Book Review: On the Brink of Everything, by Parker Palmer

There’s a lot to love in this little book. Parker Palmer is one of my favorite spiritual authors, and I’ve been fortunate to see him speak a few times. His humility and wisdom are so refreshing and needed these days, and as he ages, his readers just get more of both. This book speaks to my time of life and the subtitle says it all: grace, gravity, and getting old.

Parker says we need to reframe aging as “a passage of discovery and engagement, not decline and inaction.” Then he goes on to tell us what that looks like for him through essays, poems, and stories, plus a good sprinkling of quotes from other wise people. Lots of Thomas Merton. This is a relaxed and friendly read, and his take on spirituality is the same: “an endless effort to penetrate illusion and touch reality.”

No matter your age or spiritual background (or lack thereof), this book could do you good — especially if you have an activist’s heart.

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*** Let me apologize for WordPress. Apparently the powers that be decided to completely change the way this site works, and I can’t figure it out, nor have I the inclination to at present. Figures that the only technology I had even a tenuous grip on is now no more. It really was the only user-friendly blog platform I’d found, and now — not so much. So I am unable to categorize or label my blogs, but I’m sending this out anyway. ***

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Beware trump Boredom

It’s finally happening, the thing I have been dreading but also secretly hoping for. I am getting bored. Bored with the chaos, crimes, and corruption in the White House. Bored with the lies, the golf, the ego, the tweets. Bored with the ludicrous nominations of trump’s unqualified buddies, the hate-filled attacks on the free press, the blatant attempts to undermine our judicial system, the straight-up cruelty towards poor people, immigrants, and future generations who will view this administration as the final nail in the climate coffin.

My boredom is absolutely not OK. Detachment is one thing; I have been intentionally learning to enjoy life even as the travesty plays out (while acknowledging this as my white privilege). But boredom and passivity? Not acceptable. They indicate that I am being lulled into normalizing a situation that is anything but normal. 

Still, it’s hard to hold all the outrage and deep sadness. It wears you down, eats at you from the inside out. As someone who spent her career promoting environmental protection, this is an especially dark time.

Holding on for dear life

What To Do With The Anger?

I recently heard Parker Palmer speak at the Festival of Faith & Writing at Calvin College. The man speaks truth. I appreciated his statement that our anger is fine, it’s good, it’s God’s own righteous anger on behalf of the oppressed, the marginalized, the earth. God’s righteous anger is splashed all over “the good book” that the evangelicals wave around at trump rallies. The question is, what does one do with the anger?

Parker Palmer at the Festival of Faith & Writing

As Parker spoke, I was abruptly overtaken by a conviction that I have not been doing my best during this national crisis. I have sometimes added to the negativity. Fear has stoked anger has stoked cynicism has stoked despair. Also panic. I try (mostly) to walk as near to God as I can manage, yet none of these emotions come from God, except my healthy anger.

No, I have not been doing my best.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. It’s why I haven’t written much lately. I’m processing. I don’t want to spew more anger and divisiveness into the atmosphere. That is precisely what the raging attacker in the White House is doing, and I hate it. But I’m not sure how to be constructive. I know I’m not alone in this — constructive voices are few, far between, and usually ignored.

Anyway, I think my recent desire to do better may have led to my boredom. If I cannot churn out a blog-blast full of anger and snarky cynicism, I have nothing to do with my emotions. I can’t let them build up or I’d explode, and so I just . . . deflate. I look at my inner turmoil and say, “Oh look, more outrage and despair. Ho-hum.”

At Present, There’s Only One Thing I Can Do

In the same good book that talks about God’s great love and Her outrage on behalf of the marginalized and the outcasts, there is the following advice:

“Have no anxiety about anything. But in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” {Philippians 4: 6-7}

This is one of my favorite pieces of scripture. So in this spirit, I pray —

God thank you for this beautiful country, for this grand experiment in building a just and free society. It’s not working, God, and it’s getting scary. I am deeply grieved, and I confess I sometimes despair. My heart is broken for the dying coral reefs, the dying polar bears, the dying frogs and fish. I weep for the island people around the globe whose homes are disappearing, and for the children who will follow our folly. I weep for black teenagers dead in the street. I weep for their mothers.

God, money has become our idol. So-called leaders take millions from weapons merchants who put profits and power over the lives of school children, from prison machines that profit from incarcerating our young people, from a military addiction that feeds endless war, and from heartless corporations that intentionally spew poisons into our air and water.

God, we are sick. We are very, very sick. We really screwed up, bigly. Please. Fix. This. Amen.

“You are the light of the world.” On a good day.

Meddlesome Voices

I know a few folks for whom meddling in other’s lives is a full-time endeavor. They are certain that they know best, and they become frustrated or angry when their targets don’t follow their wise guidance on everything from the best butter substitute to a choice of careers to what one’s relationship with the Divine should look like.

You know these people, too. Perhaps you are one them. You may think you are being helpful or kind or even a martyr on someone else’s behalf. But if you are doing for someone else what they could do for themselves or trying to influence choices that are not yours to make, you are meddling.

Manipulating, even.

Ouch! Isn’t that an awful word? When I discovered that many of my interactions with others could easily fall under the category of manipulation — trying to get someone to believe or act in a way that might make me more comfortable — I cringed. I’ve worked hard to overcome this trait, which I learned from my family. I now have a permanent groove in my tongue where I bite it. This practice will remain necessary unless and until I finally believe that I do not, in fact, know best.

I have enough challenges managing my own life. I do not need “extra credit” for managing the lives of others. Even if they seem willing or eager for me to make their decisions for them.

Which brings me to something that can be even more destructive than those who meddle in other people’s lives: those who allow others to meddle in their own lives.

Letting Your Life Speak

I’m in the midst of making an important decision that could affect me heavily for the next few years at least. It’s a vocational type of decision: how do I spend my daily-dwindling time here on earth? Where do I invest my emotional energy? How do I employ the expertise and experience I’ve garnered thus far?

As Quaker author and activist Parker Palmer writes, “The deepest vocational question is not ‘What ought I to do with my life?’ It is the more elemental and demanding, ‘Who am I? What is my nature?’”

Whenever I’m faced with a major decision in this realm, I re-read Parker’s book Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation. There’s an astonishing amount of wisdom in this little hundred-page book, and it’s one of those reads that offers deeper and different wisdom with each visit.

One of Parker’s main points is that we are all born with a true self, a true nature, and then sadly, “From our first days in school, we are taught to listen to everything and everybody but ourselves,” gleaning who we are  “. . . from the people and powers around us.” Meddlesome voices. 

All of our institutions train us “away from true self towards images of acceptability . . . we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others.”

This is a great weakness of mine, a painful “thorn in my flesh.” I know I’m not the only one with this need to please and a burdensome desire for recognition and esteem. Millions of true selves are being trampled by stampeding egos chasing the values of others rather than discerning and honoring their own.

My first inclination when faced with a big decision is to read books, talk to friends, and ponder possible scenarios to imagine how they might appear to others. In other words, to look outside myself. That’s all fine. It’s raw material.

But I must be careful that I don’t end up using another’s navigational system rather than my own inner compass. My “inner light,” as the Quakers call it. I need to get down to the business of prayer, meditation, journaling, and connecting with God in nature, because those are my channels for a voice that is “different than the ‘I’ of daily consciousness, a life that is trying to live through the ‘I’ who is its vessel,” as Parker describes it.

This means tuning out all the well-meaning (or not) meddlesome voices — past, present, and imagined future — and letting your own life speak.

 

“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 Palmer