There is a tradition that the church represents, without which we wouldn't have the church, that's all about diving deep beneath the surface of the culture and finding those timeless, eternal truths that the whole Christian enterprise is rooted in. And one of those is that you don't come to God at 180 miles an hour.
— Parker J. Palmer
The kind of teaching that transforms people does not happen if the student's inward teacher is ignored" we can speak to the teacher within our students only when we are on speaking terms with the teacher within ourselves.
— Parker J. Palmer
Truth-telling by a leader can legitimate truth-telling at every level.
— Parker J. Palmer
Good teaching comes from good people.
— Parker J. Palmer
Teaching like any truly human activity emerges from one's inwardness.
— Parker J. Palmer
In classical understanding, education is the attempt to "lead out" from within the self a core of wisdom that has the power to resist falsehood and live in the light of truth, not by external norms but by reasoned and reflective self-determination. The inward teacher is the living core of our lives that is addressed and evoked by any education worthy of the name.
— Parker J. Palmer
What passes for political realism may make for lively academic debates. But it often functions, ironically, as a tool of social control, rendering us passive with an analysis that overwhelms and paralyzes us.
— Parker J. Palmer
Every young person needs some adult who's just wild and crazy about them!
— Parker J. Palmer
God ain't finished with any of us yet.
— Parker J. Palmer
I'm 67 years old now. I've had a lot of good teachers over the years; and they have been very, very different from one another. They all had passion for what they were doing, but their styles were unique to them as individuals.
— Parker J. Palmer
You don't become a good teacher by applying techniques; you don't become a good teacher by using the latest hot methodologies that are being promoted in this or that handbook.
— Parker J. Palmer
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
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
Although there are some enormously gifted lecturers and preachers who do create community with oratory, I like to do anything I can to engage my students with each other, with me, and with the subject. And the subject, I think, always has to take prominence.
— Parker J. Palmer
My favorite topping is one that a lot of people don't like. I love anchovies.
— Parker J. Palmer
I have to say that I have been blessed with significant teachers at every stage of my life.
— Parker J. Palmer
I understand that there are forms of entertainment that can make people weep or jazz them up so they feel like they have had an experience. But I also know that an hour later that's faded and you are back to the difficult realities of your own life. And we need to help people know how to go beyond those difficulties to a place where God dwells.
— Parker J. Palmer
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
I am very, very uneasy with churches that have basically said, "Well, since that's what people want and that's what sells, then were going to do our worship services like Hollywood productions. We're going to have a lot of bells and whistles. We're going to have high entertainment value, and it is going to have a lot of gloss and glitter."
— Parker J. Palmer
I don't do a lot of top-down teaching.
— Parker J. Palmer
There's a lot of fear connected with the inner journey because it penetrates our illusions. Taking the inner journey will lead you into some very shadowy places. You're going to learn things about yourself that you'll wish you didn't know. There are monsters in there-monsters you can't control-but trying to keep them hidden will only give them greater power.
— Parker J. Palmer
Discovering vocation does not mean scrambling toward some prize just beyond my reach but accepting the treasure of true self I already posses.
— Parker J. Palmer
The past isn't fixed and frozen in place. Instead, its meaning changes as life unfolds.
— Parker J. Palmer
I think the church needs to be much more countercultural than that and invite people into slowing down, into a "Be-still-and-know-that-I-am-God" mindset.
— Parker J. Palmer
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
I think the pursuit of happiness is the pursuit of reality because illusion never leaves us ultimately happy.
— Parker J. Palmer
Relational trust is built on movements of the human heart such as empathy, commitment, compassion, patience, and the capacity to forgive.
— Parker J. Palmer
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