"A Hidden Wholeness has helped people in every walk of life rise to the challenge of living 'divided no more.' What leads us to live divided lives that defy our own sense of identity and integrity? When we do, what price do we and the world pay? How can we recover the wholeness that is our birthright gift? Palmer examines the forces that deflect us from the soul's true north and gives us the tools we need to regain our bearings.
Palmer explores perspectives and practices that can help us embody integrity in a world where it often feels risky to be who we are. As we learn how to be present to others in spaces where it's safe for the soul to speak., we find ways to rejoin soul and role in our personal, vocational, and public lives.
Inspired by A Hidden Wholeness—and by the work of the Center for Courage & Renewal, a nonprofit Palmer founded—tens of thousands of people have participated in circles of trust to deepen their sense of “true self” and contribute to the common good.
In the midst of our broken world, the principles and practices in this book can ground us in the 'hidden wholeness,' giving us a place to stand as we seek to live with deeper integrity at every level of our lives."
"'Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?' With this searching question, bestselling author Parker J. Palmer begins his insightful and moving meditation on finding our way toward meaning and purpose. As readers of many ages, backgrounds, and walks of life will attest, Let Your Life Speak is an elegant and openhearted gift to all who seek to live authentically.
Let Your Life Speak offers no simplistic formulas for finding a meaningful path through life's complexities. Instead, it offers real-life experience, thoughtfully mined for insight and wisdom:
● Learn how to listen to your inner teacher and follow its guidance toward a sense of meaning and purpose
● Reframe your life as a series of 'experiments with truth,' learning from those that fail as well as those that work
● Understand that the doors that close behind you can offer as much guidance as those that open up
● Gain inspiration and resolve from the lives of seekers who have walked this path before you
Enjoy the wisdom, compassion, gentle humor, and companionship of a master teacher in a beloved book that has helped hundreds of thousands of people find their way toward meaning and purpose."
"In his newest book, Parker J. Palmer builds on his own extensive experience as a an inner life explorer and social change activist to examine the personal and social infrastructure of American politics. What he did for educators in The Courage to Teach he does here for citizens by looking at the dynamics of our inner lives for clues to reclaiming our civic well-being. In Healing the Heart of Democracy, he points the way to a politics rooted in the commonwealth of compassion and creativity still found among We the People. Democracy, writes Palmer, is a non-stop experiment in the strengths and weaknesses of our political institutions, local communities, and the human heartand its outcome can never be taken for granted. The experiment is endless, unless we blow up the lab, and the explosives to do the job are found within us. But so also is the hearts alchemy that can turn suffering into compassion, conflict into community, and tension into energy for creativity amid democracys demands. Healing the Heart of Democracy names the habits of the heart we need to revitalize our politics and shows how they can be formed in the everyday venues of our lives. Palmer proposes practical and hopeful methods to hold the tensions of our differences in a manner that can help us restore a government of the people, by the people, for the people."
"A call to advance integrative teaching and learning in higher education. From Parker Palmer, best-selling author of The Courage to Teach, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College and director of the academic program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, comes this call to revisit the roots and reclaim the vision of higher education. The Heart of Higher Education proposes an approach to teaching and learning that honors the whole human being--mind, heart, and spirit--an essential integration if we hope to address the complex issues of our time. The book offers a rich interplay of analysis, theory, and proposals for action from two educators and writers who have contributed to developing the field of integrative education over the past few decades. Presents Parker Palmer's powerful response to critics of holistic learning and Arthur Zajonc's elucidation of the relationship between science, the humanities, and the contemplative traditions Explores ways to take steps toward making colleges and universities places that awaken the deepest potential in students, faculty, and staff Offers a practical approach to fostering renewal in higher education through collegiality and conversation The Heart of Higher Education is for all who are new to the field of holistic education, all who want to deepen their understanding of its challenges, and all who want to practice and promote this vital approach to teaching and learning on their campuses."
"From beloved bestselling author Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak) comes a beautiful book of meditations and reflections on eight decades of life, the process of aging, his own spiritual journey (which has never been confined to a creed), and his vocation as a writer and thinker.
On the Brink of Everything is an exploration of Parker Palmer's experience of living and aging, written in hopes of encouraging readers of every age to explore their life course. It is not a 'guide to' or 'handbook' for 'getting old'--something all of us are doing all the time. Instead it's a set of meditations in prose and poetry that turn the prism on the meaning(s) of one's life--and on the importance of staying meaningfully engaged with life until the end. From beginning to end the book is packed with both humor and gravitas."
"A Hidden Wholeness is a thoughtful and heartfelt examination of the sources and consequences of the alienation we feel when our inner and outer lives become divorced from each other, when external forces pressure us to depart from our soul's true yearnings. The book lifts up the problem of the 'divided life,' diagnoses its sources, assesses its personal and social costs, and offers a model of community that will help people live with greater integrity and wholeness.
As he did for vocation in Let Your Life Speak and for inner lives of teachers in The Courage to Teach, bestselling author and teacher Parker J. Palmer speaks to the heart of our yearning for integrity, authenticity, and wholeness in a fractured world.For over a decade, the principles and practices in this book have been proven on the ground—by parents and educators, clergy and politicians, community organizers and corporate executives, physicians and attorneys, and many others who seek to rejoin soul and role in their private and public lives."
""This book is for teachers who have good days and bad-and whose bad days bring the suffering that comes only from something one loves. It is for teachers who refuse to harden their hearts, because they love learners, learning, and the teaching life."- Parker J. Palmer, from the Introduction
For many years, Parker Palmer has worked on behalf of teachers and others who choose their vocations for reasons of the heart but may lose heart because of the troubled, sometimes toxic systems in which they work. Hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from his approach in The Courage to Teach, which takes teachers on an inner journey toward reconnecting with themselves, their students, their colleagues, and their vocations and toward reclaiming their passion for one of the most challenging and important of human endeavors.
This book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique but is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher. Good teaching takes myriad forms, but good teachers share one trait: they are authentically present in the classroom, in community with their students and their subject, weaving connections that help their students weave a world for themselves. The connections made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts-the place where intellect, emotion, spirit, and will converge in the human self-supported by the community that emerges among us when we choose to live authentic lives."
"In this honest and compelling meditation, Parker Palmer reflects upon vocation, spirit, and the life journey with a depth of insight that will touch anyone who yearns for an authentic way of standing and serving in the world. Finding one's calling is not just about finding something we can do—it is about finding what we can'tnotdo.'Let your life speak' is a time-honored Quaker admonition to live one's life as witness to the deepest truths one knows. But as Palmer explains, those words can also mean 'listen to your life, and let it tell you what your truth is.' Vocation, he writes, comes not from external demands but from listening to the 'true self,' a listening that will always call us into some form of service to others.
As Palmer's many readers know, his writing has always been grounded in his own life experience; here he speaks even more vulnerably of his own times of being lost in the dark—as well as moments of stumbling into the light—in his own quest for vocation. Though the details of his journey are singular, he draws from it that which is universal. The result is a moving and illuminating book for anyone who seeks not just a job but a calling and companionship along the way."
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