Parker J Palmer
THE QUAKER WRITER AND TEACHER Parker J Palmer is one of my spiritual heroes, one of those really inspirational people I sincerely hope I’ll meet in person some day. Meanwhile I meet him continually in his books, in others’ books about him, and in contemplation and reflection. I often turn to Parker’s thoughtful writings. They’re full of pearls of wisdom that I mull over continually for days on end.
Today I’ve been re-reading The Active Life. Chapter 8 -
Every life is lived toward a horizon, a distant vision of what lies ahead. The quality of our action depends heavily on whether that horizon is dark with death or full of light and life …
… when we envision a horizon that holds the hope of life, we are free to act without fear, free to act in truth and love and justice today because those very qualities seem to shape our own destiny …
What is it that keeps us, individuals and churches, from seeing an horizon full of light and life up there ahead of us? Palmer speaks of his encounter with Julia Esquivel’s small book of poetry Threatened with Resurrection, and of how its title turned his mind upside down; of how he recognized that he’d often been fearful of life itself, and the movement toward new life, more than he had feared death in its various forms. And he retells the apocryphal tale of a blind man healed by Peter “in the name of the resurrected Christ” whose first response is, “You fool! You’ve destroyed my way of making a living!”
Am I, are we, in the Active Life, threatened by resurrection? Too dependent on old ways of “making a living”?
See also: Center for Courage & Renewal
