In a true community we will not choose our companions, for our choices are so often limited by self-serving motives. Instead, our… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Every good teacher and every good parent has somehow learned to negotiate the paradox of freedom and discipline. We want our children… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
I now understand what Nelle Morton meant when she said that one of the great tasks in our time is to "hear… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
The human soul doesn't want to be fixed, it simply wants to be seen and heard. The soul is like a wild… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Vocation does not come from willfulness. It comes from listening. I must listen to my life and try to understand what it… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to? — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Let’s not forget that American democracy started with ‘We the People’ agreeing to work hard to create ‘a more perfect union.’ We’ve… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
The people who help us grow toward true self offer unconditional love, neither judging us to be deficient nor trying to force… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
I want to learn how to hold the paradoxical poles of my identity together, to embrace the profoundly opposite truths that my… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
If we want to grow as teachers -- we must do something alien to academic culture: we must talk to each other… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
I am very, very uneasy with churches that have basically said, "Well, since that's what people want and that's what sells, then… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Students want to know, "Are you painting by the numbers, or are you really present as a human being to what you… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
“The God I know is the source of reality, rather than morality; the source of 'what is' rather than the source of 'what ought… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
One of the hardest things we must do sometimes is to be present to another person's pain without trying to "fix" it, to simply… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Opposing what's wrong is a halfway measure at best. A rebel must also have a vision for something better, a strategy for moving toward… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Teaching, like any truly human activity, emerges from one's inwardness, for better or worse. As I teach I project the condition of my soul… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
If my life is any example, the work that youth workers are doing is very, very important. It tends to get marginalized in the… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Self-care is never a selfish act - it is only good stewardship of the only gift I have, the gift I was put on… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
The spiritual life is about becoming more at home in your own skin. — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
“Formation may be the best name for what happens in a circle of trust, because the word refers, historically, to soul work done in… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
Don't let anyone or anything rob you of the beauty and meaning at the heart of life. It's your birthright gift. — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
“Citizenship is a way of being in the world rooted in the knowledge that I am a member of a vast community of human… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
I think the church needs to be much more countercultural than that and invite people into slowing down, into a "Be-still-and-know-that-I-am-God" mindset. — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
My high school, like most high schools, had a pretty rigid stratification system. Kids were clustered into groups - the studious ones, the athletes,… — Parker J. Palmer Copy Share Image
