Quotes from Parker J. Palmer

Rightly understood, a myth is an effort to tell truths that cannot be told with mere facts or known by the senses and the mind alone, truths that take form only in that integrative place called the heart.

Violence is what we get when we do not know what else to do with our suffering.

no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring in their own diminishment.

For the good [person] to realize that it is better to be whole than to be good is to enter on a strait and narrow path compared to which his [or her] previous rectitude was flowery license.

The human self also has a nature, limits as well as potentials. If you seek vocation without understanding the material you are working with, what you build with your life will be ungainly and may well put lives in peril, your own and some of those around you. 'Faking it' in the service of high values is no virtue and has nothing to do with vocation. It is an ignorant, sometimes arrogant, attempt to override one's nature, and it will always fail.

The writer Anne Lamott says, "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."28

The English word "truth" comes from a Germanic root that also gives rise to our word "troth," as in the ancient vow "I pledge thee my troth." With this word one person enters a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in mutually accountable and transforming relationship...to know in truth is to become betrothed, to engage the known with one's whole self...to know in truth is to be known as well.

does it mean to listen to a voice before it is

First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader. Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher's voice

the ancient human question "Who am l?" leads inevitably to the equally important question "Whose am l?"-for there is no selfhood outside of relationship.

But many educated Americans who rise to positions of responsibility believe they must operate almost exclusively on the basis of what can be observed and measured because they are educated in a system that mistakenly defines reality that way. And yet, everything human is driven by the invisible powers of the heart.

When we allow emotions to trump the intellect, we swallow "facts" that are demonstrably untrue, letting them fly around unchallenged in a mockery of civic discourse, supporting public figures who promote fictions to further their own cause.

Today I understand vocation quite differently- not as a goal to be achieved but as a gift to be received. Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess. Vocation does not come from a voice "out there" calling me to become something I am not. It comes from a voice "in here" calling me to be the person I was born to be, to fulfill the original selfhood given me at birth by God

teacher within is not the voice of conscience but of identity and integrity. It speaks not of what ought to be but of what is real for us, of what is true. It says things like, "This is what fits you and this is what doesn't"; "This is who you are and this is who you are not"; "This is what gives you life and this is what kills your spirit—or makes you wish you were dead.

What seed was planted when you or I arrived on earth with our identities intact? How can we recall and reclaim those birthright gifts and potentials?

I have been astonished to see how nature uses devastation to stimulate new growth, slowly but persistently healing her own wounds.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore, we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we are saved by love.14

when we live behind a wall, our inner darkness cannot be penetrated by the light that is in the world. In fact, all we can see "out there" is darkness, not realizing how much of it is of our own making! As a young man, the wall allowed me to cast my own darkness on others while remaining blissfully ignorant of how they saw me.

The powers and principalities would hold less sway over our lives if we refused to collaborate with them. But refusal is risky, so we deny our own truth, take up lives of "self-impersonation," and betray our identities.2

the reality we belong to, the reality we long to know, extends far beyond human beings interacting with one another.

Teaching holds a mirror to the soul. If I am willing to look in that mirror and not run from what I see I have a chance to gain self knowledge and knowing myself is as crucial to good teaching as knowing my students and my subject. In fact, knowing my students and my subject depends heavily on self knowledge.

Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already possess.

Today education has become a training ground for competition.

During the Civil War, traumatized combatants developed a condition that they called "soldier's heart."8 The violence that results in soldier's heart shatters a person's sense of self and community, and war is not the only setting in which violence is done: violence is done whenever we violate another's integrity. Thus we do violence in politics when we demonize the opposition or ignore urgent human needs in favor of politically expedient decisions.