Parker Palmer
Parker Palmer
Parker J. Palmeris an author, educator, and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He is the founder and Senior Partner of the Center for Courage & Renewal...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
CountryUnited States of America
daunting demands exempt expected knows life might nobody nor required tasks
When I was depressed, nobody expected anything of me, nor did I expect anything of myself. I was exempt from life's demands and risks. But if I were to find new life, who knows what daunting tasks I might be required to take on?
land people proposing solutions spent time
Proposing inner-life solutions to our political and economic catastrophes is something done, say the critics, only by people who've spent more time in la-la land than in the 'real world.'
believed founders range rejected wide
Whatever America's founders believed about Christianity - and they believed a wide range of things - they clearly rejected the idea of an established church.
audience deformed instead members religious spectator sports
We have been deformed by educational and religious institutions that treat us as members of an audience instead of actors in a drama, so we become adults who treat democracy as a spectator sport.
gonna hang whether
Whether we're Democrats or Republicans or independents, we have to learn to hang together or we're gonna hang separately.
arrogance god opposed political religious special standing truth
As a Christian, I'm passionately opposed to American pretensions that we have special standing with God; to political office-seekers who play on our religious differences; and to the religious arrogance that says, 'Our truth is the only truth.'
million ought ways
There are a million 'oughts' in the world. There's a million ways in which I ought to be serving the world. But the ways I'm gifted to serve and the opportunities that come to me to serve are not a million.
academic lively overwhelms passes passive realism social tool
What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.
america anesthesia forms illusion mass media power pumped understand various wealth
I think there's a lot of anesthesia being - that's been pumped into American culture, the mass media television, various forms of entertainment, and the illusion of wealth that we now understand to be an illusion as well as the illusion that America is a world power.
choosing claims happens including mysteries pretend religious rooted worth
Every religious tradition is rooted in mysteries I don't pretend to understand, including claims about what happens after we die. But this I know for sure: as long as we're alive, choosing resurrection is always worth the risk.
crises dependent ecological fact global profoundly reveal vivid
We are a profoundly interconnected species, as the global economic and ecological crises reveal in vivid and frightening detail. We must embrace the simple fact that we are dependent on and accountable to one another.
begin contradict critical deeply demands external inner inward movements oppressed people respect stop truth worthy
Movements begin when oppressed people make - and keep remaking - a deeply inward decision to stop consenting to external demands that contradict a critical inner truth, the truth that they are worthy of respect.
democratic fascist invite literally movements
Fascist movements kill off their critics, literally or metaphorically, while democratic movements value, invite and even welcome criticism.
beyond education gift life
Even when life challenges us, it's a gift beyond all measure.