Speaker 1: In case you're just recently joining us, or however long
Speaker 1: you've been a listener of the show, you may not
Speaker 1: realize that we have years and years of incredible episodes
Speaker 1: in our archives. We've had so many wonderful guests that
Speaker 1: we've decided to hand pick one of our favorites. It
Speaker 1: might be new to you, but if not, it's definitely
Speaker 1: worth another listen. We hope you'll enjoy this episode with
Speaker 1: Parker Palmer. We have multiple voices within us, and it's
Speaker 1: not always clear, even when we're not in a state
Speaker 1: of depression, that we're listening to true self. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the one you feed throughout time. Great tinkers have recognized
Speaker 1: the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in,
Speaker 1: garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true,
Speaker 1: And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen
Speaker 1: or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy,
Speaker 1: or fear. We see what we don't have instead of
Speaker 1: what we do. We think things that hold us back
Speaker 1: and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking
Speaker 1: our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort
Speaker 1: to make a life worth living. This podcast is about
Speaker 1: how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction,
Speaker 1: how they feed their good Wolf. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Our guest on this episode is Parker Palmer, and author, educator,
Speaker 1: and activist who focuses on issues in education, community leadership, spirituality,
Speaker 1: and social change. Parker is the founder and senior partner
Speaker 1: of the Center for Courage and Renewal. He's also the
Speaker 1: author of many books, including A Hidden Wholeness The Journey
Speaker 1: Toward an Undivided Life. This episode is brought to you
Speaker 1: by Casper Mattresses. Go to Casper dot com slash wolf
Speaker 1: and use the promo code Wolf to save fifty dollars
Speaker 1: off your first purchase. 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
Speaker 1: do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with
Speaker 1: his grandson, and he says, in life, there are two
Speaker 1: wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One
Speaker 1: is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and
Speaker 1: bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed, hatred, and fear. And the
Speaker 1: grandson stops for a second. He looks up at his
Speaker 1: grandfather and he says, grandfather, which one wins, And the
Speaker 1: grandfather quietly replies, the 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. Well.
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 contrary forces inside of us, the forces
Speaker 1: of light on the forces of darkness, and a lot
Speaker 1: depends on which one we feed. Um. I. When I
Speaker 1: first read that parable years ago, I thought of Abraham
Speaker 1: Lincoln's appeal to the better angels of our nature, and
Speaker 1: of course, in doing so, he was also implying that
Speaker 1: we have lesser angels in there as well. So On
Speaker 1: that level, I'm I'm with the parable. On another level,
Speaker 1: I wrestle with the employ cations a little bit in
Speaker 1: the 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. It seems
Speaker 1: to me that we always live with our with our shadows,
Speaker 1: partly because they're the hardest things for us to see
Speaker 1: in ourselves. We can we can see the shadow in
Speaker 1: another person quite easily, Oh he or she is greedy
Speaker 1: or or resentful or angry or whatever, But we have
Speaker 1: a harder time seeing that in ourselves. I want to
Speaker 1: find wholeness as in this way, wholeness is not perfection.
Speaker 1: Wholeness is about embracing all of what we are and
Speaker 1: and acknowledging that our darkness is as important as as
Speaker 1: our light, and sort of holding that in our in
Speaker 1: 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 are parables
Speaker 1: or metaphors that one sort of opens up a whole
Speaker 1: raft 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's just at a certain
Speaker 1: point you're like, well, it's not a literal story, so
Speaker 1: you can't take it that way. But the show has
Speaker 1: really spent a lot of time, I think, exploring how
Speaker 1: we work with with both parts of that. And you've
Speaker 1: got a number of books. I spent time mainly with
Speaker 1: two of them, Um, And we'll start with the first
Speaker 1: one that I read, which is called Hidden Wholeness, the
Speaker 1: Journey towards an Undivided Life. And this really gets to
Speaker 1: kind of what you were just talking about in the
Speaker 1: Integration of the Wolves. Now, I have to say that
Speaker 1: anybody that starts a book with a Leonard Cohen quote
Speaker 1: is always going to be a favorite of mine. Um,
Speaker 1: And you start the book by by quoting a line
Speaker 1: of his from the song The Future. It says the
Speaker 1: blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold, and it
Speaker 1: has overturned the order of the soul. And what I'd
Speaker 1: like to start talking about is this idea of the soul.
Speaker 1: It comes up a lot in your writing, and I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you could explain what that means to you. Well,
Speaker 1: I'll take my best shot. Um. I hesitated a bit
Speaker 1: because I think ultimately soul is a word that points
Speaker 1: toward a mystery which we know by many names, and
Speaker 1: for which no one has the right name. The closest
Speaker 1: I've ever been able to come to what I might
Speaker 1: mean by soul is the bing and human being. But
Speaker 1: other traditions name it in other ways. Of Secular humanists
Speaker 1: call it identity and integrity. Buddhists call it big self.
Speaker 1: Thomas Merton called it true self. The Hasidic Jews call
Speaker 1: it the spark of the divine in every being. I've
Speaker 1: always said that it doesn't matter to me what you
Speaker 1: call it, since no one knows its true name, and
Speaker 1: fighting over the name seems utterly nonsensical to me. But
Speaker 1: it does matter to me that you call it something,
Speaker 1: because if you don't, if you don't have a name
Speaker 1: for it, by way of acknowledging its existence. It's it's reality.
Speaker 1: Then it seems to me we end up treating ourselves
Speaker 1: and each other as objects to be manipulated or manufactured
Speaker 1: into whatever shape the culture wants us to take, or
Speaker 1: empty vessels to be filled with other people uh knowledge
Speaker 1: and quote, wisdom and guidance. So I think the naming
Speaker 1: of this mystery within the human self is a way
Speaker 1: of making a deep vow to every person, because every
Speaker 1: person has this thing called soul, whatever whatever it may be.
Speaker 1: I think for me, um, the discovery of soul happened
Speaker 1: under extremely stressful, difficult, dark circumstances, namely my own journey
Speaker 1: into clinical depression three times in my adult life. And
Speaker 1: whenever you'd like, I'd be glad to talk more about that.
Speaker 1: We don't mention depression on this show never since you're
Speaker 1: talking about human experience. I'm sure you never do. I'm
Speaker 1: a fellow suffer, and it it comes up often. How
Speaker 1: long ago was your last, you know, major episode? And
Speaker 1: I'd be curious how much of it sort of happens
Speaker 1: in a more minor level for you when you're not
Speaker 1: in the middle of a major episode. Is it kind
Speaker 1: of an on off switch or is it is there
Speaker 1: a gradient there for you? Well, I think like most
Speaker 1: of us, I you know, I swing through a certain
Speaker 1: range of moods day by day, like weather moving through.
Speaker 1: But as all of us who have experienced clinical depression, no,
Speaker 1: it's not at all like being sad or feeling bad. Um.
Speaker 1: In fact, one of the features of depression that's so
Speaker 1: terrifying is you really can't feel anything. Your your emotions
Speaker 1: are gone. So my my most recent experience was what
Speaker 1: twelve years ago, when I was sixty five years old.
Speaker 1: My two prior experiences were in my forties, my early forties,
Speaker 1: and then my late forties. So the one at age
Speaker 1: sixty five I'm now seventy seven. The one at age
Speaker 1: sixty five took me by surprise. But what I what
Speaker 1: I mean the pearl of great pride in these very
Speaker 1: long months long um journeys underground. I used to say
Speaker 1: depression is like being lost in the dark, but I
Speaker 1: eventually refined that to say depression is like becoming the dark,
Speaker 1: which is quite a different thing. Um. You know, when
Speaker 1: when you're in depression, you don't have that capacity to
Speaker 1: take the balcony view of yourself and say, oh, I
Speaker 1: see what's going on with me as we can when
Speaker 1: we're angry or having other sort of normal range emotions.
Speaker 1: And once we can get in the balcony and get
Speaker 1: a look at ourselves, we can often find a way out.
Speaker 1: But when you've 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: discovered that the faculties that I normally depend on we're
Speaker 1: dead and gone. And there are four of them that
Speaker 1: I at least depend on with some regularity. One is
Speaker 1: 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've 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: a sense from time to time that there was this
Speaker 1: little tiny spark of life way back in the thicker
Speaker 1: it's of the dark forest that my life had become,
Speaker 1: that wanted me to stay alive. I came to liken
Speaker 1: it to a wild animal, which is very very widely
Speaker 1: and can can tough, and can survive where there's little
Speaker 1: to eat and little encouragement, but like the wild animal,
Speaker 1: is also very very shy, And I became very interested,
Speaker 1: under those circumstances in what it might be like to
Speaker 1: create conditions where the soul or whatever you want to
Speaker 1: call it, could put in a more regular appearance than
Speaker 1: it does in normal, everyday society, where we create so
Speaker 1: many 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 a 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 So, 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 substance abuse, overwork, consumerism,
Speaker 1: or mindless media noise. Such anesthetics are easy to come
Speaker 1: by in society that wants to keep us divided and
Speaker 1: unaware of our pain. So, from your perspective, is the
Speaker 1: divided life? Was that behind what's happening in the depression sense?
Speaker 1: For you? I think so? I mean when I talk
Speaker 1: about depression, as I think you know, Eric, I'm always
Speaker 1: eager to say that depression comes in many forms, and
Speaker 1: those who specialize in studying and trying to treat depression
Speaker 1: are the first to say that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: mystery surrounding what's in wise of depression, So I'm reluctant
Speaker 1: 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 the 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 hand, apart exactly, and if you start with
Speaker 1: a genetically based depression that 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 a metic or biochemical h So, one of the
Speaker 1: things that I have discovered as we've done this show,
Speaker 1: when I think about personal development or this whole area
Speaker 1: of the soul of spirituality, there's so much thought and
Speaker 1: writing and literature on that need to go within, um,
Speaker 1: the need to understand our thoughts, to meditate. And as
Speaker 1: I've done this 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 whole 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 hurt or agreed, or of simple anger.
Speaker 1: So it's important to have a community in which to test,
Speaker 1: to sift and Winnow what it is you're hearing from within?
Speaker 1: And I don't mean a community that that listens to
Speaker 1: what you have to say and then tells you you're
Speaker 1: right or you're wrong, or you're half right and half wrong.
Speaker 1: That doesn't work. I'm talking about a community of discernment
Speaker 1: where we have a chance to speak our truth, whatever
Speaker 1: we may think it is, into the center of the circle,
Speaker 1: or or into the space between us in a in
Speaker 1: a relationship and be deeply listened to by the other
Speaker 1: person and get the gift from the other person of honest,
Speaker 1: open questions. One of the ground rules in the work
Speaker 1: I do, which I know we'll be talking about a
Speaker 1: little later, is no fixing, no saving, no advising, and
Speaker 1: no correcting each other. Um. This is what creates safe
Speaker 1: space for the soul. And if you think about those
Speaker 1: four words correcting, advising, saving, and fixing it. If you
Speaker 1: think about those four words correcting, fixing, advising, and saving
Speaker 1: each other. Um, those are the things that we mostly
Speaker 1: do when we listen to other people. Somebody comes to
Speaker 1: us with the problem, and we may listen for a
Speaker 1: few minutes, maybe a little longer if we've recently been
Speaker 1: 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 there's some exercises you
Speaker 1: can do, or a diet you ought to go on,
Speaker 1: et cetera. Instead, we learned in the work I do
Speaker 1: to ask each other on us to open questions, which
Speaker 1: are the kind of questions that hear other people into
Speaker 1: deeper and deeper speech, and that cause us to pause
Speaker 1: and wonder, is that the voice of true self I've
Speaker 1: been listening to, or is it something else? An honest,
Speaker 1: open question which has serves no purpose except to enable
Speaker 1: us to have a deeper conversation with ourselves, and which
Speaker 1: can only come in community, whether that's a community of
Speaker 1: two people or ten people or fifty people. That's the
Speaker 1: kind of of inquiry that constitutes communal discernment of the
Speaker 1: sort I'm talking about that can help us sort out
Speaker 1: the wheat from the chaff in our own internal dialogue.
Speaker 1: To me, this is a very important principle and it
Speaker 1: explains why bon Hoffer said, if you can't be in community,
Speaker 1: watch out about being alone, and if you can't be alone,
Speaker 1: watch out about about being in community. When when you
Speaker 1: look at that, the second half of that, if you
Speaker 1: can't be alone, beware of being in community. Aloneness is
Speaker 1: one of the conditions under which we we come home
Speaker 1: to ourselves, and we can show up in community as
Speaker 1: who we really are, not as some well Thomas Martin,
Speaker 1: he used a great phrase. He said, most of us
Speaker 1: live lives of self impersonation, so we can show up
Speaker 1: in community is who we really are, rather than as
Speaker 1: self impersonators. So I'm I'm fascinated with this paradox of
Speaker 1: solitude and community and with how it is that we
Speaker 1: take our our discernment of our own truths in solitude
Speaker 1: and community, how it is we take that into the
Speaker 1: larger world of social and political action or simply of
Speaker 1: neighborly concern. There's so much in what you said there.
Speaker 1: The first is the process you're describing as something that
Speaker 1: you call a circle of trust, and your book The
Speaker 1: Hidden wholeness really explores that in great, great detail, and
Speaker 1: I would encourage people to definitely check that out. UM
Speaker 1: will have a download on our site at one you
Speaker 1: feed dot net slash Parker that will have some of that,
Speaker 1: and we'll have links to your site and all the
Speaker 1: great things that are available out on your site. I
Speaker 1: wanted to explore a couple ideas within the circle of
Speaker 1: trust that I thought was interesting because this idea of
Speaker 1: you know, we're not going to advise other people, are
Speaker 1: not going to fix them. As I was listening to you,
Speaker 1: I was thinking, well, in some cases, that's exactly what
Speaker 1: we're asking for and what we want. Like if I
Speaker 1: come to someone and say hey, like I I coach
Speaker 1: people who come to me and say, hey, I can't
Speaker 1: seem to uh, I can't seem to get a daily
Speaker 1: exercise practice going right. In a situation like that, you know,
Speaker 1: very concrete advice can be really useful. But what you're
Speaker 1: talking about is really going into that deeper level of
Speaker 1: discovering who we are, um to reaching our soul. And
Speaker 1: you you talk a lot about the thing that I
Speaker 1: think is so important in what you're saying there is
Speaker 1: that that answer is only going to come from ourselves.
Speaker 1: You know. It's that idea of having an inner teacher,
Speaker 1: and that that the circle of trust in these methods
Speaker 1: you talk about are really there to get us in
Speaker 1: touch with our own inner teacher, and that's why it
Speaker 1: needs the quiet and the respect and the safety of
Speaker 1: that circle of trust. Absolutely, of course, there are circumstances
Speaker 1: when some sort of advice is both wanted and helpful.
Speaker 1: I do think that sometimes that we have a tendency
Speaker 1: generally to give advice, whether it gets wanted or helpful
Speaker 1: or not, partly because in everyday life giving it gets
Speaker 1: us off the hook. You know, you come to me
Speaker 1: with your problem. I'm kind of mentally looking at my
Speaker 1: watch and thinking, I'm kind a busy day out of
Speaker 1: me and a lot of things to do. If I
Speaker 1: can give Eric a piece of advice about this, I
Speaker 1: can kind of wash my hands of any further responsibility
Speaker 1: for him, because if he takes my advice, he'll he'll
Speaker 1: be fine, and if he doesn't, that's his problem, not mine, right,
Speaker 1: So so advice giving can be a form of of
Speaker 1: brush off and and one of the big dangers about
Speaker 1: the frequency with which we give advice is is the
Speaker 1: fact that it's it's kind of like giving CPR to
Speaker 1: people who actually can breathe for themselves. Um, And when
Speaker 1: we give them CPR, then we're actually inhibiting their own
Speaker 1: capacity to breathe. There are people who need CPR because
Speaker 1: they can't breathe, but when we're giving it in the
Speaker 1: inappropriate circumstances, it's not helpful. And I think the other
Speaker 1: thing to always remember about our advice, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: that this is something you think about a lot as
Speaker 1: a coach, is that a person may ask for advice,
Speaker 1: but if there is not a readiness within that person
Speaker 1: to receive it and let it sink in and then implemented,
Speaker 1: the advice is not going to help. And and so
Speaker 1: anything we can do two to let the answers to
Speaker 1: that person's problem arise from within that person, I think
Speaker 1: that then the greater service we're being to that to
Speaker 1: that individual. Yeah, yeah, there's no doubt that that when
Speaker 1: people can work their way to the answer themselves, they're
Speaker 1: much more likely to buy in and do it. And
Speaker 1: I just I really like the circle of trust idea,
Speaker 1: and I would if we had more time, I would
Speaker 1: like to really go deeper into it. But I it's
Speaker 1: I know, for me, it's one of those things I'm
Speaker 1: going to keep spending some time on and look at.
Speaker 1: And I've looked at a couple of the retreats that
Speaker 1: you do, and so I you know, I may may
Speaker 1: go to one of those because I think of myself
Speaker 1: as somebody who listens well. But but your book and
Speaker 1: the way that you approach this is very different than
Speaker 1: most of what we're taught, and it resonates as as
Speaker 1: very true. And I thought that part where you talked
Speaker 1: about the fixing and advising others is a way to
Speaker 1: get ourselves off the hook. Is a is a really
Speaker 1: profound idea that I had never thought of before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm quite sure that professional coaches and counselors don't do that,
Speaker 1: but I think in the ordinary, everyday life we do
Speaker 1: a fair amount of that. Oh yeah, it's a good
Speaker 1: cautionary idea to keep in mind. You know, a classic
Speaker 1: case would be a parent with a child who's who's
Speaker 1: just come home from a hairy day at work and
Speaker 1: looking forward to it, you know, a relaxing evening and
Speaker 1: here comes your teenager with a terrible, terrible problem. Well,
Speaker 1: there's you know, there's an inevitable human tendency to just
Speaker 1: want to get to get this exchange over with as
Speaker 1: quickly as possible. And so I think we all recognize
Speaker 1: that we need to cut ourselves some slack about that.
Speaker 1: I'm a great believer in self forgiveness because I've screwed
Speaker 1: up so often. That is the advantage of screwing up
Speaker 1: as often as I have. And it sounds like you
Speaker 1: have as you you really get you have to get
Speaker 1: good at self forgiveness and forgiving others. Yep. And you've
Speaker 1: 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 spyraiments. 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 that you wrote in there, or do you feel
Speaker 1: any different or anything that you would add to that
Speaker 1: book after kind of what you're you know, what we've
Speaker 1: been watching this year? Yes and no. Um. And as
Speaker 1: I'll say in a minute, in fact, I have been
Speaker 1: sort of in a way adding pages to the book
Speaker 1: with some things I've recently written and published. Um, it
Speaker 1: seems to me that the fundamental principles I laid out
Speaker 1: in that book are still very sound. And one of
Speaker 1: the things that that's happening right now is something that's
Speaker 1: happened for a very long time in our American political discourse,
Speaker 1: but now it's happening on steroids. And what I'm referring
Speaker 1: to is is this, as I say in the book,
Speaker 1: when Americans talk about politics, and this has been true
Speaker 1: for many, many years, that we almost always talk about them,
Speaker 1: about those people in Washington, d c. Or in the
Speaker 1: state capitol who are either screwing something everything up or
Speaker 1: or on occasion whom we regard as heroes for taking
Speaker 1: the right stand. But whatever it is, we're always talking
Speaker 1: about people who aren't in the room. And when I
Speaker 1: talked to audiences about this, I say, you know, when
Speaker 1: was the last time in your personal life, or in
Speaker 1: your work situation, or in your congregation or neighborhood, when
Speaker 1: is the last time that talking about someone who isn't
Speaker 1: there has solved any problem, As we all know it doesn't.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's better classified as gossip than as political
Speaker 1: discourse or as just letting off steam, and we all
Speaker 1: understand it on that level. But my belief is that
Speaker 1: in a country founded on the on the fundamental premise
Speaker 1: that this is all about we the people, that this
Speaker 1: is a government of the people, by the people, and
Speaker 1: for the people, we the people need to get our
Speaker 1: act together. And what that means is learning to talk
Speaker 1: across the lines that divide us on a local level, um.
Speaker 1: Not to talk about them, but to talk with each other, um.
Speaker 1: And to do that across lines of division in a
Speaker 1: way that would at least give us a fighting chance
Speaker 1: to to a rough consensus on a few items of
Speaker 1: the common good, so that we can articulate that common
Speaker 1: good to people in power and hold them accountable to
Speaker 1: it more effectively. I'll put this in slightly different terms.
Speaker 1: We have succumbed for a long time to the divide
Speaker 1: and conquer tactic that is often used in American politics
Speaker 1: by people who wish to seize power at high levels
Speaker 1: of political office. And you know they're very very good
Speaker 1: at that, and our media play along with it in
Speaker 1: ways that divide us artificially. It seems to me that
Speaker 1: you know, if if you read the screaming headlines in
Speaker 1: the newspaper, or the streaming headlines on CNN, or that
Speaker 1: flow across your computer screen, you know, you would think
Speaker 1: that the people who live up and down my block
Speaker 1: and the people who live up and down your blocker
Speaker 1: at each other's throats most of the time. But that's
Speaker 1: not true. There is there. There is when you drill
Speaker 1: down to the local level, to the level of we
Speaker 1: the people, there is a surprising amount of consensus um
Speaker 1: and I can tell micro stories or macro stories about that.
Speaker 1: Let me tell a macro story, since those tend to
Speaker 1: be more impressive to people 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 pipe why would never have
Speaker 1: happened if there had not been a broad conversation and
Speaker 1: a broad coalition across the political spectrum left, center and
Speaker 1: right of people who, despite the fact that they range
Speaker 1: from progressive Democrats to members of the Tea Party, are
Speaker 1: in agreement that chrony capitalism is a bad thing. That
Speaker 1: it's 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. And 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 and absolutely believe that. And I've never,
Speaker 1: you know, found an activist at any point on the
Speaker 1: plitical spectrum with with whom it wasn't possible to find
Speaker 1: at least patches of common ground. Because we begin by
Speaker 1: sharing the sense that we are 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 head lines
Speaker 1: you would imagine we're totally polarized on when when in
Speaker 1: fact we're not. And the other thing, the other point
Speaker 1: that I make in the book, and 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, it didn't involve enslaved human beings,
Speaker 1: it didn't involve Native Americans, it didn't involve white men
Speaker 1: who didn't own land. We the people was people who
Speaker 1: looked looked like them, like the founders, quite male gentry
Speaker 1: by landowners, and they essentially wanted a country that was
Speaker 1: that was governed by that kind of elite. Well, they
Speaker 1: got that terribly wrong, and they planned DNA in the
Speaker 1: American experiment and democracy that we are, you know, that
Speaker 1: is still bearing bad fruit today and will for a
Speaker 1: long time to come. It's called racism, it's called sexism,
Speaker 1: and so forth, and so on. And candidates, in certain
Speaker 1: candidates Mr. Trump being the most notable example at the moment,
Speaker 1: are playing on all of that in a really demonic way.
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 rewoven. The historian Joseph
Speaker 1: Ellis has written eloquently about the fact that our form
Speaker 1: of government was not intended to come to quick solutions
Speaker 1: to problems. Instead, it was intended to keep the salient
Speaker 1: problems on the table long enough that we, in holding
Speaker 1: their tension, we could open our minds and hearts to
Speaker 1: better and better solutions, a more perfect union, to use
Speaker 1: the language of the founders. So it's it's that structure
Speaker 1: of government that over the years has allowed us to
Speaker 1: expand the definition of we the people way beyond what
Speaker 1: the founders imagined, and much for the better, especially in
Speaker 1: a society that by is going to be over half
Speaker 1: people of color. You have five habits of the heart
Speaker 1: that you describe that are important to heal the heart
Speaker 1: of democracy, and we're not gonna have time to go
Speaker 1: through all of them, but I wanted to circle back
Speaker 1: to one that you reference there, which is an ability
Speaker 1: to hold tension in life giving ways. Can you explore
Speaker 1: what that means a little bit more. We have this
Speaker 1: primitive brain stem that the lizard brain, I guess some
Speaker 1: people call it, that has these instinctive behaviors, the most
Speaker 1: famous of which is the fight or flight response, So
Speaker 1: that when we're hit with the tension of a sudden stimulus,
Speaker 1: our tendency is either to turn around and punch it
Speaker 1: out or to flee from it in fear. So we
Speaker 1: don't like we don't like tension. We either run away
Speaker 1: or try to kill it off. And there's you know,
Speaker 1: there's evidence after evidence of how difficult it is for
Speaker 1: us to hold tension at all, let alone to hold
Speaker 1: it creatively. Um One of the studies that fascinates me
Speaker 1: as someone who has a deep belief in the power
Speaker 1: and the necessity of silence to do any kind of
Speaker 1: meaningful discernment. There have been studies that show that the
Speaker 1: average group can tolerate about fifteen seconds of silence before
Speaker 1: somebody has to break it because because suddenly people are
Speaker 1: experiencing the tension of thinking something has gone wrong, this
Speaker 1: is getting awkward, this you know. And in our groups
Speaker 1: where we practice silence in these circles of trust and learn,
Speaker 1: it's its value. We like to say to people, silence
Speaker 1: isn't a sign that something is going wrong. It may
Speaker 1: 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.
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, deep,
Speaker 1: underground period of grieving and slowly slowly emerge awakening to
Speaker 1: the surprising revelation that they have become larger people, more compact,
Speaker 1: it more open, more understanding, more forgiving. Their hearts have
Speaker 1: grown bigger, not in spite of their loss, but because
Speaker 1: of their loss. There's something about that kind of loss
Speaker 1: that actually makes life more precious and makes the people
Speaker 1: 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 and 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, Um,
Speaker 1: I think that there's there's some of that I really like.
Speaker 1: In your book, you talk about how in both books
Speaker 1: there's there's ways of finding common ground with people who
Speaker 1: seem to hold extremely different viewpoints, and and the basic
Speaker 1: of it is to hear their story. Yeah, exactly. One
Speaker 1: of the things, as you know, that I talked about
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: abortion and twenty five people come into a room, um
Speaker 1: nobody knows upfront who holds what position, and for most
Speaker 1: of the day until the last hour or so, they
Speaker 1: are forbidden from announcing their position, but instead invited and
Speaker 1: coached to tell the personal story of whatever the experience
Speaker 1: was that led them to the position they hold. And
Speaker 1: they learned to graft these stories and tell these stories,
Speaker 1: which a lot of us don't know how to do,
Speaker 1: and then to tell them to each other one on
Speaker 1: one or try adds small groups. Well. By the end
Speaker 1: of the day, when when it starts to be revealed
Speaker 1: what people's positions are, something remarkable has happened. The human
Speaker 1: thing has happened. People have realized that the same story
Speaker 1: can lead to people to two quite different positions. People
Speaker 1: have realized even more fundamentally, that the more you know
Speaker 1: about another person's story, the less possible it is two
Speaker 1: despise or dislike or dismiss that person, no matter how
Speaker 1: different he or she may be from you, politically, ideologically,
Speaker 1: or whatever. There's something about the human story that is
Speaker 1: that is not only appealing and attractive. There's something about
Speaker 1: the human story that's that's universal, especially if it's if
Speaker 1: it's what I like to call a soul story as
Speaker 1: opposed to an ego story. UM. One thing I know
Speaker 1: for sure, we all know this, I think in one
Speaker 1: way or another, is that if I want to connect
Speaker 1: with another person at a deep level, boasting about my
Speaker 1: successes isn't going to do the job. And frankly, it
Speaker 1: doesn't even do the job for me, because I've learned
Speaker 1: more from my failures or my journeys in darkness that
Speaker 1: I have from my successes. When I succeed, I kind
Speaker 1: of pet myself on the back and I think I've
Speaker 1: got really got my act together. And it's not until
Speaker 1: I fall on my face that you know, I stay
Speaker 1: up until three in the morning trying to figure out
Speaker 1: how to get it right the next time. UM. So
Speaker 1: what connects us is those broken places. To quote Leonard
Speaker 1: Going Again writes about he not only wrote about the
Speaker 1: blizzard of the world, but he has that wonderful lyric
Speaker 1: in anthem I think is the name of the song
Speaker 1: where he says, forget your perfect offering, ring the bills
Speaker 1: that still can ring. There's a crack in everything. That's
Speaker 1: how the light gets in. But it's also through those
Speaker 1: cracks that we connect with one another. So when you
Speaker 1: hear the human story in the workshop like this, where
Speaker 1: you know people are talking about an ideologically contentious issue
Speaker 1: of um, you may not change your mind, but you
Speaker 1: re forge the human bond. And one principle that's very
Speaker 1: very important to me is that in the long run,
Speaker 1: it's more important to be in right relationship with each
Speaker 1: other than it is to be right. Um. That doesn't
Speaker 1: mean that we have to give up on what are
Speaker 1: on our beliefs about right. I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: No one wants to do that. But what's right is
Speaker 1: a complicated subject, and if we're not in right relationship
Speaker 1: with one another, we can't hang in with the conversation
Speaker 1: long enough to 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 know 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. Okay bye. If what you just heard
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