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Quiet and Loud: Not A Matter of Volume?


Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody (I Thessalonians 4:11-12)
            In our age of desperate attention-seeking, overloaded with selfies and status updates, it's a bit of a challenge to consider living a quiet life that wins respect. This might be partly because in our society, there is so little consensus about what quiet person is like, or what is worthy of respect. I value being quiet, but I'm not usually either afraid or reluctant to speak my mind. I want to be invisible, but I feel driven to express what I believe to be truth. As I read through Paul's letters, I find myself concluding that I'm a third rate Paul (OK, I'm not sure I'd rank as high as a third rate.)
            I'm not sure that's what Paul was writing about to the Thessalonians. Over the past couple  years, I've read a couple books on the Civil Rights Movements of the 50s ad 60s. Camelot And The Cultural Revolution argues that the assassination of John F. Kennedy ended one Civil Rights Movement and started another, darker one. I'm not sure the timing is exact, and I'm not sure that the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. was not part of what caused that change, but the point is that what started as peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience became violence, and that method remains with  us today. In our society it's about power over others, not power over one-self.
         Is this the difference between quiet and loud? Quiet does not retreat, but it is gentle. Loud may or may not retreat, but it is violent. Quiet would rather work in the garden, loud cannot wait to get to the streets. Quiet spends decades working for end an injustice. Loud loots and destroys. Quiet convinces. Loud shames.  Quiet may be respected. Loud is (at best) feared. Quiet can and will stand alone. Loud is looking for an audience, and is dependent on that audience for support.

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