Tag Archives: Parker Palmer

That Damn Grim Reaper is Stalking Me.

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The Grim Reaper is at the threshold of my dear family.  My heart is very heavy.  The reason it is so heavy now is that I have a heart which I haven’t had in the past. This “death thingy” that we all live with is “the great equalizer” and humbles us…or at least it can anyway.  The fantasies, illusions, and hypocrisies that we hide behind, allowing us to “perfunctory” along our life’s way, disintegrate in the face of this “Humility”.  The formulaic, canned humility that I’ve used to imprison my heart can only dissipate in the face of this “Humility.” I am very humbled that one of my dear brothers-in-law has less than 24 hours left on this beautiful planet.

BUT I take comfort with the wisdom of Irvin Yalom, a gifted psychologist, that it is incumbent upon us as human being to “die” before Death, allowing us then to live as never before.  We are no longer hapless before our fragility; we can then find an anchor there that will stabilize us in the tumult of this emotional maelstrom. The tenor of Yalom’s observation is that until we “die” we will not be able to live, only “be-bopping” along our “three-score and ten,” deliberately, willingly opting to avoid the Life-giving dissipation of our persona’s grip.  Bill and I talked frequently of the “Anchor” that we were finding.  Irish poet, William Butler Yeats summed up the sentiments I have expressed here: The leaves are many but the root is one./  Throughout all the lying days of my youth, I have swayed my leaves and flowers under the sun./ Now may I wither into the truth.

The following is a link to a brilliant essay by a deeply-spiritual Quaker, Parker Palmer, in which death and fragility is powerfully presented.—   https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/08/10/parker-palmer-naropa-university-commencement-address/

Lao Tzu, Emptiness, and Protestantism

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Lao Tzu (6th century BCE) first introduced me to the paradoxical dimension of reality.  One stanza of his Tao Te Ching, #11, grabbed my attention before I really knew where it would lead me.  Here is my favorite translation of that wisdom by Witter Bynner:

Thirty spokes are made one by holes in a hub,

By vacancies joining them for a wheel’s use;

The use of clay in moulding pitchers

 Comes from the hollow of its absence;

 Doors, windows, in a house,

Are used for their emptiness:

Thus we are helped by what is not

To use what is.

This ancient Chinese sage realized that there is a hidden dimension of life which is the essential dimension of life but is recognized only to those are attuned to the subterranean regions of the heart.  This hidden dimension is described in the Christian tradition as the spiritual realm.  But the Christian tradition, especially here in the West, has erred by not appreciating the true essence of spirituality as emptiness, and fashioned a spirituality which is merely a thing among other things, an object among other objects.  Western thought has objectified the world and its spirituality has, therefore, been reduced to a rational enterprise that has no room…in most circles…for the wisdom of Lao Tzu. What has happened, therefore, is that spirituality has become a “graven image” which the Old Testament rather sternly prohibited. This subtle “idolatry” is particularly so with Protestantism which does not emphasize mysticism and meditation which places value on the quietness of the mind.

 

I ran across a beautiful poem today on Facebook which brought these thoughts to mind, a poem which was shared on the page of Parker J. Palmer, a noted member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quaker):

WHAT ELSE by Carolyn Locke

The way the trees empty themselves of leaves,
let drop their ponderous fruit,
the way the turtle abandons the sun-warmed log,
the way even the late-blooming aster
succumbs to the power of frost—

this is not a new story.
Still, on this morning, the hollowness
of the season startles, filling
the rooms of your house, filling the world
with impossible light, improbable hope.

And so, what else can you do 
but let yourself be broken 
and emptied? What else is there
but waiting in the autumn sun?

 

“Climb the Rugged Cross of the Moment”

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One thing I love about being involved in the blog-o-sphere is that I learn from my followers. Just yesterday I discovered through one of them about Parker Palmer who I had not heard of before. Here is a note from Wikipedia about Parker’s views on faith:
Faith is not a set of beliefs we are supposed to sign up for he says. It is instead the courage to face our illusions and allow ourselves to be disillusioned by them. It is the courage to walk through our illusions and dispel them. He states the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is fear – fear of abandoning illusions because of our comfort level with them. For example, not everything is measurable and yet so much of what we do has that yardstick applied to it. Another illusion is “I am what I do …. my worth comes from my functioning. If there is to be any love for us, we must succeed at something.” He says in this example that it is more important to be a “human being” rather than a “human doing.” We are not what we do. We are who we are. The rigors of trying to be faithful involves being faithful to one’s gifts, faithful to other’s reality, faithful to the larger need in which we are all embedded, faithful to the possibilities inherent in our common life.

I think it was W. H. Auden who encouraged us to “Climb the rugged cross of the moment and let our illusions die.” These “illusions” (or pretenses) are flotsam and jetsam we have picked up from the vortex of human culture, a veil we have spun to hide the void. They are essential dimensions of our human, ego identity but when they are the whole of what we know as our identity, then the words of Jesus become relevant, “What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul.” The teachings of Jesus tell us that there is another dimension to life that we need to access if our life, our ego life, is to have meaning. Having this access does not destroy our very necessary ego life; it merely gives it meaning.