things or tempted; but the Gospels make it pretty clear that Jesus,
>also (coincidentally), once he has been acknowledged by God to be the Son,
>was transported to the desert for 40 days, and put to the test by Satan or
>some other demonic force. He did not succumb but emerged ready to "go on
>mission." I get the sense that like Abraham, ordered to sacrifice his own
>son and then stopped at the last second, Jesus was learning what he was
>made of. The test was for himself, not to prove anything to his "higher
>power."
>
>Scorsese's film "The Last Temptation of Christ"--with its grotesque
>displays during Jesus' 40 days--remains my favorite in an otherwise
>insufferable subgenre precisely because it deals with the idea of trial
>and interior torment. This is the Jesus who would rather someone else had
>the job. It is un-Orthodox book and film, and wholly moving.
>
>Ken
>
>---------------
>Kenneth Wolman www.kenwolman.com kenwolman.blogspot.com
>
> "You have to be a speedy reader, cause there's
> so, so much to read!" - Dr. Sousé