Meet the Bioneers: Parker Palmer
Posted: 3:27PM September 19th, 2011 | Comments
[This is the fifth and final in a series of five profiles of the individuals who belong to the 2011 class of Badger Bioneers. Remember to visit our dedicated Bioneers page on this site and purchase tickets to this year's Bioneers conference!]
Parker Palmer; Author, Educator, Founder - Center for Courage & Renewal
A lady famously inquired of Ben Franklin on his exit from the Constitutional Convention of 1787, “Well, doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”
His response – “A republic, madame, if you can keep it” – remains strong medicine for those suffering malaise or depression when faced with the present-day intractable political discourse that is souring state legislatures and Capitol Hill in DC.
Depression is, in fact, what led Parker Palmer to begin his latest book – six years in the making – and it was the hole from which he had to climb to rekindle his own faith in the American political tradition.
“Writing is, for me, a way of re-engaging with the world,” says Palmer, in his distinctive, rich baritone. At 71, he is an energetic, precise conversationalist, and he has adopted the mien of someone who is used to stating his case plainly, and staking his territory on moral ground.
Published this month, Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit is the ninth book in Palmer’s 40-plus year career as nationally-recognized author and educator. This book addresses the non-engagement of the American citizenry, which, in Palmer’s view, is at least partly responsible for the shrill, strident tone that dominates political chatter.
“We maintain the illusion that we can somehow hide out in private and still have a vibrant, engaged political society,” says Palmer. And the longer we remain dissociated from the political conversation, the more we allow pundits, talking heads, and ideologues to define the terms of engagement, to private political benefit.
This has meant more people living in fear of their neighbors and their neighbors’ politics.
“Fear is an unsustainable relationship,” says Palmer.
“And as long as we are animated by fear, we have a very unstable and unsustainable political situation.”
Given that the economic, environmental, and energy issues facing American society are greater than any in perhaps recent memory, this unsustainable situation is particularly worrisome. As its name suggests, Healing the Heart of Democracy is calibrated to call people back to the rights – and duties – for which they are responsible, and on which the ultimate outcome of the ongoing democratic experiment rides.
Palmer’s previous books have also dealt explicitly with the elements of sustainable relationships: relationships between people, but also the relationships that individuals have with their work.
“Over the last 40 years my focus has been on the sustainability of the institution of education,” Palmer reflects.
“Fifty percent of the people who go into public education with high energy and enthusiasm are gone after five years. A tremendous number are driven out because not enough people are interested in sustaining the human resource called the teacher.”
It was this crisis in the vocation of education that opened Palmer’s eyes to the ways in which individuals – of all professions – can become siloed, trapped, and sapped of their initial fire or motivation.
As founder of The Center for Courage and Renewal, Palmer sees his life’s work as helping people “rejoin soul and role.” In the case of the Center, this has meant providing workshops and reflective retreats to over 25,000 teachers, clergy, executives and administrators in fifty cities, nurturing their creativity and their passion, and returning to them a sense of their own potential.
In Palmer’s view, Healing the Heart of Democracy is an extension of his concern for vocation.
“We’ve been ignoring the infrastructure of democracy,” he says. Like the country’s wobbly bridges and leaking dams, the nation’s citizenry needs to be renewed and re-energized, and called back to a sense of purpose rooted in responsibility for one’s neighbors, and one’s community, city, and nation.
It is a vision of a true democracy, and it is true sustainability.
