The reading from 1 Kings includes the verse that is often offered to retreatants, generally on their first day, as they move into the silence and solitude of a directed retreat.
Elijah is in a cave on Horeb, the mountain of God. Those coming on retreat are in their own cave, though one hopes that it is a comfortable room in a retreat house.
God was not in any of the dramatic or obvious places – wind, earthquake and fire. God was in the sound of sheer silence, or as some translations have it, the sound of a gentle breeze.