Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am. Parker J. Palmer More Quotes by Parker J. Palmer More Quotes From Parker J. Palmer Technology is incredibly creative and has great potentials; but it is also very seductive in the way it isolates people, in the way it jazzes people up, in the way it makes junkies out of us - junkies who need a constant stimulation, more information, more bells and whistles, more electronic wonders in order not to be bored. Parker J. Palmer technologyorderpeople The winters will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them. Parker J. Palmer crazywinter In every story I have heard, good teachers share one trait: a strong sense of personal identity infuses their work. Parker J. Palmer strongteachingteacher When we generate utopian visions and hope to make them happen soon – when we elect Barack Obama and expect all our problems to be solved, and solved quickly, by his presidency – the outcome is both predictable and tragic. That is not the way to engage social change in a democracy. And it is not the way to help democracy itself survive and thrive. Democracy is a non-stop experiment. Each generation must help sustain it, which means being in it day-by-day for the long haul. Parker J. Palmer visionlongmean We continually make decisions in private which affect the commonweal, as the ecologists (to take but one example) have shown us. When I keep my house warmer than it needs to be, I consume fuel which might help someone else keep warm, or keep a job. When the food I eat is high on the protein chain I contribute to a maldistribution of protein around the world. When I teach my children to be primarily concerned with private gain, I diminish the ranks of public leadership in the rising generation. Parker J. Palmer decisionjobschildren I want my inner truth to be the plumb line for the choices I make about my life - about the work that I do and how I do it, about the relationships I enter into and how I conduct them. Parker J. Palmer lineschoiceslife Don't let anyone or anything rob you of the beauty and meaning at the heart of life. It's your birthright gift. Parker J. Palmer birthrightheart I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as the hushed descent of a sky full of snow. Parker J. Palmer sightskysnow Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known. Parker J. Palmer engagementencountersworld Perhaps, the answer is that my ravaged mind rails against the idea of God, but something deeper in me calls out as if God might answer. 'There are not foxholes,' I guess, and depression is the deepest and deadliest foxhole I've been in. It may be the 'dark night of the soul' that the mystics talk about but in depression it is not so much that one becomes lost in the dark as one becomes the dark. Parker J. Palmer darkdepressionnight Good teaching cannot be reduced to technique; good teaching comes from the identity and integrity of the teacher. Parker J. Palmer teachingteacherintegrity Whoever our students may be, whatever the subject we teach, ultimately we teach who we are. Parker J. Palmer who-we-areteachingmay As I teach, I project the condition of my soul onto my students, my subject, and our way of being together. Parker J. Palmer soultogetherway The kind of teaching that transforms people does not happen if the student’s inward teacher is ignored… we can speak to the teacher within our students only when we are on speaking terms with the teacher within ourselves. Parker J. Palmer teachingteacherpeople Disabused of our illusions by much travel and travail, we awaken one day to find that the sacred center is here and now - in every moment of the journey, everywhere in the world around us, and deep within our own hearts. Parker J. Palmer one-dayjourneyheart Why does a literary scholar study the world of "fiction"? To show us that the facts can never be understood except in communion with the imagination. Parker J. Palmer imaginationdoefiction Fear is so fundamental to the human condition that all the great spiritual traditions originate in an effort to overcome its effects on our lives. With different words, they all proclaim the same core message: "Be not afraid." Though the traditions vary widely in the ways they propose to take us beyond fear, all hold out the same hope: we can escape fear's paralysis and enter a state of grace where encounters with otherness will not threaten us but will enrich our work and our lives. Parker J. Palmer effortspiritualfear There is a tradition that the church represents, without which we wouldn't have the church, that's all about diving deep beneath the surface of the culture and finding those timeless, eternal truths that the whole Christian enterprise is rooted in. And one of those is that you don't come to God at 180 miles an hour. Parker J. Palmer diving-deepchurchchristian Is the life I'm living the life that wants to live in me? Parker J. Palmer live-lifepositivelife The past isn't fixed and frozen in place. Instead, its meaning changes as life unfolds. Parker J. Palmer frozenfixedpast
