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Spirituality is not primarily about values and ethics, not about exhortations to do right or live well. The spiritual traditions are primarily about reality...an effort to penetrate the illusions of the external world and to name its underlying truth.

Parker J. Palmer

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Parker J. Palmer
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More quotes by Parker J. Palmer

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My favorite topping is one that a lot of people don't like. I love anchovies.
Parker J. Palmer
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The human soul doesn't want to be fixed, it simply wants to be seen and heard. The soul is like a wild animal - tough, resilient and shy. When we go crashing through the woods shouting for it to come out so we can help it, the soul will stay in hiding. But if we are willing to sit quietly and wait for a while, the soul may show itself.
Parker J. Palmer
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I am not sure that any sight or sound on earth is as exquisite as the hushed descent of a sky full of snow.
Parker J. Palmer
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Mentoring is a mutuality that requires more than meeting the right teacher: the teacher must meet the right student.
Parker J. Palmer
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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
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Connection and connectedness are other words for community and communion.
Parker J. Palmer
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Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.
Parker J. Palmer
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The highest form of love is the love that allows for intimacy without the annihilation of difference.
Parker J. Palmer
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Everybody is on a lifelong journey toward trying to live more deeply. There is nobody who can say, Well, I've got that one checked off my to-do list. We have to be honest with ourselves about where we are on this journey and about the difficulty of living in our own identities and integrity.
Parker J. Palmer
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Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.
Parker J. Palmer
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Death in various forms is sometimes comforting, while resurrection and new life can be demanding and threatening. If I lived as if resurrection were real, and allowed myself to die for the sake of a new life, what might I be called upon to do?
Parker J. Palmer
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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.
Parker J. Palmer
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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.
Parker J. Palmer
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Teaching like any truly human activity emerges from one's inwardness.
Parker J. Palmer
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You are much more likely to have a holy experience in a quiet, focused, and communal context than you are when you are being entertained.
Parker J. Palmer
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We are here not only to transform the world but also to be transformed.
Parker J. Palmer
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We are participants in a vast communion of being, and if we open ourselves to its guidance, we can learn anew how to live in this great and gracious community of truth.
Parker J. Palmer
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... the stranger is not a threat but an opportunity to grow in my view of reality, to grow in my own sense of possibility
Parker J. Palmer
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What do I want to let go of and what do I want to give myself to?
Parker J. Palmer
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I want my inner truth to be the plumb line for the choices I make about my life - about the work that I do and how I do it, about the relationships I enter into and how I conduct them.
Parker J. Palmer