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The week began with the shocking news that a terrible earthquake had torn through southern Turkey and northern Syria. Another one followed in its wake. Thousands of people have been killed or injured. These earthquakes have happened in already traumatised and tremoring lands, still shaking from war and the resulting refugee crisis. World leaders have rightly pledged to send support. Watching the images of the earthquakes from the safety of my home, I alternated between imagining how horrendous this experience must be to wanting to turn away, to retreat. As I did so, I was reminded of something I learnt from one of my coaching clients who specialises in managing national disasters through natural crises or war and terrorism. He told me that humans can live with the facts of natural and other disasters because, generally, we just don’t believe they will happen to us. On one hand, building a mental retreat like this is a healthy coping mechanism, enabling us free ourselves from terror or emotional paralysis. On the other, this might allow us to excuse ourselves from sustaining the empathy that is needed to respond to distant catastrophes. We’ve been building such escape caves for millennia. The Torah tells the story of the Prophet Elijah who retreats to a cave when he feels under threat, but God challenges him - “Why are you there? Get out!” So, Elijah stands outside and experiences the extremes - first of a tornado, then of an earthquake and the accompanying avalanches and fires. Cataclysmic sights and sounds. In the aftermath of an earthquake, every so often, the rescuers stand in complete silence and just listen. They’re trying to hear any sound, any voice, any indication of life that may have been obscured by the noise of moving rubble. Elijah also experienced quiet and silence after the earthquake. But that wasn’t enough – the most important thing was what happened next. Elijah was commanded to act – not just to listen or to hide in his cave. The quiet voice of God asked him, "So Elijah, what are you going to do now?" I find that story helpful when faced with terrible events such as this earthquake, particularly when - Iike most of us - I can experience so much noise and pressure in my own life. Perhaps those words to Elijah can serve as an encouragement to move out of the safety of our caves, so we can imagine ourselves standing alongside those rescuers, listening intently. Can we allow ourselves to hear even a small, still voice calling to us – “what are you going to do now”?