Speaker 1: We have multiple voices within us, and it's not always clear,
Speaker 1: even when we're not in a state of depression, that
Speaker 1: we're listening to true self. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed throughout time. Great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true, and yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Parker Palmer, an author, educator, and activist
Speaker 1: who focuses on issues and education, community leadership, spirituality, and
Speaker 1: social change. Parker is the founder and senior partner of
Speaker 1: the Center for Courage and Renewal. He's also the author
Speaker 1: of many books, including A Hidden Wholeness the journey toward
Speaker 1: an undivided life. And here's the interview with Parker Palmer. Hi, Parker,
Speaker 1: welcome to the show. Thank you, very good to be
Speaker 1: with you. I'm happy to have you on UM. I've
Speaker 1: had a chance to explore some of your work, particularly
Speaker 1: in depth over the last week, and I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot that that really spoke to me about it,
Speaker 1: and I look forward to getting into some of those details.
Speaker 1: Before we do that, though, Let's start like we always do,
Speaker 1: with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his
Speaker 1: grandson and he says, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always at battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which
Speaker 1: represents things like greed, hatred, and fear. And the grandson
Speaker 1: stops for a second. He looks up at his grandfather
Speaker 1: and he says, grandfather, which one wins, And the grandfather
Speaker 1: quietly replies, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what that parable means to
Speaker 1: you in your life and in the work that you do.
Speaker 1: I think it's a fascinating story, and I suppose paradoxical
Speaker 1: reactions to it. As you may know, paradox is a
Speaker 1: big word in my vocabulary, and we will probably return
Speaker 1: to it. On the one hand, I agree completely that
Speaker 1: we have these uh contrary forces inside of us, the
Speaker 1: forces of light on the forces of darkness, and a
Speaker 1: lot depends on on which one we feed. Um. I.
Speaker 1: When I first read that parable years ago, I thought
Speaker 1: of Abraham Lincoln's appeal to the better angels of our nature,
Speaker 1: and of course in doing so, he was also implying
Speaker 1: that we have lesser angels in there as well. So
Speaker 1: on that level, I'm I'm with the parable. On another level,
Speaker 1: I wrestle with the implications a little bit in the
Speaker 1: sense that but I think that in the long run,
Speaker 1: human wholeness has a lot to do with integrating the
Speaker 1: light and the dark in us, rather than trying to
Speaker 1: overwhelm one with the other, rather than trying to imagine
Speaker 1: that it's possible to drive out the darkness. Um. It
Speaker 1: seems to me that we always live with our with
Speaker 1: our shadows, partly because they're the hardest things for us
Speaker 1: to see in ourselves. We can we can see the
Speaker 1: auto in another person quite easily. Oh he or she
Speaker 1: is greedy or or resentful or angry or whatever, but
Speaker 1: we have a harder time seeing that in ourselves. I
Speaker 1: want to find wholeness as in this way, wholeness is
Speaker 1: not perfection. Wholeness is about embracing all of what we
Speaker 1: are and and acknowledging that our darkness is as important
Speaker 1: as as our light and sort of holding that in
Speaker 1: our in our conscious awareness as we go through the day, um,
Speaker 1: so that we can kind of manage our lives in
Speaker 1: that complicated force field. So, like most stories or parables
Speaker 1: or metaphors, that one sort opens up a whole raft
Speaker 1: of questions for me that I find very fruitful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I agree. I think it's on the surface, it's very straightforward.
Speaker 1: You kind of get it and it's about choice and
Speaker 1: then but as you go further into it, there really
Speaker 1: are these these things about how do we work with
Speaker 1: those bad wolf part of ourselves? You know. I think
Speaker 1: it's like as a parable it just at a certain
Speaker 1: point you're like, well, it's not a literal story, so
Speaker 1: you you can't take it that way. But the show
Speaker 1: has really spent a lot of time, I think exploring
Speaker 1: how we work with with both parts of that and
Speaker 1: You've got a number of books. I spent time mainly
Speaker 1: with two of them, Um, and we'll we'll start with
Speaker 1: the first one that I read, which is called Hidden Wholeness,
Speaker 1: the journey towards an undivided life. And this really gets
Speaker 1: to kind of what you were just talking about in
Speaker 1: the Integration of the Wolves. Now, I have to say
Speaker 1: that anybody that starts a book with a Leonard Cohen
Speaker 1: quote is always going to be a favorite of mine. Um.
Speaker 1: And you you start the book by by quoting a
Speaker 1: line of his from the song the Future. It says,
Speaker 1: the blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold and
Speaker 1: it has overturned the order of the soul. And what
Speaker 1: I'd like to start talking about is this idea of
Speaker 1: the soul. It it comes up a lot in your writing,
Speaker 1: and I was wondering if you could explain what that
Speaker 1: means to you. Well, I'll take my best shot. Um.
Speaker 1: I hesitate a bit because I think ultimately soul is
Speaker 1: a word that points toward a mystery which we know
Speaker 1: by many names, and for which no one has the
Speaker 1: right name. The closest I've ever been able to come
Speaker 1: to what I might mean by soul is the being
Speaker 1: and human being, but other traditions name it in other
Speaker 1: ways of Secular Humanists call it identity and integrity, Buddhists
Speaker 1: call it big Self. Thomas Merton called it true self.
Speaker 1: The Hasidic Jews call it the spark of the divine
Speaker 1: and every being. I've always said that it doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to me what you call it, since no one knows
Speaker 1: its true name, and fighting over the name seems utterly
Speaker 1: nonsensical to me. But it does matter to me that
Speaker 1: you call it something, because if you don't, if you
Speaker 1: don't have a name for it by way of acknowledging
Speaker 1: its existence, it's it's reality. Then it seems to me
Speaker 1: we end up treating ourselves and each other as objects
Speaker 1: to be manipulated or manufactured into whatever shape the culture
Speaker 1: wants us to take, or empty vessels to be filled
Speaker 1: with other people's knowledge and quote, wisdom and guidance. So
Speaker 1: I think the naming of this mystery within the human
Speaker 1: self is a way of making a deep vow to
Speaker 1: every person, because every person has this thing called soul,
Speaker 1: whatever whatever it may be. I think for me, the
Speaker 1: discovery of soul happened under extremely stressful, difficult, dark circumstances,
Speaker 1: namely by own journey into clinical depression three times in
Speaker 1: my adult life, And whenever you'd like, I'd be glad
Speaker 1: to talk more about that. We don't mention depression on
Speaker 1: this show never. I'm sure you're talking about human experience.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you never do. I'm a fellow sufferer, and
Speaker 1: it it comes up often. How long ago was your last,
Speaker 1: you know, major episode? And I'd be curious how much
Speaker 1: of it sort of happens at a more minor level
Speaker 1: for you when you're not in the middle of a
Speaker 1: major episode. Is a kind of an on off switch
Speaker 1: or is it? Is there a gradient there for you? Well,
Speaker 1: I think like most of us, I you know, I
Speaker 1: swing through a certain range of moods day by day,
Speaker 1: like weather moving through. But as all of us who
Speaker 1: have experienced clinical depression, no, it's not at all like
Speaker 1: being sad or feeling bad. Um. In fact, one of
Speaker 1: the features of depression that's so terrifying, as you really
Speaker 1: can't feel anything, your your emotions are gone. So my
Speaker 1: my most recent experience was what twelve years ago, when
Speaker 1: I was sixty five years old. My two prior experiences
Speaker 1: were in my forties, my early forties and then my
Speaker 1: late forties. So the one at age sixty five I'm
Speaker 1: now seventy seven. The one at age sixty five took
Speaker 1: me by surprise. But what I what I mean the
Speaker 1: perl of great price. In these very long, months long
Speaker 1: um journeys underground, I used to say depression is like
Speaker 1: being lost in the dark, but I eventually refined that
Speaker 1: to say depression is like becoming the dark, which is
Speaker 1: quite a different thing. Um. You know, when when you're
Speaker 1: in depression, you don't have that capacity to take the
Speaker 1: balcony view of yourself and say, oh, I see what's
Speaker 1: going on with me, as we can when we're angry
Speaker 1: or having other sort of normal range emotions. And once
Speaker 1: we can get in the balcony and get a look
Speaker 1: at ourselves, we can often find a way out. But
Speaker 1: when you have become the darkness, you don't have any
Speaker 1: outside view of it. You don't have any leverage on it.
Speaker 1: But I discovered in depression, and of course some of
Speaker 1: this is in the aftermath or on your way out,
Speaker 1: I discovered that the faculties that I normally depend on
Speaker 1: we're dead and gone. And there are four of them
Speaker 1: that I at least depend on with some regularity. One
Speaker 1: is my intellect, another is my ego, another is my emotions,
Speaker 1: and another is my will. Well, in depression, you can't
Speaker 1: think your way out of it, so the intellect is useless.
Speaker 1: Your ego is shattered. You have no sense of self,
Speaker 1: so that doesn't work either. Your emotions, as I have said,
Speaker 1: are dead and gone. You can't feel anything, and your
Speaker 1: will power is limited to the tiniest, tiniest steps, like
Speaker 1: getting up at eleven o'clock instead of eleven thirty, being
Speaker 1: able to to face the day just a little earlier.
Speaker 1: And it was under those circumstances that I began to
Speaker 1: dissense from time to time that there was this little
Speaker 1: tiny spark of life way back in the thickets of
Speaker 1: of the dark forest, that my life had become that
Speaker 1: wanted me to stay alive. I came to liken it
Speaker 1: to a wild animal, which is very very widely and
Speaker 1: can can tough, and can survive where there's little to
Speaker 1: eat and little encouragement, but like the wild animal, is
Speaker 1: also very very shy. And I became very interested, under
Speaker 1: those circumstances, in what it might be like to create
Speaker 1: conditions where the soul or whatever you want to call
Speaker 1: it could put in a more regular appearance than it
Speaker 1: does in normal, everyday society, where we create so many
Speaker 1: conditions that that drive the shy soul back into hiding.
Speaker 1: As I like to say, we all know that if
Speaker 1: if we want to see a wild animal out in
Speaker 1: the woods, the last thing we want to do is
Speaker 1: to go through the woods shouting for it to come out.
Speaker 1: What we want instead is to sit quietly at the
Speaker 1: base of a tree, breathe with the earth, and after
Speaker 1: a while, the thing we're seeking may put in an appearance.
Speaker 1: We may catch it only out of the corner of
Speaker 1: our eye, but once you've seen it, you won't forget it.
Speaker 1: And and that was the image that came to me
Speaker 1: as I emerged from the depths of depression. I love
Speaker 1: that analogy about the wild animal, and will come back
Speaker 1: to what are some of the ways that you've worked
Speaker 1: to create of potentially, you know, drawing the soul out
Speaker 1: um you say that, I'm just going to quote you.
Speaker 1: Hear that you said the divided life is a wounded life,
Speaker 1: and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound.
Speaker 1: Ignore that call, and we find ourselves trying to numb
Speaker 1: our pain with an anesthetic of our choice, be a substance, abuse,
Speaker 1: over work, consumerism, or mindless media noise. Such anesthetics are
Speaker 1: easy to come by in society that wants to keep
Speaker 1: us divided and unaware of our pain. So from your perspective,
Speaker 1: is the divided life? Was that behind what's happening in
Speaker 1: the depression sense for you? I think? So, I mean
Speaker 1: when I talk about depression, as I think you know, Eric,
Speaker 1: I'm always eager to say that depression comes in many forms,
Speaker 1: and those who specialize in studying and trying to treat
Speaker 1: depression are the first to say that there's a lot
Speaker 1: of mystery surrounding what's in wies of depression. So I'm
Speaker 1: reluctant to make huge generalizations as if they apply to everybody.
Speaker 1: Some depressions are strictly genetic or related to brain chemistry,
Speaker 1: I think, and others are highly highly situational. And then
Speaker 1: what gets what gets really confusing, is that no matter
Speaker 1: which end of the spectrum you start at, the two
Speaker 1: can intermingle. So if you start with a situational depression
Speaker 1: or something in your life where you're living a divided
Speaker 1: life and something is troubling, you so deeply that you're
Speaker 1: losing sleep and you develop radical insomnia that can change
Speaker 1: your brain chemistry in a way that creates depression on
Speaker 1: the other hands apart exactly. And if you start with
Speaker 1: a genetically based depression the distorts your perceptions and your behavior,
Speaker 1: then you're going to end up in situations that worse
Speaker 1: than it. So it's a it's a tricky thing to unrample.
Speaker 1: I think there is in my background, my family background,
Speaker 1: some genetic predisposition toward depression UM. And I think that
Speaker 1: in my case, the balance of factors were more situational
Speaker 1: than genetic or biochemical. H And here's the rest of
Speaker 1: the interview with Parker Palmer. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that I have discovered as we've done this show, when
Speaker 1: I think about personal development or this whole area of
Speaker 1: the soul of spirituality, there's so much thought and writing
Speaker 1: and literature on that need to go within um, the
Speaker 1: need to understand our thoughts, to meditate. And as I've
Speaker 1: done the show, certainly we've talked a lot about that,
Speaker 1: but I've been surprised by how often we've talked about
Speaker 1: you know, people have brought us back to the importance
Speaker 1: of other people. And one of the things that I
Speaker 1: found most profound in your writing was the way that
Speaker 1: you very over and over drive home this idea that
Speaker 1: it's not an either or thing that we really need
Speaker 1: in order to nurture the soul. We really need both
Speaker 1: the community and solitude. Can you explain a little bit
Speaker 1: more why both those things are so critical. That's a
Speaker 1: very important point, certainly to me, and I'm glad it
Speaker 1: is to you and apparently to other guests on your show. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, Dietrich bon Hoffer was a great German theologian
Speaker 1: who took a stand against Hitler and was executed just
Speaker 1: before the end of the war. He wrote a wonderful
Speaker 1: book called Life Together, and the life he lived kind
Speaker 1: of gives him a lot of street cred in my mind.
Speaker 1: And what he said, and one of the great sentences
Speaker 1: in that book is this, let the person who cannot
Speaker 1: be in community be aware of being alone, and let
Speaker 1: the person who cannot be alone be aware of being
Speaker 1: in community. And I think that behind that is this
Speaker 1: very important paradox that we need to first of all,
Speaker 1: but you could start in either place, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to start first with the inner journey and with listening
Speaker 1: to the voice of true self or the voice of
Speaker 1: the soul. I'm a Quaker, and as we Quakers would say,
Speaker 1: the voice of the inner teacher. Um. That's obviously critical.
Speaker 1: But as you know, and I know, and anyone who's
Speaker 1: suffered from depression knows, there's something called the voice of
Speaker 1: depression that speaks lies about who we are. It tells
Speaker 1: us that we're worthless. It tells us today is the
Speaker 1: day to take your life because there's no hope left.
Speaker 1: And if you journey with depression, you have to fight
Speaker 1: that voice off with some regularity. In other words, we
Speaker 1: have multiple voices within us, and it's not always clear,
Speaker 1: even when we're not in a state of depression, that
Speaker 1: we're listening to true self. Perhaps we're listening to a
Speaker 1: voice of resentment or heart or agreed or of simple anger.
Speaker 1: So it's a portant to have a community in which
Speaker 1: to test, to sift and Winnow what it is you're
Speaker 1: hearing from within? And I don't mean a community that
Speaker 1: that listens to what you have to say and then
Speaker 1: tells you you're right or you're wrong, or you're half
Speaker 1: right and half wrong. That doesn't work. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: a community of discernment where we have a chance to
Speaker 1: speak our truth, whatever we may think it is, into
Speaker 1: the center of the circle, or or into the space
Speaker 1: between us in a in a relationship and be deeply
Speaker 1: listened to by the other person and get the gift
Speaker 1: from the other person of honest, open questions. One of
Speaker 1: the ground rules in the work I do, which I
Speaker 1: know we'll be talking about a little later, is no fixing,
Speaker 1: no saving, no advising, and no correcting each other. Um.
Speaker 1: This is what creates safe space for the soul. Um.
Speaker 1: And if you think about those four words correcting, advising, saving,
Speaker 1: and fixing hit. If you think about those four words correcting, fixing, advising,
Speaker 1: and saving each other, um, those are the things that
Speaker 1: we mostly do when we listen to other people. Somebody
Speaker 1: comes to us with a problem and we may listen
Speaker 1: for a few minutes, maybe a little longer if we've
Speaker 1: recently been to a listening workshop, and and then we'll say, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I I read this great book on that subject.
Speaker 1: Why don't you go read it. I'm sure it would
Speaker 1: do a lot of good. Or for some exercises you
Speaker 1: can do, or a diet you ought to go on, etcetera. Instead,
Speaker 1: we learned in the work I do to ask each
Speaker 1: other honus to open questions, which are the kind of
Speaker 1: questions that hear other people into deeper and deeper speech
Speaker 1: and cause us to pause and wonder, is that the
Speaker 1: voice of true self I've been listening to or is
Speaker 1: it something else? Um an honest, open question which has
Speaker 1: serves no purpose except to enable us to have a
Speaker 1: deeper conversation with ourselves, and which can only come in community,
Speaker 1: whether that's a community of two people or ten people
Speaker 1: or fifty people. That's the kind of of inquiry that
Speaker 1: constitutes communal discernment of the sort I'm talking about, that
Speaker 1: can help us sort out the wheek from the chaff
Speaker 1: in our own internal dialogue. To me, this is a
Speaker 1: very important principle, and it explains why bon Hoffer said,
Speaker 1: if you can't be in community, watch out about being alone,
Speaker 1: and if you can't be alone, watch out about about
Speaker 1: being in community. When you look at that the second
Speaker 1: half of that, if you can't be alone, to be
Speaker 1: aware of being in community. Aloneness is one of the
Speaker 1: conditions under which we we come home to ourselves, and
Speaker 1: we can show up in community as who we really are,
Speaker 1: not as some well, Thomas Martin. He used a great phrase,
Speaker 1: he said, most of us live lives of self impersonation,
Speaker 1: so we can show up in community is who we
Speaker 1: really are, rather than as self impersonators. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: fascinated with this paradox of solitude and community and with
Speaker 1: how it is that we take our discernment of our
Speaker 1: own truth in solitude and community, how it is we
Speaker 1: take that into the larger world of social and political
Speaker 1: action or simply of neighborly concern. There's so much in
Speaker 1: what you said there. The first is the process you
Speaker 1: described mean is something that you call a circle of trust.
Speaker 1: And uh, your book The Hidden Wholeness really explores that
Speaker 1: in great, great detail, and I would encourage people to
Speaker 1: definitely check that out. UM will have a download on
Speaker 1: our site at one you feed dot net slash Parker
Speaker 1: that we'll have some of that, and we'll have links
Speaker 1: to your site and all the great things that are
Speaker 1: available out on your site. I wanted to explore a
Speaker 1: couple of ideas within the circle of trust that I
Speaker 1: thought was interesting because this idea of you know, we're
Speaker 1: not going to advise other people, were not going to
Speaker 1: fix them, because I was listening to you, I was thinking, well,
Speaker 1: in some cases, that's exactly what we're asking for and
Speaker 1: what we want. Like if I come to someone and
Speaker 1: say hey, like I I coach people who come to
Speaker 1: me and say hey, I can't seem to uh, I
Speaker 1: can't seem to get a daily exercise practice going right
Speaker 1: in a situation like that, you know, very concrete advice
Speaker 1: can be really useful, but what you're talking about is
Speaker 1: really going into that deeper level of discovering who we are,
Speaker 1: um to reaching our soul. And you you talk a
Speaker 1: lot about. The thing that I think is so important
Speaker 1: to what you're saying there is that that answer is
Speaker 1: only going to come from ourselves. You know. It's that
Speaker 1: idea of having an inner teacher, and that that the
Speaker 1: circle of trust in these methods you talk about are
Speaker 1: really there to get us in touch with our own
Speaker 1: inner teacher, and that's why it needs the quiet and
Speaker 1: the respect and the safety of that circle of trust. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: of course, there are circumstances when some sort of advice
Speaker 1: is both wanted and helpful. I do think that sometimes
Speaker 1: that we have a tendency generally to give advice, whether
Speaker 1: it gets wanted or helpful or not, partly because in
Speaker 1: everyday life giving it gets us off the hook. You know,
Speaker 1: you you come to me with your problem. I'm kind
Speaker 1: of mentally looking at my watch and thinking, I'm kind
Speaker 1: a busy day out of me and a lot of
Speaker 1: things to do. If I can give Eric a piece
Speaker 1: of advice about this, I can kind of wash my
Speaker 1: hands of any further responsibility for him, because if he
Speaker 1: takes my advice, he'll he'll be fine, and if he doesn't,
Speaker 1: that's his problem, not mine, right, So, so advice giving
Speaker 1: can be a form of of brushoff and and one
Speaker 1: of the big dangers about the frequency with which we
Speaker 1: give advice is is the fact that it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of like giving CPR to people who actually can breathe
Speaker 1: for themselves. Um, And when we give them CPR, then
Speaker 1: we're actually inhibiting their own capacity to breathe. There are
Speaker 1: people who need CPR because they can't breathe, But when
Speaker 1: we're giving it in the inappropriate circumstances, it's not helpful.
Speaker 1: And I think the other thing to always remember about
Speaker 1: our advice, and I'm sure that this is something you
Speaker 1: think about a lot as a coach, is that a
Speaker 1: person may ask for advice, but if there is not
Speaker 1: a readiness within that person to receive it and let
Speaker 1: it sink in and then implemented, the advice is not
Speaker 1: going to help. And and so anything we can do
Speaker 1: two to let the answers to that person's problem arise
Speaker 1: from within that person, I think that then the greater
Speaker 1: service we're being to that to that individual. Yeah, there's
Speaker 1: no doubt that when people can work their way to
Speaker 1: the answer themselves, they're much more likely to buy in
Speaker 1: and do it. And I just I really like the
Speaker 1: circle of trust idea, and I would if we had
Speaker 1: more time, I would like to really go deeper into it.
Speaker 1: But I it's I know, for me, it's one of
Speaker 1: those things I'm going to keep spending some time on
Speaker 1: and look at. And I've looked at a couple of
Speaker 1: the retreats that you do, and so I you know,
Speaker 1: I may may go to one of those because I
Speaker 1: think of myself as somebody who listens well. But but
Speaker 1: your book and the way that you approach this is
Speaker 1: very different than most of what we're taught, and it
Speaker 1: resonates as as very true. And I thought that part
Speaker 1: where you talked about the fixing and advising others is
Speaker 1: a way to get ourselves off the hook. Is a
Speaker 1: is a really profound idea that I had never thought
Speaker 1: of before. Yeah, I'm quite sure that professional coaches and
Speaker 1: counselors don't do that, but I think in the ordinary,
Speaker 1: everyday life we do a fair amount of that. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a good cautionary idea to keep in mind. You know,
Speaker 1: a classic case would be a parent with a child
Speaker 1: who's who's just come home from a hairy day at
Speaker 1: work and looking forward to it, you know, a relaxing evening,
Speaker 1: and here comes your teenager with the terrible, terrible problem.
Speaker 1: Well there's you know, there's an inevitable human tendency to
Speaker 1: just want to get to get this exchange over with
Speaker 1: as quickly as possible. Yeah, and uh yeah, so I
Speaker 1: think we all recognize that we need to cut ourselves
Speaker 1: some slack about that. I'm a great believer in self
Speaker 1: forgiveness because I've screwed up so often. That is the
Speaker 1: advantage of screwing up as often as I have, And
Speaker 1: it sounds like you have as you you really you
Speaker 1: have to get good at self forgiveness and forgiving others. Yep,
Speaker 1: And you've got to make all of life a learning journey, or,
Speaker 1: as Gandhi said, experiments with truth and then you then
Speaker 1: you have to learn from the failed experiments. One of
Speaker 1: the things that I wanted to go deeper into is
Speaker 1: I want to move from your book on the Hidden
Speaker 1: Wholeness and go to Healing the Heart of Democracy. Although
Speaker 1: I find a great deal of commonality between UM, I
Speaker 1: find a lot of the concepts carry over in those books.
Speaker 1: But obviously when you wrote that book, we weren't in
Speaker 1: the middle of the election circus we're in now. Is
Speaker 1: anything you wrote in there or do you feel any
Speaker 1: different or anything that you would add to that book
Speaker 1: after kind of what you're you know, what we've been
Speaker 1: watching this year? Yes and no. And as I'll say
Speaker 1: in a minute, in fact, I have been in a
Speaker 1: way adding pages to the head book with some things
Speaker 1: I've recently written and published. UM. It seems to me
Speaker 1: that the fundamental principles I laid out in that book
Speaker 1: are still very sound. And one of the things that
Speaker 1: that's happening right now is something that's happened for a
Speaker 1: very long time in our American political discourse, but now
Speaker 1: it's happening on steroids. And what I'm referring to is
Speaker 1: is this, as I say in the book, when Americans
Speaker 1: talk about politics, and this has been true for many,
Speaker 1: many years, we almost always talk about them, about those
Speaker 1: people in Washington, d c. Or in the state capitol
Speaker 1: who are either screwing something everything up or or on
Speaker 1: occasion whom we regard as heroes for taking the right stand.
Speaker 1: But whatever it is, we're always talking about people who
Speaker 1: aren't in the room. And when I talked to audiences
Speaker 1: about this, I say, you know, when was the last time,
Speaker 1: in your personal life, or in your work situation, or
Speaker 1: in your congregation or neighborhood, when was the last time
Speaker 1: that talking about someone who isn't there has solved any problem?
Speaker 1: As we all know it doesn't. In fact, it's better
Speaker 1: classified as gossip than as political discourse or as just
Speaker 1: letting off steam, and we all understand it on that level.
Speaker 1: But my belief is that in a country founded on
Speaker 1: the on the fundamental premise that this is all about
Speaker 1: we the people, that this is a government of the people,
Speaker 1: by the people, and for the people, we the people
Speaker 1: need to get our act together, and what that means
Speaker 1: is learning to talk across the lines that divide us
Speaker 1: on a local level, um. Not to talk about them,
Speaker 1: but to talk with each other, um, and to do
Speaker 1: that across lines of division in a way that would
Speaker 1: at least give us a fighting chance to come to
Speaker 1: a rough consensus on a few items of the common good,
Speaker 1: so that we can articulate that common good to people
Speaker 1: in power and hold them accountable to it more effectively.
Speaker 1: I'll put this in slightly different terms. We have succumbed
Speaker 1: for a long time to the divide and conquer tactic
Speaker 1: that is often used in American politics by people who
Speaker 1: wish to seize power at high levels of political office.
Speaker 1: And you know, they're very, very good at that, and
Speaker 1: our media play along with it, um in ways that
Speaker 1: divide us artificially. It seems to me that, you know,
Speaker 1: if if you read the screaming headlines in the newspaper,
Speaker 1: or the streaming headlines on CNN, or that flow across
Speaker 1: your computer screen, you know, you would think that the
Speaker 1: people who live up and down my block and the
Speaker 1: people who live up and down your block are at
Speaker 1: each other's throats most of the time. But that's not true.
Speaker 1: There is there. There is when you drill down to
Speaker 1: the local level to the level of we the people,
Speaker 1: there is a surprising amount of consensus um and I
Speaker 1: can tell micro stories or macro stories about that. Let
Speaker 1: me tell a macro story, since those tend to be
Speaker 1: more impressive to people who who are who are cynics,
Speaker 1: or who have given up on this possibility in American
Speaker 1: political life. A lot of people are unaware of the
Speaker 1: fact that sixteen states have now called by referendum or legislation,
Speaker 1: have now called for a constitutional amendment to overcome the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court decisions called Citizens United, which gave big money
Speaker 1: extraordinary overweening power in our political process. Most people who
Speaker 1: have looked at American politics have said the game is lost.
Speaker 1: Once the Supreme Court established the Citizens United laws, it
Speaker 1: was no longer possible for ordinary people to get their
Speaker 1: voices heard in the American political process. But sixteen states
Speaker 1: have now called for a constitutional amendment, and another six
Speaker 1: team have such calls in the pipeline, And that's moving
Speaker 1: in on the two thirds of necessary among the states
Speaker 1: to eventually pass that constitutional amendment in the Congress. Now
Speaker 1: we're a long way from passing a constitutional amendment. That's
Speaker 1: not the argument I'm making. The argument I'm making is
Speaker 1: very simple. The calls that I'm talking about, which have
Speaker 1: either happened or in the pipeline, would never have happened
Speaker 1: if there had not been a broad conversation and a
Speaker 1: broad coalition across the political spectrum left, center and right
Speaker 1: of people who, despite the fact that they range from
Speaker 1: progressive Democrats to members of the Tea Party, are in
Speaker 1: agreement that chrony capitalism is a bad thing. That it's
Speaker 1: a bad thing, whether you're left, right or a center,
Speaker 1: to have a Congress that is essentially bought and paid
Speaker 1: for by lobbyists and corporations and other folks who have
Speaker 1: benefited from citizens united. So is that conversation possible? You
Speaker 1: bet it is. And one of the best macro examples
Speaker 1: is the one I just gave. What I found really
Speaker 1: interesting about that section of your book was we tend
Speaker 1: to think of the divide in the political spectrum between
Speaker 1: right and left. You know, that tends to be where
Speaker 1: we draw up our lines and and think that that's
Speaker 1: really where we're divided in And you said that a
Speaker 1: more use maybe maybe useful isn't the right word. But
Speaker 1: a different division to look at is the division between
Speaker 1: the people who have given up and think they can't
Speaker 1: do anything politically. I absolutely believe that, and I've never
Speaker 1: found an activist at any point on the political spectrum
Speaker 1: with with whom it wasn't possible to find at least
Speaker 1: hatches of common ground. Because we begin by sharing the
Speaker 1: sense that we are a part of we the people,
Speaker 1: and we have a voice that wants to be heard,
Speaker 1: and we have agency the capacity to translate that voice
Speaker 1: into effective action. All that remains is for us to
Speaker 1: find those substantive issues on which we agree, and there
Speaker 1: are lots of them, left right and center. In poll
Speaker 1: after poll and in action project after action project have
Speaker 1: found consensus not only around chrony capitalism, but around the
Speaker 1: reform of our drug laws, around prison reform, around meaningful
Speaker 1: reasonable forms of gun control, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, all of
Speaker 1: these things that if you simply read the headlines you
Speaker 1: would imagine we're totally polarized on when when in fact
Speaker 1: we're not. And the other thing, the other point that
Speaker 1: I make in the book, and I as you know, Eric,
Speaker 1: and this is an important point to me, is that
Speaker 1: all the founders of this country really got it wrong
Speaker 1: about who constitutes we the people. You know, for them,
Speaker 1: it didn't involve women, didn't involve enslaved human beings, it
Speaker 1: did involved Native Americans, it didn't involve white men who
Speaker 1: didn't own land. We the people was people who looked
Speaker 1: looked like them, like the Founders, quite male gentry landowners,
Speaker 1: and they essentially wanted a country that was that was
Speaker 1: governed by that kind of elite. Well, they got that
Speaker 1: terribly wrong, and they planned DNA in this American experiment
Speaker 1: in democracy that we are, you know, that is still
Speaker 1: bearing bad fruit today and will for a long time
Speaker 1: to come. It's called racism, it's called sexism, and so
Speaker 1: forth and so on. And candidates, in certain candidates Mr.
Speaker 1: Trump being the most notable example at the moment, are
Speaker 1: playing on all of that in a really demonic way. Um.
Speaker 1: We can talk about that in a little bit if
Speaker 1: you'd like. Um. But the Founders, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: they blew it when it comes to who's included and
Speaker 1: we the people, had a particular form of political genius
Speaker 1: which we cannot forget, and that is that they crafted
Speaker 1: the first form of government that I'm aware of any way,
Speaker 1: in which conflict, even intense conflict, is regarded not as
Speaker 1: the enemy of a good social order, but as the
Speaker 1: engine of a better social order. Um, that's why we
Speaker 1: have the structure of government that we do, which in
Speaker 1: the book I likened to a weaver's loom, holding the
Speaker 1: tension of threads on which the fabric of a good
Speaker 1: society can keep getting woven and rewill them. The historian
Speaker 1: Joseph Ellis has written eloquently about the fact that our
Speaker 1: form of government was not intended to come to quick
Speaker 1: solutions to problems. Instead, it was intended to keep the
Speaker 1: salient problems on the table long enough that we, in
Speaker 1: holding their tension, we could open our minds and hearts
Speaker 1: to better and better solutions, a more perfect union, to
Speaker 1: use the language of the Founders. So it's it's that
Speaker 1: structure of government that over the years has allowed us
Speaker 1: to expand the definition of we the people way beyond
Speaker 1: what the founders imagined, and much for the better, especially
Speaker 1: in a society that by fifty is going to be
Speaker 1: over half people of color. You have five habits of
Speaker 1: the heart that you describe that are important to heal
Speaker 1: the heart of democracy, and we're not going to time
Speaker 1: to go through all of them. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: circle back to one that you reference there, which is
Speaker 1: an ability to hold tension in life giving ways. Can
Speaker 1: you explore what that means a little bit more. We
Speaker 1: have this primitive brain stem that the lizard brain, I
Speaker 1: guess some people call it, that has these instinctive behaviors,
Speaker 1: the most famous of which is the fight or flight response,
Speaker 1: so that when we're hit with the tension of a
Speaker 1: sudden stimulus, our tendency is either to turn around and
Speaker 1: punch it out or to flee from it in fear.
Speaker 1: So we don't like we don't like tension. We either
Speaker 1: run away or or try to kill it off. And there's,
Speaker 1: you know, there's evidence after evidence of how difficult it
Speaker 1: is for us to hold tension at all, let alone
Speaker 1: to hold it creatively. Um One of the studies that
Speaker 1: fascinates me as someone who has a deep belief in
Speaker 1: the power and the necessity of silence to do any
Speaker 1: kind of meaningful discernment. There have been studies that show
Speaker 1: that the average group can tolerate about fifteen seconds of
Speaker 1: silence before somebody has to break it because because suddenly
Speaker 1: people are experiencing the tension of thinking something has gone wrong.
Speaker 1: This is getting awkward. This you know, and in our
Speaker 1: groups where we practice silence in these circles of trust
Speaker 1: and learn, it's its value. We like to say to people,
Speaker 1: silence isn't a sign that something is going wrong. It
Speaker 1: may be a sign that something is going really, really right,
Speaker 1: as people reflect deeply on what they've been hearing and
Speaker 1: try to integrate it into their own lives. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of examples of how hard it is
Speaker 1: for us to hold tension, as in the tension of
Speaker 1: political viewpoints left, right and center. Well, tension holding does
Speaker 1: create stress. But in writing the book, I was intrigued
Speaker 1: to discover that there's an antonym to the word distress.
Speaker 1: So we talk a lot about how distressing tension is,
Speaker 1: but psychologists talk about you stress e U s t
Speaker 1: r e S s U stress, which is the positive
Speaker 1: effective tension that the tension that opens us up to
Speaker 1: new ways of looking at the world, the tension that
Speaker 1: opens our hearts to new levels of humanity and compassion.
Speaker 1: I'm as you know from reading the book, Um, I
Speaker 1: work a lot with this image of the human heart,
Speaker 1: by which I don't mean simply the seat of our emotions. UM.
Speaker 1: If you, if you go back to the root of
Speaker 1: the word heart. It comes from the Latin core c
Speaker 1: o r So it's that center place in the human
Speaker 1: self c o r e where all of our faculties
Speaker 1: converge emotion, will intellect um you know, ego in the
Speaker 1: positive sense, bodily knowledge, relational knowledge, problem solving knowledge, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So we enter life circumstances, especially if we care about
Speaker 1: other people and about what's going on around us, we
Speaker 1: enter life circumstances that that takes us to something called heartbreak.
Speaker 1: It's a very common human phenomena, but I've observed over
Speaker 1: seventy seven years of hanging out with myself and others,
Speaker 1: that the human heart can break in at least two ways.
Speaker 1: It can shatter into a million pieces, and sometimes as
Speaker 1: it's in the process of shattering, it gets hurled at
Speaker 1: the ostensible source of its pain, in the in the
Speaker 1: manner of a fragment grenade, trying to to do harm,
Speaker 1: to do damage to where that pain is coming from.
Speaker 1: That's one way for the heart to break, and we
Speaker 1: see a lot of that these days. But it's also
Speaker 1: possible for the heart to break not apart, but open
Speaker 1: into greater capacity. And if we look carefully at the
Speaker 1: microcosms of our lives. We'll see a lot of that too.
Speaker 1: At my age, I know a lot of people who
Speaker 1: have lost the dearest person in their lives to death,
Speaker 1: and their hearts are broken. They go into that long,
Speaker 1: deep underground period of grieving and slowly slowly emerge awakening
Speaker 1: to the surprising revelation that they have become larger people,
Speaker 1: more compassionate, more open, more understanding, more forgiving. Their hearts
Speaker 1: have grown bigger, not in spite of their loss, but
Speaker 1: because of their loss. There's something about that kind of
Speaker 1: loss that actually makes life more precious and makes the
Speaker 1: people around you, the world around you, more precious as well.
Speaker 1: So one of the questions I like to think about
Speaker 1: on a daily basis is how do I keep my
Speaker 1: heart supple enough that it can break open rather than
Speaker 1: apart when the big hits come. And that includes the
Speaker 1: political realm that that includes you know, as much as
Speaker 1: I despise the Trump phenomenon and fear the fascist possibilities
Speaker 1: in it, to speak very frankly, um, I need to
Speaker 1: keep my heart open to the pain among we the
Speaker 1: people that Trump has tapped into. I think he's tapped
Speaker 1: into it in a totally irresponsible, very dangerous, racist, misogynist way.
Speaker 1: But there is pain out there. There is real pain
Speaker 1: and fear in that base in all of us. I mean, honestly,
Speaker 1: I think that there's there's some of that I really
Speaker 1: like In your book. You talk about how in both
Speaker 1: books there's there's ways of finding common ground with people
Speaker 1: who seem to hold extremely different viewpoints and and the
Speaker 1: basic of it is to hear their story. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: One of the things that you know that I talked
Speaker 1: about in the book is just to make this very concrete,
Speaker 1: is a series of workshops that I'm aware of where
Speaker 1: people are brought together around very contentious issues such as abortion,
Speaker 1: and people come into a room, um, nobody knows upfront
Speaker 1: who holds what position UM, And for most of the
Speaker 1: day until the last hour or so, they are forbidden
Speaker 1: from announcing their position, but instead invited and coached to
Speaker 1: tell the personal story of whatever the experience was that
Speaker 1: led them to the position they hold. And they learned
Speaker 1: to craft these stories and tell these stories, which a
Speaker 1: lot of us don't know how to do, and then
Speaker 1: to tell them to each other one on one or
Speaker 1: try adds small groups. Well, by the end of the day,
Speaker 1: when when it starts to be revealed what people's positions are,
Speaker 1: something remarkable has happened. The human thing has happened. People
Speaker 1: have realized that the same story can lead to people
Speaker 1: to two quite different positions. People have realized even more fundamentally,
Speaker 1: that the more you know about another person's story, the
Speaker 1: less possible it is too despise or dislike or dismiss
Speaker 1: that person, no matter how different he or she may
Speaker 1: be from you, politically, ideologically, or whatever. There's something about
Speaker 1: the human story that is that is not only appealing
Speaker 1: and attractive. There's something about the and story that's that's universal,
Speaker 1: especially if it's if it's what I like to call
Speaker 1: a soul story as opposed to an ego story. UM.
Speaker 1: One thing I know for sure, we all know this,
Speaker 1: I think in one way or another, is that if
Speaker 1: I want to connect with another person at a deep level,
Speaker 1: boasting about my successes isn't going to do the job.
Speaker 1: And frankly, it doesn't even do the job for me,
Speaker 1: because I've learned more from my failures or my journeys
Speaker 1: and darkness than I have from my successes. When I succeed,
Speaker 1: I kind of pet myself on the back and I
Speaker 1: think I've got really got my act together. And it's
Speaker 1: not until I fall on my face that you know,
Speaker 1: I stay up until three in the morning trying to
Speaker 1: figure out how to get it right the next time. Um,
Speaker 1: so what connects us is those broken places. To quote
Speaker 1: Leonard Going Again writes about he not only wrote about
Speaker 1: the blizzard of the world, but he has that wonderful
Speaker 1: lyric in anthem I think is the name of the
Speaker 1: song where he says, forget your perfect offering, ring the
Speaker 1: bells that still can ring. There's a crack in everything.
Speaker 1: That's how the light gets in. But it's also through
Speaker 1: those cracks that we connect with one another. So when
Speaker 1: you hear the human story in the workshop like this,
Speaker 1: where you know people are talking about an ideologically contentious issue, um,
Speaker 1: you may not change your mind, but you re forge
Speaker 1: the human bond. And one principle that's very very important
Speaker 1: to me is that in the long run, it's more
Speaker 1: important to be in right relationship with each other than
Speaker 1: it is to be right. Um. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: we have to give up on what on our beliefs
Speaker 1: about right. I don't want to do that, No one
Speaker 1: wants to do that. But what's right is a complicated subject,
Speaker 1: and if we're not in right relationship with one another,
Speaker 1: we can't hang in with the conversation long enough to
Speaker 1: make any progress on those complications at all. Yeah, exactly, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that is a good place for us to
Speaker 1: wrap up. I think I could probably do this for
Speaker 1: about three more hours with you, but um, you know
Speaker 1: we're near, we're past the end of the show. So um,
Speaker 1: thanks so much Parker for coming on. As I said earlier,
Speaker 1: we'll have links to all of your personal Facebook page,
Speaker 1: the Courage and Renewal Center, all those different things at
Speaker 1: one you feed, dot net slash. Parker will also have
Speaker 1: a download there, and I encourage people were just google
Speaker 1: Parker J. Palmer and you will find all of your
Speaker 1: wonderful stuff there. So thanks again so much. I've got
Speaker 1: a lot out of your reading that I'm going to
Speaker 1: continue to think about and come back to, and uh
Speaker 1: I certainly want to explore more. Well, thank you, Eric,
Speaker 1: it's been a delight to be on with you, and
Speaker 1: just all good wishes with the good work you're doing.
Speaker 1: Thanks so much. Bye, bye, okay bye. You can learn
Speaker 1: more about this podcast and Parker Palmer at one You
Speaker 1: feed dot Net slash Parker