Parker Palmer: On the Brink of Everything

Parker Palmer: On the Brink

Joanne Blue Mosque

“I’ve lost the capacity for multitasking, but I’ve rediscovered the joy of doing one thing at a time. My thinking has slowed a bit, but experience has made it deeper and richer. I’m done with big, complex projects, but I’m more aware of the loveliness of simple things... I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life.”—Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity & Getting Older (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc., 2018) pp. 1-2. 

Parker Palmer takes us to the brink of an alternative life. It is a slower life where we observe and become aware of so much we missed in this world while living at a frantic pace: cardinals, dolphins, pelicans, hummingbirds, downy woodpeckers, Carolina Chickadees, the ocean, crocus, daffodils, old friends, the list goes on. Parker Palmer has so many suggestions for our new life. First, we are to consider being a mentor, knowing that we will learn as much or more from the one we mentor. Second, we are to be more observant of the world outside of us and inside our inner world.

Palmer reminds us that “violence happens when we do not know what else to do with our suffering.” We are called to reach out with love to those who suffer and become acquainted with our own suffering and what we can learn from it. Parker Palmer simply asks us to welcome everything that comes into our lives, the good and the bad.

Palmer quotes Rumi’s poem, “The Quest House,” reminding us that every part of our life has something to teach us. Palmer talks about how suffering breaks our hearts, but if our hearts are supple instead of brittle, they break open and allow more love and a new life to come in. Our heart becomes supple by stretching it, taking in all of life’s little joys and taking in life’s little deaths without an anesthetic.  

Palmer believes faith allows us to live with all the contradictions of life. However, we become faithless when we are so afraid of contradictions that we pretend they are not there.  

We can now become observers of our world because most of the world does not have time to observe and digest. They simply react.

He reminds us that as long as we only look for results, our tasks become smaller and smaller.

We are to be seed scatterers. Others may plant, Others water. Others reap.  

Palmer’s experience is that solitude is not being apart from others but being apart from ourselves.  

Palmer reminds us of Benedict’s message of “keeping death daily before our eyes.”

Langley Santorini

In the meantime, we must reach out and learn from the younger generation, move toward, not away from, what we fear, and spend as much time as possible in the natural world.

Finally, he reminds us of how essential humor is as we age, quoting William James: “Common sense and a sense of humor are the same things moving at different speeds. Humor is common sense dancing.”

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com  https://www.joannaseibert.com/

 

The Ache for Home by The Reverend Barkley Thompson

The Ache for Home by The Reverend Barkley Thompson

The baby who almost lost his hands, Christmas at grandparents, beach vacations with grandparents, fish for people as a noun, not a verb, unused switches, grandfather teaching you to swim, widows, a mother transfigured when harm might come to her firstborn, a small town lawyer’s waiting room, chased by death in a graveyard, a child’s first encounter with death, tuna fish and Alzheimer’s Disease, a lost eyeball, chocolates from Iceland, Vienna sausages, the greatest gift, paper grocery sacks nativity pageants.

Do any of these stories of childhood memories resonate with you? They and more are in the Reverend Barkley Thompson’s newest book, The Ache for Home. The stories are parts of sermons that, in the end, called Barkley back to his home state of Arkansas after he had served churches in Memphis and Roanoke and as the dean of Christ Church Cathedral in Houston, Texas.

Of course, the great preachers bring you to see God in your own experience as they tell their story, and Barkley is the master of this. I have been reminded of the unconditional love that flowed from grandparents who taught me about love. I remember the nativity pageants we had in my childhood playhouse for our neighborhood, the nativity pageants at all the churches I have served, and especially the pageants written, costumed, and performed by our grandchildren.

Barkley is an outstanding preacher, and all of Barkley’s sermons connect us to the scripture he brings to life with his stories—so many excellent sermons. My favorite is his preaching on the Transfiguration from Mark’s gospel. Get his book just for that one.

 Barkley’s stories and sermons also take us home, as he experiences what home is—not a place in time, but a place that first called us to a relationship with God. We give thanks to those who were there to mentor us, be our advocates, love us, and connect us to the love so great that only comes from the God of love. This is home.

Joanna Seibert

 

Our Neighbors

Our Neighbors

“The hardest spiritual work in the world is to love the neighbor as the self—to encounter another human being, not as someone you can use, change, fix, help, save, enroll, convince, or control, but simply as someone who can spring you from the prison of yourself, if you will allow it.”—Barbara Brown Taylor in An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith (HarperOne. 2010).

Our older son once took his daughter to high school each day on his way to work, before she started driving. If they had extra time, they would stop at their favorite coffee or smoothie haunt and have a cup of coffee, hot chocolate, or smoothie together. What a treasure it can be to have a few minutes a day with one of your parents, and maybe even share a cup of your favorite comfort drink. They are both introverts, so they may not say much, but each offers the other a presence in this one-on-one experience and a chance to get to know each other better.

I grew up in a small town with fantastic neighbors. Mrs. Rick, a widow with pearl-white hair, lived across the street in a house that seemed huge at the time. One of our neighbors on Second Street had to move away due to health reasons. Mrs. Rick then started walking at 9:00 every morning for seven blocks from Second Street to Ninth Street, up to Riddle’s Drug Store, to meet her neighbor for coffee. Our next-door neighbor, Paul, cut Mrs. Rick’s grass every week.

I have a friend who calls me every morning. Unfortunately, most people are too busy working to contact or talk to one person a day regularly and realize it is a pure gift.

These are the kinds of relationships that work best to “spring” us from ourselves. We don’t have to pretend anymore. Other people can learn who we indeed are if we allow such intimacy. When we are with them, we begin to let down our masks and become the person God created us to be.

I share more pictures of our neighbors across the street.