Parker Palmer: On the Brink
“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 and complex projects, but 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 our 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 therefore still called to reach out with love to those who suffer, and to become acquainted with our own suffering and what we can learn from it. Parker Palmer asks us simply to welcome everything, the good and bad that comes into our lives. He 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 heart is supple instead of brittle, it breaks open and allows more love and a new life to come in. Our heart becomes supple by stretching it, taking in all life’s little joys, and also by 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 the contradictions we pretend are not there.
We can now become observers of our world, because most of the rest 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 our own self.
Palmer reminds us of Benedict’s message of “keeping death daily before our eyes.”
In the meantime, we are to 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.”
Joanna. Joannaseibert.com
