Deb Cooper on Parker Palmer

Guest Writer: Deb Cooper

Parker Palmer: On the Brink

“I like being old.  Age brings diminishments, but more than a few come with benefits.  I’ve lost the capacity for multitasking, but I’ve rediscovered the joy of doing one thing at a time.  My thinking has slowed a bit, but experience has made it deeper and richer.  I’m done with big and complex projects, but more aware of the loveliness of simple things. . . I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life. . . Looking back, I see why I needed the tedium and the inspiration, the anger and the love, the anguish and the joy.  I see how it all belongs. . . I’m not given to waxing romantic about aging and dying.  I simply know that the first is a privilege and the second is not up for negotiation.”  Parker Palmer, On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity & Getting Older, pp. 1-2,  2018, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.

More than twenty years ago, I was having a conversation with Barbara, a co-worker, when I asked her, “What is your favorite season of the year?”  Her response: “In the winter, I like summer the best; in the summer, I like winter the best.”  I was so taken aback by her response that I could think of nothing else to say, and the conversation ended.

I am curious why this conversation came to mind as I reflected on Parker Palmer’s words about “aging.”  As I read Palmer, I recognized my almost 70-year-old self as being “in transition” – currently multitasking while yearning for a narrower focus, currently working through a complex project while yearning for more depth in my relationships with friends, with God’s creation, with my own Self.  Perhaps my experience with Barbara came to mind just in time to give me pause to reflect more about just where I am at this moment.  

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been in conversation with Sandra, someone I’m just beginning to know.  She is an artist who paints landscapes of all the seasons—spring, summer, fall, winter—and she also loves to paint the flowers she grows in her own garden.  About her painting flowers, Sandra said she often uses good quality artificial flowers as her model in the dead of winter.  It is her way to bring spring and summer into a cold January.   Sandra brings life to everything she paints, and our conversations have breadth and depth. 

This is a common experience for me—life juxtaposing very different situations, bringing them both into a present moment, as if to say, “it is time to choose.”  I have something to learn from both Barbara and Sandra as I step into one more life transition, and thanks to Palmer’s book, I’m beginning to “see how it all belongs.”  

Deb Cooper

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Live your Life

Live your life

“Live your life so that the fear of death can never enter your heart. When you arise in the morning, give thanks for the morning light. Give thanks for your life and strength. Give thanks for your food and for the joy of living. And if perchance you see no reason for giving thanks, rest assured the fault is in yourself.”  Ascribed to Chief Tecumseh, Synthesis Today quote, August 3, 2018, www.synthesispub.com

Aaron Burden  Unsplash

Gratitude is definitely a secret to a Spirit filled life.  Those in 12 step groups believe that you will most probably not go back to your old addiction, what they call “a slip” if you stay in a life of gratitude each day. Whenever someone in recovery is not doing well, the most suggested remedy is to start making a gratitude list every day, especially at night.

I live with Balbir Matbur’s teaching that “he travels in a boat called Surrender. His two oars are Forgiveness and Gratitude.”  As long as I can surrender to a power greater than myself and am willing to forgive and remain grateful for what I have been given, I live a life of peace. My blood pressure stays more normal. I am less likely to become irritated at all of life’s hiccups, my computer is not working, someone has said something unkind, I have expectations of myself and others that are not being met, my body is not working the way it should, I am not getting my way, my plan done for the day.

 I begin to live a life believing there is a grand plan better than my own.

My husband and I once made fun of an older man who was a friend of his father who would so often said, “you must have an attitude of gratitude.” Well, we both know now that there is no greater wisdom for living than this simple jingle.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

Buechner: Memory, Eucharist

Buechner: Memory, Eucharist, Jesus

“There are two ways of remembering. One way is to make an excursion from the living present back into the dead past. The old sock remembers how things used to be when you and I were young, Maggie. The faraway look in his eyes is partly the beer and partly that he's really far away.

The other way is to summon the dead past back into the living present. The young widow remembers her husband, and he is there beside her.

When Jesus said, "Do this in remembrance of me," he was not prescribing a periodic slug of nostalgia.” Frederick Buechner, Originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words, Frederick Buechner Quote of the Day, August 1, 2018.

Debby Hudson   Unsplash

Buechner gives us two ways to remember, going back and bringing memories forward. The going back to past memories can allow us to relive a scene from our lives. Anthony de Mello writes that sometimes that scene was too powerful to experience at the first time. As we relive it, we can participate in it again and again perhaps with a greater sense of its meaning.

Bringing memories forward is like doing active imagination with a friend or someone you deeply loved who has died. You imagine their presence with you. My experience is sometimes you will feel their presence even without trying to imagine it. Buechner believes that when Jesus said, “Do this is remembrance of me” (1 Corinthians 11:24) ,   Jesus is calling us to bring him back into our presence and know and feel his love so that we might go out and do the same for others. 

Some believe that Jesus is actually present in the bread and wine at the Eucharist. Others believe that the bread and wine are messengers or symbols reminding us of Jesus’ presence and love in our lives. Either way, the God of love is present.

Joanna   joannaseibert.com