How we travel the arc between our own sunrise and sundown is ours to choose: Will it be denial, defiance, or collaboration?
Author
Parker J. Palmer
Parker J. Palmer is a teacher, author, and founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal. His many books include Healing the Heart of Democracy, Let Your Life Speak, and On the Brink of Everything. He’s also a contributor to the book, Anchored in the Current: Discovering Howard Thurman as Educator, Activist, Guide, and Prophet.
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To see life steadily and see it whole, we must find ways to hold the paradox of life-in-death and death-in-life.
Fragility and vulnerability are rare qualities in today’s political climate. But perhaps that — above all else — is what connects us to each other.
To age with grace and humor is to be continually open to the wonder, mystery, and difficulty of our world.
The dread that comes with charting unknown territory is also an opportunity to embrace new forms of self knowledge — to experience what Wendell Berry calls “our essential loneliness.”
Life is complexity and mystery; so is the poetry and beauty we find in it.
The constant and unrelenting motion of life can make us forget to notice the richness of stillness, of pause. A poem from Pablo Neruda to help you remember.
The galaxy of your inner life is as rich as the sky, as deep as the universe. Parker Palmer shares a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke.
A reflection on living and aging through the poetry of Mary Oliver.
When mornings and evenings roll along, watch how they open and close, how they invite you to the long party that your life is.
As spring approaches — a reminder to open the love letters that nature sends us — in every season.
A reminder for beauty and gratitude in a time when gun violence is at the heart of our public consciousness.
The depth of understanding that diversity can bring is rooted in each of our commitment to never forget our own, small contribution to the world.
In times of anxiety, distraction, and dissonance, it can take courage to turn away — to ground yourself in the focused anger needed to bring about change.
There is joy in seeking out the boundless newness of the world. To embrace this is to welcome the uncertain, the mysterious, the unknowable — whether you are in the spring of youth or the sunset of seniority.
For Black History Month, Parker Palmer commemorates Rosa Parks’s courageous act of civil disobedience and the great change that can come from resisting one’s own diminishment.
Can we stop trying to fool each other and start telling the truth, “lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark?”
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