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Violence is what happens when we don't know what else to do with our suffering.

Parker J. Palmer

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Parker J. Palmer
Violence
Suffering
Else
Happens

More quotes by Parker J. Palmer

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Some journeys are direct, and some are circuitous some are heroic, and some are fearful and muddled. But every journey, honestly undertaken, stands a chance of taking us toward the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need
Parker J. Palmer
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Truth-telling by a leader can legitimate truth-telling at every level.
Parker J. Palmer
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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.
Parker J. Palmer
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When someone says 'I'm so disillusioned', I say 'Congratulations! You've lost another illusion.'
Parker J. Palmer
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Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the 'integrity that comes from being what you are.
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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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.
Parker J. Palmer
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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 stand respectfully at the edge of that person's mystery and misery.
Parker J. Palmer
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We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul that avoid the unconscious violence we do when we try to save each other that evoke our capacity to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery never trying to coerce the other into meeting our own needs.
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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The teachers who have had the most impact on me and on most learners I know are teachers whose selfhoods have been deeply invested in what they are doing.
Parker J. Palmer
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Disabused of our illusions by much travel and travail, we awaken one day to find that the sacred center is here and now - in every moment of the journey, everywhere in the world around us, and deep within our own hearts.
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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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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I want to learn how to hold the paradoxical poles of my identity together, to embrace the profoundly opposite truths that my sense of self is deeply dependent on others dancing with me and that I still have a sense of self when no one wants to dance.
Parker J. Palmer
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Storytelling has always been at the heart of being human because it serves some of our most basic needs: passing along our traditions, confessing failings, healing wounds, engendering hope, strengthening our sense of community.
Parker J. Palmer
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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.
Parker J. Palmer
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A leader is a person who must take special responsibility for what's going on inside of himself or herself ... lest the act of leadership create more harm than good.
Parker J. Palmer
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Is the life I'm living the life that wants to live in me?
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