Dreading the Next Political Season? Parker Palmer Has a Tonic for Your Heart

Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit by Parker J. Palmer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Parker Palmer is a man with one good idea. In many ways he reminds me of my father, who was a remarkable preacher day in and day out, but who also had a song in him. Every now and then my mother or one of the deacons who had heard him in times past would press him to sing a "special," as it is called in my religious tradition.  So Dad would eventually acquiesce and mount the dais to sing.  He never varied in his choice of sacred music. Every special I ever recall hearing him sing was the same. "How Great Thou Art." He sang it well, not perfectly, but his heart was in it and I loved hearing him sing that song.

And so goes Parker Palmer. His one great special sung over and over again is his song of the Quaker meeting.  He wants to take the genius of that gathering out of the meeting house and into the streets, to executive offices, board rooms and places of business and even, as he so ably does with this book, into the public square.

Palmer quietly but passionately tells and retells the story of a meeting of equals, of those who are endeavoring to become true friends as they observe the Gospel Order.  He witnesses to a determined faith in a process that will not run ahead of nor lag behind the guidance of God's Spirit and that of one's friends.

Palmer's song is worth singing over and over again. Never mind that the basic structure is simple, because it is also profound.  This Quaker convert who discovered the genius of a spiritual process devoted to listening deeply to one another, eschewing pat answers and quick fixes, refusing to be satisfied with premature foreclosure, really has discovered something rare but much needed in our modern world.

Palmer fashions a strong lodgepole for this book by means of his development of a central metaphor. He compares our experiences of having our hearts broken into pieces due to our disappointments in the political process with the alternative possibility that our hearts might be broken open to redeemptive and restorative experiences by those same disappointments. Palmer suggests that the current focus on winning and losing leads us in precisely the wrong direction.  Instead, he beckons us to take our experiences of bitter defeat and unsatisfying victories and to use them as touchstones to deepen our understanding of ourselves and our political enemies. In Karen Horney's apt terminology, Palmer is helping us to let go of our reactionary instinct to constantly move against one another so that we can move toward each other in genuine dialogue.

Palmer's exposition of De Tocqueville's book, Democracy in America, is one of the most thoughtful and revealing essays I've read on this subject. Palmer manages to turn what I imagined would be a boring rehash of one of the most quoted books on U.S.-style democracy and turned it into a lesson in thoughtful and informative exposition. I listened to this section several times over, so delighted was I with the insights he brought to the text.

Perhaps the most boring part for me was the section on education, if for no other reason than the fact that I've read literally dozens if not hundreds of papers on this aspect of Palmer's thought.  He is an educator and so it is to be expected that he would include a section on education, but I did not find new ideas here, just what felt like an obligatory attempt to address something he's already covered in great detail elsewhere.

All in all, however, I came away from listening to Healing the Heart of Democracy with something that felt very much like genuine healing for my heart. Like my father's special, Palmer inspired me, comforted me with familiar themes and reminded me of the beauty that can guide each of us through the perils of this dark political quagmire through which we are toiling.



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Corruption Among Us: A Response to Despair

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Looking back on yesterday's essay it seems more than a little ironic that the topic was corruption leaving Wall Street and walking down Main Street.  Frankly, I didn't plan on talking about a plague of corrupting influences on the afternoon of Halloween.   

The more I think about it, however, the more it makes sense to me that all those monster movies online and on the television, combined with the ghoulish images the candidates are throwing up of each other, would have driven me toward this theme.

A CASE IN POINT

This morning I got another dose of it when a friend and colleague of mine, Don Sewell, was talking about a medical crisis he had been informed of by colleagues in another country.  

Don is director of Baylor Health Care System's (BHCS) Faith in Action Initiatives, a position that challenges him daily to respond to the needs of individuals and communities around the world undergoing humanitarian crises.  

His work, with the strong support of BHCS' senior leaders, its employees and a dedicated corps of Faith in Action employees and volunteers, is making a difference literally all over the world.

Don's counterpart in country  was deeply disturbed at an outbreak of  a condition she feared might be leprosy. 

When Don showed photos and shared a description with a doctor, however, who has experience in public health and disaster relief, the initial answer came back that this was not an outbreak of leprosy, but something more mundane.

It appears that the particular medical condition is related to a bacteria in the soil, one that grows in settings where people who don't have access to clean water and sanitation facilities.  

The solution is simple, and the postive effect on a community's health can be dramatic.  Yet it calls for aid agencies to recognize the problem and to directly address it as a top priority.  Sending more first aid kits and care packages will do nothing to stop the infection that is attacking individuals.  

I couldn't help thinking of the question with which I ended my article yesterday. "How can we resist the devil in times like these?"

HOW TO FIGHT A SOUL DESTROYING INFECTION

More now than at any other time in my life I think that we who say we believe in a loving God are being challenged to resist the corruption that has infected the very soil of our social, cultural and spiritual lives.

That corruption, as I said yesterday, does NOT come from any group of people in this land who are the "enemy."  It goes much deeper and its source is rooted in a spiritual perversion that wants to distort the nature of love until it is twisted completely out of true.

And no matter how many spiritual band-aids we attempt to put on the problem, no matter how many scapegoats we find to blame, these corrupting influences will not disappear until we change tactics and begin to clean up our own spiritual houses and fields.

In times like these, when powerful men seek to further inflate the perception of their power and goodness while simultaneously slandering not merely the goodness but the basic humanity of their opponents, it is easy to believe that love will not do, and that faith requires a "by any means fair or foul" mindset.  

The reality is just the opposite.  There is no time when ordinary women and men are called upon more to exercise faith in a God who reigns sovereign over all nations.  There is no more time when ordinary people need to commit themselves more to integrity, to honesty and to wisdom.

NEEDED NOW MORE THAN EVER

On the eve of the first world war, the great Christian mystic, Evelyn Underhill wrote the following:

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"Many will feel that in such a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant, disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book (Practical Mysticism, published in 1914) which deals with that which is called the "contemplative" attitude to existence is wholly out of place."

Underhill went on to write that if the principles for which the book she was writing were to have any real value they had to show that they made a difference at just such a time as the time of war, of violence, of corruption and despair.  Such commitment to live in faith in times of crisis, said Underhill,

". . . will teach (us) to see the world in a truer proportion, discerning eternal beauty beyond and beneath apparent ruthlessness. It will educate (us) in a charity free from all taint of sentimentalism; it will confer on (us) an unconquerable hope; and assure (us) that still, even in the hour of greatest desolation, "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things."

I believe that the heart of the Christian faith is just this belief in a mystical union with God (Galatians 2:20) through Christ that joins our very lives with the life of God and binds us in union to one another, not to a nation or a political candidate.

Work as hard as you feel you must for your political candidate, but if you have any faith at all, do all you can to preserve your soul's integrity.  Pray as you work, and ask God to prepare you, on the day after the polls close, to put your whole heart into the work of loving service to others to which God has called you and me.

What else do you think that we ordinary individuals must do?

Born in Wolverhampton, England in 1875 Evelyn Underhill was educated at home and at King's College for Women. In 1907 she married Hubert Stuart Moore, also a barrister. In that year she also underwent an experience of conversion to Christianity. Much of the rest of her life became a quest to find the meaning of her early religious experiences. Throughout the rest of her life she moved from Neoplatonist to Theist to Christocentric Christian.

Underhill, Evelyn (2011-04-04). Practical Mysticism. Neeland Media LLC. Kindle Edition.

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Cynicism & Corruption Leave Wall Street, Walk Down Main Street

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“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your sisters and brothers throughout the world.              1 Peter 5:8-9 NKJV

You may have noticed, dear reader, that I seem to have hit a wall in terms of my posts here.  I haven't been able to put my finger on it.  My writing doesn't seem to have slowed down in other places, but I have not been able to get anything on this website.

Anybody who knows me will tell you that it isn't because I've run out of things to say.  "Seldom right, but never unsure," probably comes as close as anything I know to describing the life of my discourse, and for better and worse I seem to have stuck remarkably close to that motto for very long time now.

WE ARE DROWNING IN AN OCEAN OF TOXIC FAITH

This morning it occurred to me that it isn't so much about not having things to say as it has been about a real crisis of faith in communication of all kinds.

Of course the run-up to the election has a great deal to do with it, but I don't mean the ad campaigns.  You can read Jim Denison's usual insightful take on the impact our politics is having on the heart and soul of the U.S. of A. here.  He documents the fact that in battle ground states, voters will be bombarded with 10,000 political ads per week, with a 14:1 ratio in favor of negative advertising.  He didn't say what the percentage of genuinely truthful communications would be taking place.  

Thank God for people of faith and insight like Jim, because right now I wouldn't give you a plug nickle for the rest of cyberspace.

Which pretty well explains my crisis of confidence in words.  

The thing that has me more concerned about the state of things right now, though, is not the level of vitriol and untruth in political ads.

Who can be surprised by that phenomenon?  

What alarms me more than anything is the level of mean-spiritedness, dishonesty and winner-take-all spirit that prevails among ordinary people who are posting online.  

A very large minority have completely abandoned civility and honesty in favor of outright profanity, name calling, ridiculous dishonesty and shameless vitriol.  It is as though people have given up speaking to one another and are now just throwing words at each other like jailed chimps flinging feces at their captors.

Except for the fact that this is a democracy, and if the people get the government they deserve, then we are our own jailers now, smeared with the excrement of our own degrading motivations.

CORRUPTION ON A GRASS ROOTS SCALE

It reminds me of those scenes in Lord of the Rings where the heroes, the ordinary characters upon whom the fate of middle-earth depends, are corrupted by the power of the ring. Not the villain Gollum.  But Frodo, Gandalf, and Boromir.  They betray one another, plot the worst for one another, and are relentlessly absorbed into the degradation of an evil power, if only for a moment.

In the last several weeks I've become more worried about grass roots corruption among ordinary individuals than I ever was about corruption on Wall Street and in Washington, D.C.

Have we ever needed more evidence that the devil is a roaring, ravenous lion, swaggering across a nation- a world even- looking for whom he may devour?

The devil is not Romney.  It isn't Obama or Democrats or Republicans or socialists, liberals, or fundamentalists.  The ravenous lion is a power much greater than all those earthly powers, one that only uses the political feuds of the moment to swallow integrity alive and to convince people that honesty must take a back seat to winning.  That civility is a sign of weakness and a prediction of failure.  That integrity is nonexistent and that our choices are only between strong and stronger, not good and better.

How can we resist the devil at a time like this?  Is there any hope that God may still be directing affairs in this television talk show brawl we have made of politics in the U.S.?  

Leave a comment with your read on what we can do to effectively fight the corruption that is infecting our nation.

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