parker-j-palmer Quotes About people

“Community is a place where the connections felt in our hearts make themselves known in the bonds between people, and where the tuggings and pullings of those bonds keep opening our hearts.”

Source: The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal

“Here, I think, is another clue to finding true self and vocation: we must withdraw the negative projections we make on people and situations - projections that serve mainly to mask our fears about ourselves- and acknowledge and embrace our own liabilities and limits.”

People Thinking Self Situation Limits Findings Negative Embrace Acknowledge Mask True Self Clue Vocation Projection Liability

Book:Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Source: Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

“The answer comes to me through studying the lives of the Rosa Parks and the Vaclav Havels and the Nelson Mandelas and the Dorothy Days of this world. These are people who have come to understand that no punishment that anybody could lay on us could possibly be worse than the punishment we lay on ourselves by conspiring in our own diminishment, by living a divided life, by failing to make that fundamental decision to act and speak on the outside in ways consonant with what we know to be true on the inside.”

People Knows World Way Speak Decision Answers Study Failing This World Fundamentals Lays Punishment Being True Parks Divided Nelson Rosa Conspiring Consonants

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“My favorite topping is one that a lot of people don't like. I love anchovies.”

People My Favorite Toppings

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“My high school, like most high schools, had a pretty rigid stratification system. Kids were clustered into groups - the studious ones, the athletes, the popular ones - and we never crossed paths with each other. You stayed in your air-tight group, and you were suspicious of people in other groups.”

People Kids School Path Groups Air High School Athlete Suspicious Studious Crossed Paths

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“At its deepest level, I think teaching is about bringing people into communion with each other, with yourself as the teacher, and with the subject you are teaching.”

People Thinking Levels Teacher Teaching Subjects Communion

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“People are always asking, "Is this person in front of me the same on the inside as he or she appears to be on the outside? Is there congruence between what's within that person and the words and actions I'm viewing and hearing externally?" Children ask that about their parents; students ask it about their teachers; parishioners ask it about their pastors and priests; employees ask it about their bosses; and in a democracy, citizens ask it about their political leaders.”

“When there is a gap between what's on the outside and what's on the inside, that's when people retreat into their foxholes because it is an unsafe situation. You don't know what you are dealing with. What you see is not what you are going to get. And that is when people start withdrawing.”

People Knows Situation Gaps Retreat Unsafe Withdrawing Foxholes

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“Technology is incredibly creative and has great potentials; but it is also very seductive in the way it isolates people, in the way it jazzes people up, in the way it makes junkies out of us - junkies who need a constant stimulation, more information, more bells and whistles, more electronic wonders in order not to be bored.”

People Way Needs Order Wonder Technology Creative Information Constant Bored Bells Seductive Junkie Stimulation

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“I am very, very uneasy with churches that have basically said, "Well, since that's what people want and that's what sells, then were going to do our worship services like Hollywood productions. We're going to have a lot of bells and whistles. We're going to have high entertainment value, and it is going to have a lot of gloss and glitter."”

People Want Wells Said Values Church Worship Hollywood Sells Productions Entertainment Bells Glitter Uneasy Gloss Worship Service

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“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.”

People Thinking Knows Needs Stills Church Mindset Invites Slow Down Slowing

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“I understand that there are forms of entertainment that can make people weep or jazz them up so they feel like they have had an experience. But I also know that an hour later that's faded and you are back to the difficult realities of your own life. And we need to help people know how to go beyond those difficulties to a place where God dwells.”

People Knows Needs Feels Helping Reality Form Difficult Hours Know How Difficulty Jazz Entertainment Faded

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“When you are with young people, it is almost inconceivable that things wouldn't arise that you'd have to respond to, such as someone wrestling on the bus. And how you handle that, how you respond to that, how you deal with that is a lesson to the people you are on the bus with.”

People Young Deals Lessons Handle Arise Bus Wrestling

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“I like to say that before we can create an external space in which to receive people, we have to create an internal space in which to receive them.”

People Space Internals

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“We can teach a good, formal lesson on forgiveness as a Christian virtue and all the doctrines that are attached to it. But to be in a real-life situation, a work camp or a trip or some other activity with young people where real forgiveness needs to happen, that's a different situation altogether. And that is where the deepest learning will occur.”

People Needs Different Real Happens Christian Young Situation Teach Virtue Lessons Activity Real Life Doctrine Camps Formal

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“I now understand what Nelle Morton meant when she said that one of the great tasks in our time is to "hear people to speech." Behind their fearful silence, our students want to find their voices, speak their voices, have their voices heard. A good teacher is one who can listen to those voices even before they are spoken-so that someday they can speak with truth and confidence.”

People Want Said Speak Voice Behinds Silence Teacher Heard Teaching Students Speech Tasks Our Time Someday Fearful Good Teacher

Book:The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

Source: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

“Our equal and opposite needs for solitude and community constitute a great paradox. When it is torn apart, both of these life-giving states of being degenerate into deathly specters of themselves. Solitude split off from community is no longer a rich and fulfilling experience of inwardness; now it becomes loneliness, a terrible isolation. Community split off from solitude is no longer a nurturing network of relationships; now it becomes a crowd, an alienating buzz of too many people and too much noise.”

Source: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

“Solitude does not necessarily mean living apart from others; rather, it means never living apart from one's self. It is not about the absence of other people -- it is about being fully present to ourselves, whether or not we are with others. Community does not necessarily mean living face-to-face with others; rather, it means never losing the awareness that we are connected to each other. It is not about the presence of other people -- it is about being fully open to the reality of relationship, whether or not we are alone.”

People Mean Doe Self Reality Faces Community Awareness Solitude Losing Connected Absence Face To Face

Author:Parker J. Palmer

“The people who help us grow toward true self offer unconditional love, neither judging us to be deficient nor trying to force us to change but accepting us exactly as we are. And yet this unconditional love does not lead us to rest on our laurels. Instead, it surrounds us with a charged force field that makes us want to grow from the inside out - a force field that is safe enough to take the risks and endure the failures that growth requires.”

Source: A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

“Let’s not forget that American democracy started with ‘We the People’ agreeing to work hard to create ‘a more perfect union.’ We’ve lost the idea that politics begins at home with what happens in families, in neighborhoods, in classrooms, in congregations. We called this democracy into being – and if we want to call this democracy back to its highest values, it’s got to be the us doing that calling. That’s not going to happen if ‘We the People’ don’t know how to talk to one another with civility and hold our differences in a creative, life-giving way.”

“The kind of teaching that transforms people does not happen if the student’s inward teacher is ignored… we can speak to the teacher within our students only when we are on speaking terms with the teacher within ourselves.”

People Ifs Kind Doe Happens Speak Term Teacher Teaching Students Inward Ignored

Book:The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

Source: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

“Authority is granted to people who are perceived as authoring their own words, their own actions, their own lives, rather than playing a scripted role at great remove from their own hearts.”

People Heart Action Roles Authority Granted Remove

Book:The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal

Source: The Courage to Teach Guide for Reflection and Renewal

“Every good teacher and every good parent has somehow learned to negotiate the paradox of freedom and discipline. We want our children and our students to become people who think and live freely, yet at the same time we know that helping them become free requires us to restrict their freedom in certain situations.”

Source: The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

“... circles of trust ... are a rare form of community - one that supports rather than supplants the individual quest for integrity - that is rooted in two basic beliefs. First, we all have an inner teacher whose guidance is more reliable than anything we can get from a doctrine, ideology, collective belief system, institution, or leader. Second, we all need other people to invite, amplify, and help us discern the inner teacher's voice.”

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