A Hidden Wholeness

The tragic gap between reality and possibility

Parker Palmer | April 2022 (Vol. XXXV, No. 4)
There are at least two ways to understand what it means to have our hearts broken. One is to imagine the heart broken into shards and scattered about. The other is to imagine the heart broken open into new capacity. As I stand in the tragic gap between reality and possibility, this small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world's suffering and joy, despair and hope.
~ Parker Palmer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS

The precious wildness we seek

Parker J Palmer | December 2021 (Vol. XXXIV, No. 11)
The soul is like a wild animal — tough, resilient, savvy, self-sufficient and yet exceedingly shy. If we want to see a wild animal, the last thing we should do is to go crashing through the woods, shouting for the creature to come out. But if we are willing to walk quietly into the woods and sit silently for an hour or two at the base of a tree, the creature we are waiting for may well emerge, and out of the corner of an eye we will catch a glimpse of the precious wildness we seek.
~ Parker J. Palmer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS

When the heart break the words fall in

Parker Palmer | February 2014 (Vol. XXVII, No. 2)

The insight at the heart of nonviolence is that we live in a tragic gap—a gap between the way things are and the way we know they might be… If we want to live nonviolent lives, we must learn to stand in the tragic gap, faithfully holding the tension between reality and possibility in hopes of being opened to a third way... [of breaking our] collective hearts open to justice, truth, and love.

There is an old Hasidic tale that tells us how such things happen. The pupil comes to the rebbe and asks, "Why does Torah tell us to 'place these words upon your hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place these holy words in our hearts?" The rebbe answers, "It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks, and the words fall in."

~Parker J. Palmer in A HIDDEN WHOLENESS

Solitude means never living apart from one's self

Parker Palmer | July/August 2013 (Vol. XXVI, No. 7)

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.

~ from A HIDDEN WHOLENESS by Parker Palmer
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