Kruse Kronicle

The Active Life - 8. “Threatened With Resurrection": Acts of Death or New Life. Parker Palmer

Today we come to the eighth and final chapter in Parker Palmer's The Active Life: A Spirituality of Creativity, Work, and Caring, titled "' Threatened With Resurrection': Acts of Death or New Life."

The Horizons of Action

In this final chapter, Palmer offers insight into the meaning of resurrection. He opens by reminding us that we live our lives in view of a coming horizon. How we view that horizon shapes our action. If all we see is death on the horizon, we can become fearful and despondent.

But when we envision a horizon that holds the hope of life, we are free to act without fear, free to act in truth and love and justice today because those very qualities seem to shape our own destiny. (139)

The hope of resurrection can set us free. Yet Palmer offers an interesting insight into resurrection.

I have sometimes feared life itself, and the movement toward new life, more than I have feared death in its various forms. (140)

We are prone to become accustomed to our pain and dysfunctions, and losing them … dying to them … threatens our very identity and ability to make sense of the world.

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 new life, what might I be called upon to do? (142)

Who Threatens Us?

In the second section of this chapter, Palmer turns to a poem by Julia Esquivel titled They Have Threatened Us With Resurrection. (You can follow the link to read the poem.) The context for the poem is the murder and repression of peasants in Guatemala from the 1950s to 1980s. Her poem suggests that both the oppressors and the martyred oppressed threaten us with resurrection.

"… On the one hand, we fear the killers, but not simply because they want to kill us. We fear them because they test our convictions about resurrection, they test our willingness to be brought into a larger life than the one we know. On the other hand, we fear the innocent victims of the killers, those who have died for love and justice and peace. Though they are our friends, we fear them because they call us to follow them in "this marathon of Hope." If we were to take their calling seriously, we ourselves would have to undergo some form of dying."

And …

So we huddle together in our conspiracy of silence, trying to ignore both the death and their murderers, trying to ignore the ambiguous call of the new life that lies beyond death. (148)

As Palmer notes, the "Us" in the poem's title isn't just about the killers and the killed. We, the ones observing this, are part of the "Us" as well.

The Meaning of Resurrection

Toward the end of this section. Palmer writes:

For Esquivel, there is no resurrection of isolated individuals. She is simply not concerned about private resurrections, yours or mine or her own. Each of us is resurrected only as we enter into the network of relationships called community, a network that embraces not only living persons but people who have died, and nonhuman creatures as well. Resurrection has personal significance – if we understand the person as a communal being – but it is above all a corporate, social and political event, an event in which justice and truth and love come to fruition. (152)

I think Palmer writes some important stuff here. Resurrection isn't simply being raised into a new life and a personal relationship with Jesus. Resurrection is the consummation of the Kingdom of God. It is the realization of the world that God intended from the beginning. Resurrection is threatening to our complacent existence, but it is also the hope that animates us.

Resurrection Into Community

Death is our constant companion. We can live in denial of it, or we can embrace it as our companion.

… if we try to gain life by denying death, the paradoxical result is that we become lifeless. This is why "disillusionment" is so important, for by losing our illusions we can tap the energy of the reality that lies beyond them. Once we are thoroughly disillusioned we can say, with Thoreau, "Reality is fabulous!" No matter how difficult reality may be, it contains more life than any illusion.

And …

The reality is that sooner or later all we have will be taken from us by death. But if we can live with the threat of resurrection in our bones, then we will live truly and well. Then we will join in a corporate witness that is immortal, a witness that is only strengthened by the forces of death, a witness that is in itself the resurrection life. (155)

Palmer goes on to say:

For many of us, the life we need to lose is the life lived in the image of the autonomous self, and the life we shall then find is that of the self embedded in community – a community that connects us not only to other people but the natural world as well. No wonder resurrection is threatening … (156)

He wraps up the chapter with this:

In the active life of work, creativity, and caring we are given endless opportunities to lose ourselves so that we may find ourselves, to join with others in the great community so that free from the fear of isolation, we may become who we are. It is the testimony of Julia Esquivel that by joyfully embracing the threat of resurrection we can work, create, and care in ways that take us not toward the futility of death but toward the fullness of new life for ourselves and for the whole of creation. (157)

As I reflected on this chapter and the whole book, it drove home a very important point to me: it is too frequently overlooked. Living the resurrection life is frequently cast in terms of getting on board with some "big deal"… going to an unreached community with the message of Jesus or losing ourselves in some great struggle for justice or compassion. I do not doubt that the resurrection life leads some of us for a period into such "big deals." But as I've read Scot McKnight write about other topics, "This is true but not true enough." I read Palmer to say that resurrection life penetrates all our work, creativity, and caring, which means all of our work, creativity, and caring is mission. The "big deal" is not an escape from secular and trivial life into a sacred and meaningful life. When it emerges, the "big deal" springs from having ALL of life deeply embedded in resurrection life. Our most menial daily acts are opportunities for service in the Kingdom of God. The big deal turns out to be the daily small deal.

 

Questions:

How have you been threatened by resurrection?

How do react to the idea of "resurrection into community," rather than simply an event tied to your personal narrative?

Do you experience your daily life as deeply connected to the resurrection? Why or why not?

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The Active Life - 7. “Loaves and Fishes": Acts of Scarcity or Abundance. Parker Palmer

Today we come to the seventh chapter in Parker Palmers’ The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, titled “’Loaves and Fishes’: Acts of Scarcity or Abundance.” We will begin with a review of Palmer’s main points. I agree with his general conclusion in this chapter, but I find his path to his conclusions problematic (more below.) The story in this chapter is the story of the Loaves and Fishes from the Gospel of Mark:

The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes

The apostle returned to Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place, and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves. Now many saw them going, and knew them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns, and got there ahead of them. As he landed he saw a great throng, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a lonely place, and the hour is now late; send them away, to go into the country and villages round about and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread, and give it to them to eat?” And he said to them. “How many loaves have you? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” Then he commanded them all to sit down by companies upon the green grass. So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set before the people; and divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand people. (Mark 6:30-44, RSV. Inclusive language by Palmer.)

Palmer sees action and contemplation as inseparable in this story. Jesus and the disciples intend to take a break, but the crowds follow them. This pressed home ever clearer the gifts they had to give and their own need to give them. But unlike the Angel in Buber’s story, these actions are not from “above.” The passage says Jesus acted out of compassion. It was responsive, not reflexive. It sprang from a sense of inner truth, much like the experience of the woodcarver.

But the focus of the story is this:

Hunger and food, of both the literal and metaphorical sorts, are the dominant images of this story. I want to translate these images into generic terms of scarcity and abundance. … In this story, as throughout his active life, Jesus wanted to help people penetrate the illusion of scarcity and act out the reality of abundance. (124)

The Scarcity Assumption

The quality of our active lives depends heavily on whether we assume a world of scarcity or a world of abundance. Do we inhabit a universe where the basic things that people need – from food and shelter to a sense of competence and of being loved – are ample in nature? Or is this a universe where such goods are in short supply, available only to those who have the power to beat everyone else to the store? The nature of our action will be heavily conditioned by the way we answer those bedrock questions. In a universe of scarcity, only people who know the arts of competing, even of making war will be able to survive. But in a universe of abundance, acts of generosity and community become not only possible but fruitful as well. (124-125)

From here, Palmer enters a critique of contemporary economic systems. He views competition as a result of false consciousness about scarcity. He says:

When we Americans, who comprise some six percent of the world’s population, consume over a third of the world’s resources, we create real scarcity for others.  (125)

By extrapolation, I understand him to believe that there is a fixed amount of resources in the world. Those resources would be more than sufficient for all if redistributed. A direct consequence of some having too much is that others do not have enough. Furthermore, he complains:

The cash-exchange mechanism makes it so much easier for us to ignore the gross inequities in the distribution of food and shelter around the world. (126)

In contrast …

When we are in community, many things we think we must buy in the marketplace suddenly become available free of charge. (127)

… and …

Community and abundance go hand in hand; the two words are nearly synonymous. (128)

… and …

… the first step in any action that assumes abundance and wants to amplify it is to perceive, and receive, those resources already present to us in the abundance of life itself. (129)

In my estimation, Palmer is a profound philosopher/theologian but not a very good economist. More on that at the end.

The True Miracle

Many people focus on a “magical” quality in this story. But they may be missing the intended personal application. Like the woodcarver in the earlier story, we might say, “the Spirits did it,” seeing ourselves as bystanders. Palmer writes:

What Jesus does instead of magic is to act on the assumption of abundance. First, he divides the crowd into “companies” of hundreds and fifties and commands them all “to sit down … upon the green grass.” His miracle begins with the simple act of gathering the faceless crowd of five thousand into smaller, face-to-face communities. This is the stock-in-trade of every good community organizer, this clustering of people into more intimate settings where everyday miracles have a chance to happen. (130)

… and …

In the faceless crowd we experience scarcity – a scarcity of contact, of concern, of affirmation, of love. But as the crowd is replaced by community, an invisible sense of abundance arises long before the community produces any visible goods or services. True abundance resides in the simple experience of people being present to one another and for one another.  (130)

Palmer says he feels no need to dismiss a supernatural interpretation of the story, but he suspects a different miracle was happening. As the small groups of people saw the disciples being generous, they were inspired to share what they had with each other.  He writes ...

… the experience of community it is itself abundance. In the faceless crowd we experience scarcity – a scarcity of contact, of concern, of affirmation, of love. But as the crowd is replaced by community, an invisible sense of abundance arises long before the community produces any visible goods and services.

… and conversely …

Our refusal to believe that we have enough is one cause of the competition that has resulted in such an inequitable distribution of resources at home and around the world. (132)

Leadership for Community

Palmer closes the chapter by noting how action and contemplation are intertwined in this story. The presenting issue is the need to feed so many people. That leads to contemplation of the problem. That contemplation informs Jesus that there is enough. There is abundance. But the realization is pointless without action. So by active participation in the truth of God’s abundance and sending his followers to act on such a basis, a miracle happens. That miracle transforms individuals and communities, leading them into deeper contemplation of God and the truth of the world God created. Abundance requires our participation, but it is not our creation. So also, with community.

“But even as we act to evoke community, we must remember that community itself is a gift to be received, not a goal to be achieved. We have a strong tendency to make community one more project among many, to struggle and strain to come into relationship with one another, only to find that the stress of the very efforts exhausts us and drives us apart. Still, time after time we try to “make” community happen in the same effortful and self-defeating ways. Why? Because as long as we are the makers, we remain in control; and as long as we are in control, we will not be vulnerable to the risks of true community.” (136)

A Rejoinder

Palmer has some very important truths in this chapter, but his misunderstanding of economics shades things in some unfortunate ways.

First, scarcity is real! God may have created a world of abundant natural resources, but none are useful to humanity without human action (apart from air and sunshine). Matter, energy, and data must be transformed from less useful to more useful forms through human imagination and labor. Everything we need cannot be fabricated at once. Each human being has a finite level of labor, combined with a finite number of hours to work on any given day. Priorities must be set. Production capacity is scarce relative to what we need at any given moment. How will we decide which things to do in which order? How can abundance best be realized given the absolute scarcity of goods and services? Economics studies how we go about these decisions. We can acknowledge the abundance of resources God has entrusted to us. But economics acknowledges the scarcity of goods and services with the appreciation that generation of abundance is humanity’s aim.

Second, Palmer says, “When we Americans, who comprise some six percent of the world’s population, consume over a third of the world’s resources, we create real scarcity for others.” (125) This statement is incorrect in two technical ways.

• The USA may have consumed one-third of the resources the world consumed in a year, but it did not consume one-third of the world’s resources. Each year, only a small fraction of global resources is consumed.
• At the time Palmer was writing twenty years ago, the USA percentage of the global economy was about 23%, and the USA share of the world population was about 4.5%. Since 1999, the USA share of the global economy has been shrinking by a fraction each year, down to about 19% today. The share of the world population is only slightly smaller.

But his statement and analysis are indicative of a deeper conceptual flaw: Palmer sees the world economy as a zero-sum game. The world has a fixed number of goods and services (not just resources). That number is constant from year to year. If someone has more than the average, others must have correspondingly less. With generosity, we would equal out the imbalance in the zero-sum game.

The world economy is not a zero-sum game. Since Palmer wrote his book, the world economy has grown by about 50%. The USA share of the world economy has declined to 19% over the last two decades. The share has also dropped for Europe (27% to 21%) and Japan (9% to 6%). Yet all of these economies have grown over the same period. How is it possible for their shares of the world economy to decline as their economies become larger? Because regions outside these nations are growing even faster (like China, 2.5% to 12.5%, and India, 2.5% to 5%), the size of the global economy is growing. Again, the world economy is not a zero-sum game.

Mohammad Yunnis, “Banker to the Poor” wrote Creating a World Without Poverty: Social Business and the Future of Capitalism.

“To me, the poor are like Bonsai trees. When you plant the best seed of the tallest tree in a six-inch deep flower pot, you get a perfect replica of the tallest tree, but it is only inches tall. There is nothing wrong with the seed you planted; only the soil-base you provided was inadequate.

Poor people are bonsai people. There is nothing wrong with their seeds. Only society never gave them a base to grow on.”

Just as there are bonsai people, there are also bonsai economies in nations across the globe. They can flourish just as much given the right soil as the other trees.

(I know some will interject here that such growth will exhaust our resources. It will not … or at least it need not. Such thinking discounts human creativity and imagination. That discussion is for another day.)

Third, Palmer fails to distinguish between face-to-face community and commercial society. He correctly identifies the need for face-to-face interaction with others if community is to emerge. I affirm all he has to say about community. Within such community, we come to know each other truly. We can share and care based on personal knowledge of need and merit. Attempts to substitute market exchange to fulfill many of the things we find in community are rightly challenged. But each of us can only be in true community with a few dozen people, at most. How do we coordinate economic activity beyond the scope of face-to-face community?

Most things we use today, from #2 pencils to high-tech gear, require the seamless coordination of countless thousands (millions?) of people scattered across the planet. We cannot accomplish them in face-to-face community. Prices in a market system help people know the demand for their work and the goods they produce. Prices are an information system that coordinates our behavior. Without prices and monetary exchange, people cannot know how much to buy or sell. Without this information, there is no way to achieve substantial prosperity. People are left only to the resources immediately available to them in local community. There is much less to be generous with.

Palmer writes:

“The cash-exchange mechanism makes it so much easier for us to ignore the gross inequities in the distribution of food and shelter around the world.” (132)

No! As I said above, employing the cash-exchange mechanism in face-to-face community is often inappropriate, but the cash-exchange mechanism is absolutely essential for commercial society and for reducing inequities around the world. Certainly, generosity in the form of aid to relieve immediate need is required, but the bigger issue is that bonsai people need to be transplanted into better soil. They need to be included in networks of productivity and exchange. Just as it is foolhardy to make face-to-face community a matter of market exchange, so too is it foolhardy to view commercial society as face-to-face community writ large.

My Application

With all this in mind, what do we make of the story? I begin with a question: If the story is about people being inspired to share with others based on the actions of Jesus and the disciples, where did the bread and fish come from that the people had stashed away? The bread came from the labor of clearing a field, planting seeds, nourishing a crop of wheat, harvesting the crop, adding ingredients to make dough, and then baking that dough into bread. The fish came from putting a boat into the water, dropping a net, hauling in a catch, salting and preserving the fish, and then retrieving the fish for such an occasion. Because of human imagination and labor, people had something they could share with others in face-to-face community.

Jesus inspired generosity by offering the loaves and fish. Elsewhere in the New Testament, Jesus tells us we will accomplish much greater things than he did. If generosity in face-to-face community is first grounded in productive labor, then how much greater can the generosity be if each of us were radically more productive, generating more to share? We can’t be in community with millions of other people. But we can be sure that bonsai people are given better soil and included in networks of exchange and productivity, making the most of their imagination and labor, allowing them to be generous with each other in face-to-face community.

I think Palmer is right about scarcity and abundance in the sense that we too often mistake want for need. Our drive for these “needs” inclines us to depersonalize others, abuse nature, and become stingy with what we have been given. This is not to say the only things we are to pursue are minimalist needs. Rather, we must prioritize our wants in relation to other considerations within the Kingdom of God. We need to be grateful for what we have. When superfluous wants to rise to the status of needs, we experience a scarcity created by our imagination. We become fearful and turned inward. Community is lost.

Leadership for community is not just about inspiring generosity. It is also about inspiring and creating the optimal conditions for expanding abundance, about ever-increasing the fruitfulness of the garden in ways that honor God. Like the woodcarver, it requires delving deep into the reality of our context (economics in this case) to know how to act truthfully.

 

Questions

In what ways have you felt scarcity? When have you felt scarcity the strongest? When have you been most aware of abundance? What do these experiences teach us about action in our daily existence?

 Does my critique of Palmer ring true with you? Why or why not?

 What do you think Jesus intended to communicate with his actions on this occasion?

 

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The Active Life - 6. “Jesus in the Desert": The Temptations of Action. Parker Palmer

Continuing our series on Parker Palmer's The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring, we look at Chapter 6, "' Jesus in the Desert': The Temptations of Action." The story in this chapter is the temptation of Jesus in the desert as given in Luke 4:1-15, (Jerusalem Bible, modified by Palmer with inclusive language.)

Temptations of Jesus in the Desert

Filled with Holy Spirit, Jesus left the Jordan and was led by the Spirit through the wilderness, being tempted by the devil for forty days. During that time he ate nothing and at the end he was hungry. Then the devil said to him, "If you are the Chosen One, tell this stone to turn into a loaf." But Jesus replied, "Scripture says: 'People do not live on bread alone.'"

Then leading him to a height, the devil showed him in a moment of time all the kingdoms of the world and said to him, "I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I give it to anyone I choose. Worship me, then, and it shall all be yours." But Jesus answered him, "Scripture says, 'You must worship the Lord your God, and serve God alone.'"

Then he led him to Jerusalem and made him stand on the parapet of the Temple. "If you are the Chosen One," he said to him "throw yourself down from here, for Scripture says: 'God will put angels in charge of you to guard you,' and again: 'They will hold you up on their hands in case you hurt your foot against a stone.'" But Jesus answered him, "It has been said: 'You must not put the Lord your God to the test.'"

Having exhausted all these ways of tempting him, the devil left him, to return at the appointed time.

Jesus, with the power of the Spirit in him, returned to Galilee; and his reputation spread throughout the countryside. He taught in their synagogues and everyone praised him. (100)

So far, Palmer has used stories from outside the Christian tradition for his reflections. We are so familiar with Christian stories it is hard to see them anew. As we turn this story from Luke, he wants us to listen carefully to the story and not to minimize the struggle and the suffering presented in the story, both for Jesus and, by implication, for us. He also reminds us that "The temptations story makes it clear that God's Spirit is not safe but dangerous, that those who act on the Spirit's urging will sometimes find themselves hungry and thirsty and filled with fear." (102) Reflecting on last week's story by Martin Buber, Palmer wonders:

"Is the devil in this biblical story an angel who tried to set things right but refused to learn from his failure? Is this devil still trying to set things right by finding an ally who is willing to risk the same mistake? Let us keep these questions alive while we explore the temptations that Jesus faced as he embarked on his active life." (103)

Turn This Stone to Bread

Palmer says this is, in part, the temptation to prove our identity. The devil begins, "If you are the Chosen One, …"

"Jesus does not regard himself as accountable for his calling to any voice except God's, so in his refusal to "prove" anything to the devil he is actually proving that his is the Chosen One as he himself understands it." (106)

But there is more. It is a temptation to be relevant, to meet a surface need.

"Like the woodcarver, who fasted not merely from food but from praise and criticism, gain and success, Jesus' real need is for inward confirmation of his mission, a confirmation he is more likely to fine in the emptiness of fasting than in gratification of bodily needs." (107)

By pressing to be relevant, we can sabotage true needs. "The temptation to be relevant is often the temptation to deal with only the external illusion of a problem and ignore its internal truth." (108)

I Will Give You Power

Palmer says, "The power that tempts us is never power with or for others, but always power over something or someone." (109) The imagery of "height," being above it all, is critical here. Height gives us two illusions.

"The first illusion is that once we are above it all we need not be immersed in the suffering of those who are under our power. … The second illusion is that a power that keeps us above it all is a power that will not corrupt us." (109)

But possibly the most disarming response to the devil's offer would have been to ask the question, "Does this guy really have the thing he says he can give me?" (110) Too often, we strive for things believing they will bring us benefits beyond the thing itself … freedom, status, belonging, or meaning. What is being offered is not capable of delivering what is promised. Palmer remarks that, "Were Jesus to worship the devil in this case, it would not be so much immoral as just plain foolish." (111) Such temptations should not entrap us, yet they so easily do.

Throw Yourself Down

Palmer notes that Jesus was "led" to these various tests by the devil and that it is interesting that Jesus offers no resistance. Earlier in the chapter, he says that the root Latin word for temptation, "tempartare," means to touch, to try or test, to feel experimentally. (103)  Palmer writes:

"… Resisting temptations does not mean refusing to go into place where one is tempted, does not mean evading the quandaries of one's life. We must go to those places because we have to, because they are necessary way station on the journey, because the journey requires energy that should not be squandered on fighting the journey itself. The real work is to go where we are led, to see what is there, to respond out of our own truth." (112)

Once again, Palmer thinks that Jesus' response is not out of an ethical "ought" but out of wisdom concerning the circumstances. "I do not think it would be morally wrong to test God by jumping off a high building to see if God would save you. It would be stupid." (113) To me, Palmer is not very clear about what he means in this discussion. I gather that he is saying that God could intervene, but God does not intervene to protect our petty agendas. God intervenes to further God's agenda. Acting as though we have the power to compel God to serve our ends is stupidity. That, at least, makes sense to me.

Palmer writes that "Henry Nouwen calls this third temptation the temptation to be spectacular, and it may be the most difficult of the three to resist." (113) He writes:

"This is, perhaps, the temptation to be charismatic, to inspire the sort of awe in people that leaves your ego continually inflated but that lacks the obligation that might pull you back to earth." (113)

The Temptation to be Inadequate

Palmer closes with this important observation in the chapter's final section.

"… But the temptation that afflicts many of us is that of weak ego—the temptation to think of ourselves as irrelevant, powerless, and utterly mundane, as people in whom Satan would never have the slightest interest.

On the surface, the temptations of the strong ego and the weak ego seem quite contrary to one another. But paradoxically, their origins and outcomes are the same. Both destroy our capacity for right action because both proceed from the same mistaken premise: the assumption that effective action requires us to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular, that only by being so can we have a real impact on the world." (114)

And later:

"Right action requires only that we respond faithfully to our inner truth and to the truth around us." (115)

But this is not the end of the temptation problem. Anyone who rightly rejects the call to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular will end up compellingly impacting people. Such a person will receive praise, just as news of Jesus spread through the countryside and he received praise. Then we are tempted to pursue praise. This passage was especially insightful about such praiseworthy people:

"There are two problems at work here. One is the public's tendency to project onto this man a quality that they want to possess but are unable to find in themselves, so they burden their hero with the impossible task of living out a part of their lives for them. The other problem is that their hero, like most of us, may find the hero role attractive, may seek to keep those projections coming, may even be willing to give up the solitary life that he finds so valuable for the sake of praise and fame – as I might, if given the chance." (118)

And finally:

"Right action demands that we find a deeper and truer source of energy and guidance than relevance, power, and spectacle can provide." (119)

 

Questions

In what ways have you experienced the temptation to be relevant, powerful, and spectacular? Have you experienced the temptation to be inadequate? How so?

Can you think of people in your own life who seem to be both the extremes of the temptations of Christ and the temptation to be inadequate? How would you characterize their lives?

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The Active Life - 5. “The Angel”: Action, Failure and Suffering. Parker Palmer

Today we move to chapter five, "The Angel": Action, Failure and Suffering, in Parker Palmer's The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring. This chapter features a story by Martin Buber, "The Angel and the World's Dominion."

To preface this story, Palmer notes that Martin Buber was a Jewish philosopher, and what he writes comes out of that perspective:

From the outset Jews have had to confront suffering and holocaust, to wrestle continually with the stark question, Why? In the midst of Jewish history, Hasidism arose as a mystical affirmation of the spark of light that is always found in the heart of darkness, a spark that can ignite human hope and action even in the deadliest of times. (79)

Here is Buber's story.

The Angel and the World's Dominion

Martin Buber

There was a time when the Will of the Lord, Whose hand has the power to create and destroy all things, unleashed an endless torrent of pain and sickness over the earth. The air grew heavy with the moisture of tears, and a dim exhalation of sighs clouded it over. Even the legions that surround God's throne were not immune to the hovering sadness. One angel, in fact, was so deeply moved by the sufferings he saw below, that his soul grew quite restless. When he lifted his voice in song with the others, a note of perplexity sounded among the strains of pure faith; his thoughts rebelled and contended with the Lord. He could no longer understand why death and deprivation need serve as connecting links in the great Chain of Events. Then one day he felt to his horror that the eye of All-Being was piercing his own eye and uncovering the confusion in his heart. Pulling himself together, he came before the Lord, but when he tried to talk, his throat dried up. Nevertheless, the Lord called him by name and gently touched his lips. The angel began to speak. He begged God to place the administration of the Earth in his hands for a year's time, that he might lead it to an era of well-being. The angelic bands trembled at this audacity. But at that same moment Heaven grew bright with the radiance of God's smile. He looked at the supplicant with great love, as He announced His agreement. When the angel stood up again, he too was shining.

And so a year of joy and sweetness visited the Earth. The shining angel poured the great profusion of his merciful heart over the most anguished of her children, on those who were benumbed and terrified by want. The groans of the sick and dying were no longer heard in the land. The angel's companion in the steely armor, who only a short time before had been rushing and roaring through the air, stepped aside now, waiting peevishly with lowered sword, relieved of his official duties. The earth floated through a fecund sky that left her with the burden of new vegetation.  When summer was at its height, people moved singing through the full, yellow fields; never had such abundance existed in the memory. At harvest time, it seemed likely that the walls would burst or the roofs fly off, if they were going to find room to store their crops.

Proud and contented, the shining angel basked in his own glory. For by the time the first snow of winter covered the valleys, and dominion over the earth reverted into God's hands, he had parceled out such an enormous bounty that the people of the earth would surely be enjoying his gifts for many years to come.

But one cold day, late in the year, a multitude of voices rose heavenwards in a great cry of anguish. Frightened by the sound, the angel journeyed down to the Earth and, dressed as a pilgrim, entered the first house along the way. The people there, having threshed the grain and ground it into flour, had then started baking bread—but, alas, when they took the bread out of the oven, it fell to pieces, and the pieces were unpalatable; they filled the mouth with a disgusting taste, like clay. And this was precisely what the Angel found in the second house and in the third and everywhere that he set foot. People were lying on the floor, tearing their hair and cursing the King of the World, who had deceived their miserable hearts with His false blessing.

The angel flew away and collapsed at his Master's feet. "Lord," he cried, "help me to understand where my power and judgment were lacking."

Then God raised his voice and spoke: Behold a truth which is known to me, and only to me from the beginning of time, a truth too deep and dreadful for your delicate, generous hands, my sweet apprentice —it is this, that the Earth must be nourished with putrefaction and covered with shadows that its seeds may bring forth — and it is this, that souls must be made fertile with flood and sorrow, that through them the Great Work may be born." (79-81)

Where Angels Fear to Tread

So was the angel caring and compassionate or full of arrogance? Palmer believes he was both:

Our action is often a mixture of ego and innocence, and we will not become whole until we can embrace that simple fact. If we wait for purity of motive, we will never act, or our action will be immaterial. If we abandon hope for a 'second innocence,' our action will merely multiply cynicism. (82)

And later:

Our most constructive impulse is often accompanied by a destructive impulse, made all the more destructive by the fact that we usually remain oblivious to this sinister energy within us. (82)

This duality was present in the angel, as it is with us. But Palmer reminds us that the angel is not the same at the end of the story as he was at the beginning. If we embrace the presence of this tension, we can grow to greater wisdom as the angel did.

Some see the angel motivated by compassion at the story's start, but Palmer does not. Compassion means being with another. But the angel's "… relation to that suffering was both visual and vertical: he saw it rather than touched it, and he kept himself above it rather than entering into it." (83) Only at the end of the story is he motivated by the horror to "journey down to earth" to understand what has happened.

And here is the rub. "What we usually learn, once we are there, is that there is no "fix" for the person who suffers, only the slow and painful process of walking through the suffering to whatever lies on the other side." (84) Our attempts at "fixing" things is really an effort to distance ourselves from the pain of others.

If you take my advice, and do it right, you will get well and I will be off the hook. But if you do not follow my advice, or do not follow it properly, I am off the hook nonetheless: I have done the best I could, and your continued suffering is clearly your fault. (85)

Meaningful action requires coming close to others with compassion.

The Healing Power of Failure

Key to the angel's transformation is his willingness to enter into his failure, to understand it, and learn from it. He does not run away from it and minimize it. Palmer tells a wonderful story about a wealthy white suburban congregation yoked with an urban black congregation. After three years of making money and skills available, nothing meaningful happened for the black congregation. The white congregation asked Palmer to do a sociological analysis to help them "fix the problem." Palmer writes:

… In fact, I did not view the situation as a problem to be solved. I suggested that in a congregation as wealthy as theirs, among people with so much power, the one kind of poverty that they could experience was the poverty of being unable to achieve the results they wanted. Their frustration with their sister church was, perhaps as close as they would ever get to the daily poverty of inner city blacks who can achieve so few of their cherished goals. (88)

Only by thoroughly embracing failure can we grow in understanding. Palmer concludes this section with this observation:

Rather than holding his [the angel] failure at arm's length and trying to move on, he entered fully into the pain of it and sought help from the only source left. That is all we can do when we fail so miserably – but if we do it, it is enough. (90)

What Kind of God is This?

Palmer notes that many people are put off by the characterization of God in the story. God seems to be in total control and yet allows seemingly unnecessary cruelty. Why did God not tell the angel if God knew how the story would end?

Palmer counters that the angel did know something of the truth from the start. The problem was that the angel "could no longer understand why death and deprivation need to serve as connecting links in the great Chain of Events."

… The problem from the beginning is that the angel knew the truth but "could no longer understand" it. That is, he refused to accept what he already knew.

Some of us do a lot of that, I think. We know things that we do not want to accept, and so we act as if we do not know them – until our actions and their outcomes force us to acknowledge what we already knew. … (91)

Furthermore,

… We are often ready to receive a false blessing no matter what the eventual cost; it takes unusual maturity to turn down. … (91-92)

Palmer writes:

So Buber's God might be acquitted of irresponsibility on at least two counts. One, God gave the angel freedom, even to mess up. Two, even if God had reminded the angel at the outset that life demands suffering, the angel still would have tried to circumvent that truth. But those understandings of God do not go deep enough. The truth about God in this story – and, I believe, about God in our lives – is far more radical and unsettling: God is in this mess with us and has the same unfulfilled yearnings that make our human hearts ache. (92)

I have no doubt many will find this controversial. Personally, I think there is an angle from which this must be true. If God has created beings with whom he desires a loving relationship, then those beings must be able to choose to love God (or not) freely. God can still be sovereign with confidence that God's love will prevail and still be open-ended in honoring our freedom to choose, including us as co-creative partners of the new reality God is calling us.

Jesus says, "I am the vine and you are the branches." Vines do not bear fruit. Branches do. It is through his community that Christ makes himself known. Paul says that we are the body, the physical presence, of Christ. Again, it is through Christ's community that God is made known. In the Buber story, God awakens something in the angel to take creative action, not God acting independently or sending an automaton to execute instructions. "… God in this story is a trusting and risking parent who gives the child the power and freedom to live his or her life to the fullest, no matter what." (94)

A Great Work to be Born

In the final section, Palmer writes:

On one level, the lesson God has to teach is simply the truth about nature itself: Seeds do not grow if they are not "nourished with decay." That is what composting and fertilizing are all about. By ridding earth of decay for a year, the angel destroyed the conditions that allow true grain to grow, and the result was grain that could not nourish people once it was made into bread. This law of nature, God tells the angel, is the law of human nature as well. Decay and shadow, flood and sorrow, must fertilize souls as well as seeds if the fruit of our inner life is to nourish us and others.

But God's teaching has a more immediate, less abstract, meaning. With it, God is trying to help the angel understand the very process that God and the angel are going through. The Great Work is the work the angel is engaged in – the work of developing compassion by suffering the fires of failure. God is engaged in this Great Work with us, continually expanding the scope of God's own compassion and experiencing the failures of love. (95)

With all this being true, there is hope that this inescapable reality can somehow be escaped. Enter the vision of a messiah. God does enter into our circumstances to overcome this reality, not over and against us, but with and through us. It is a process of sanctification and learning to become more compassionate.

 

Questions

What parts of the story resonate with you? Which parts trouble you? Why?

Can you recall when you or others sought to achieve great works only to end in disappointment or even horror? How have those experiences shaped you?

What do you think of how Palmer frames God? What encourages you or troubles you about seeing God in this way?

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The Active Life - 4. "The Woodcarver": A Model for Right Action. Parker Palmer

This week we are looking at chapter 4, “’The Woodcarver’: A Model for Right Action,” in Parker Palmer’s book, The Active Life. Palmer draws on another story by the ancient Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu.

 

The Woodcarver.

 

Khing, the master carver, made a bell stand

Of prescious wood. When it was finished,

All who saw it were astounded. The said it must be

The work of spirits.

The Prince of Lu said to the master carver:

“What is your secret?”

 

Khling replied: “I am only a workman:

I have no secret. There is only this:

When I began to think about the work you commanded

I guarded my spirit, did not expend it

On trifles, that were no to the point.

I fasted in order to set

My heart at rest.

After three days fasting, I had forgotten gain and success.

After five days

I had forgotten criticism.

After seven days

I had forgotten my body

With all its limbs.

 

“By this time all thought of your Highness

And of the court had faded away.

All that might distract me from the work

Had vanished.

I was collected in the single thought

Of the bell stand.

 

“Then I went to the forest

To see the trees in their own natural state.

When the right tree appeared before my eyes,

The bell stand also appeared in it, clearly, beyond doubt.

All I had to do was to put forth my hand

And begin.

 

“If I had not met this particular tree

There would have been

No bell stand at all.

 

“What happened?

My own collected thought

Encountered the hidden potential in the wood;

From this live encounter came the work

Which you ascribe to the spirits. (55-56)

Palmer suspects that many people will find this story a bit romantic. Does it really apply to our contemporary work world?

Many people feel hampered by the hierarchies in which we often must work, by institutional structures that curtail the independence that we think we need to do our creative best. But few people work in a setting as demanding as the woodcarver’s. … When I ask Chinese scholars what would have happened if Khing had failed to produce a bell stand acceptable to the prince, they usually answer with a sweeping movement of the forefinger across the front of the throat. (57)

Few of us work under such demanding circumstances, yet the woodcarver seems to take an odd approach in completing his task. After years of reflection on this story, Palmer writes that he sees four “critical junctures” in the story where an element of work is revealed that we can learn from. “The four elements are motives, skills and gifts, ‘the other,’ and results.” (58) Palmer unpacks these four elements during the rest of the chapter.

Motives

Each action has a motive behind it. Khing is not making the bell stand out out of some whimsical desire to create but in response to a command by the prince. He must do this to survive. This may not be the most desirable motivation for action, but it is what it is. However, once the action is set in motion, Khing can choose how to complete his task. He begins by fasting to cleanse himself of all the destructive pressures and motivations hindering him from authentically engaging in his task. By forgetting the details of his present context, he was able to re-member … join back together the authentic pieces of his identity … and act out of who he truly was. Palmer writes:

 … If we are to transcend the motives and context that so often limit and distort our action, we must enter into our versions of fasting, forgetting, and dying. (64)

As I read this section, my mind kept going to this passage in the Bible:

Col 3:22-24

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord. Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ.  NRSV

R. Paul Stevens notes that ministry is defined not by what we do but by who we serve. It is critical to continually “re-member” our identity as servants of Christ in the face of a world that endlessly seeks to dismember us with other motives.

Skills and Gifts.

Khing resists the adulation thrust upon him for his work and, thereby, the temptation to unreflectively throw himself into his task. His skill is not superhuman. His workmanship comes from experience, practice, and awareness. People often give such accolades (“the work of the spirits”) to an accomplished craftsman because ascribing high-quality work to supernatural sources frees them from reflecting on how poorly devoted they have been to their own development. Khing is not letting others off the hook.

Palmer goes on to reflect on a distinction between innate abilities we possess and skills we have learned. He writes:

The skills we are most aware of possessing are often those we have acquired only through long hours of study and practice, at considerable financial or personal cost. Precisely because these skills once cost us effort to acquire, and still cost us effort to employ, we are acutely aware of owning them. Ironically, these self-conscious skills are often not our leading strengths; if they were, they would not be so effortful. But they are our strengths upon which we sometimes build our identities and our careers – though we build on an anxious, uncertain foundation. Meanwhile, our native, instinctive gifts either languish unused and unappreciated or get used unconsciously without being named and claimed. (66)

Concerning the woodcarver, Palmer observes:

… the woodcarver possesses several other gifts [other than technical woodcarver skills], all of which are essential to the mastery he demonstrates: the capacity to wait patiently for insight to emerge, the capacity to trust in the outcomes of uncertain process, the capacity to take risks under pressure, the capacity to speak his truth even when it is not what people want to hear. (67)

To discover our innate abilities, Palmer suggests we might want to reflect on our earliest childhood memories and remember how we spent our time. What things pleased us, and what things could not abide? By returning to early memories of ourselves, we can recapture what we naturally did before we were socialized to conform to particular norms or ground our identity in acquired skills. I was counseled to do this a few years ago. I think the exercise was one of the most important acts of self-discovery I have ever done.

The Other

Action always involves an “other,” whether other people or other objects. “Right action requires knowledge of the other’s nature, which means knowledge of its potentials and limits, of what it can and cannot do.” (70)

In this section, I think Palmer is wrestling with a polarity. We are not intended to leave the world untouched in a pristine primitive state, but neither are we to treat the “other” as only raw material to be shaped for utilitarian purposes. In this sense, I’m reminded of Darrell Cosden (Theology of Work), who reminds us that the natural order is simultaneously the raw material from which we fashion artifacts and our home. Embracing either pole without the other is dehumanizing. Our human existence is one of correctly discerning how we work in harmony with the other, even as we reshape it.

Results

Palmer does not deny that achieving results is important, but he pushes back against the idea that the only meaningful, or even primary, thing is the results.

“… As long as ‘effectiveness’ is the ultimate standard by which we judge our actions, we will act only toward ends we are sure we can achieve. People who undertake projects of real breadth and depth are very unlikely to be “effective,” since effectiveness is measured by short-term results (never mind the fact that such people may be creating cultural legacies by their “failures”). But people with small visions will win the effectiveness awards, since those projects are so insignificant that they can almost always ‘succeed’ (never mind the fact that they contribute nothing of real merit to the commonweal). (75)

Palmer tells of a friend who said, “I have never asked myself if I was being effective, but only if I was being faithful.” (76) But Palmer goes on to add:

Again, results are not irrelevant. We rightly care about outcomes; we have to live with them, and being accountable for them is part of right action. But to make results the primary measure of action is a sure path to either inanity or insanity. The only standard that can guide and sustain us in action worth taking is whether the action corresponds to the reality of the situation, including the reality of our own inward nature.

The paradox is that faithful action does get results. …  (78-79)

Finally, Palmer reminds us that when we act, we are not only shaping the “other” but also ourselves.

 

Questions

Do you feel trapped in your work, compelled to do work that may not be your first choice, or work for which your employer is seeking to motivate you in ways that dismember your true identity? What do you think of Palmer’s idea of “re-membering” ourselves?

Have you ever deeply reflected on your childhood to discover what things brought you pleasure or dissatisfaction? What does such reflection tell you about the innate abilities God has given you?

In what ways do you experience a tension between seeing the world as raw material and as a home that nourishes us?

How have you seen the tension between results and faithfulness play out in your own life?

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The Active Life - 3. "Active Life": The Shadow Side. Parker Palmer

Today we are looking at the third chapter in Parker Palmer's book the Active Life, "Active Life": The Shadow Side. The first two chapters lay out preliminary thoughts regarding contemplative and active lives. The final six chapters begin with a piece of ancient wisdom, followed by Palmer's reflections. Today we are looking at a piece by the Chuang Tzu, a Chinese philosopher living in the fourth century B.C.E. It is called, "Active Life." Palmer uses a portion of a version translated by Thomas Merton and John C. H. Wu (to which Palmer has made some gender-inclusive edits.) Here is the translation. Following it is a video of the complete work as Merton presented it:

 

Active Life by Chuang Tzu

 

If an expert does not have some problem to vex him, he is unhappy!

If a philosopher's teaching is never attacked, she pines away!

If critics have no one on whom to exercise their spites, they are unhappy.

All such people are prisoners in the world of objects.

 

He who wants followers, seeks political power.

She who wants reputation, holds an office.

The strong man looks for weights to lift.

The brave woman looks for an emergency in which she can show bravery.

The swordsman wants a battle in which he can swing his sword.

People past their prime prefer a dignified retirement, in which they may seem profound.

People experienced in law seek difficult cases to extend the application of laws.

Liturgists and musicians like festivals in which they parade their ceremonious talents.

The benevolent, the dutiful, are always looking for chances to display virtue.

 

Where would the gardener be if there were no more weeds?

What would become of business without a market of fools?

Where would the masses be if there were no pretext for getting jammed together and making noise?

What would become of labor if there were no superfluous objects to be make?

 

Produce! Get results! Make money! Make friends! Make changes!

Or you will die of despair.

 

Distilling the poem's critique to one sentence, Palmer writes: "Too much of our action is really reacation." He says,

"Such 'doing' does not flow from free and independent hearts, he says, but depends on external provocation. It does not come from our sense of who we are and what we want to do, but from our anxious reading of how others define us and of what the world demands. When we react this way we do not act humanly; we become cogs in a machine whose every move is forced by what is happening elsewhere in the interlocked system of cogs. 'All such people are prisoners in the word of objects." (39)

We seek situations and manipulate the world into scenes that showcase our skill. The world and the people in it become objects we use to get praise and find meaning. It makes us feel alive. And it is addictive.

Palmer writes:

At root, a professional is one who makes a profession of faith – faith in something larger and wiser than his or her own powers. The true professional is the opposite of someone who makes objects of other people by creating dependencies. Instead, the true professional is a person whose action points beyond his or her self to the underlying reality, that hidden wholeness, on which we all can rely. (44)

This is the positive side of the professional, but there is a dark side as well. In one passage, Palmer asks, "What meaning would life have for some mental health professionals if there were not people who depended on their help?" (43) Should the health professional actually be successful in increasing mental health, demand for her expertise would diminish, and therefore her identity. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, and there must be nails if the hammer is to have meaning. Only if you see yourself as something more than a hammer do you have the freedom to hammer nails as needed but then to engage in other actions as circumstances change without losing identity.

Another challenge the reactive life presents is the tendency to create self-fulfilling prophecies. "Action based on false beliefs has the power to bring those falsehoods into being." (45) Someone addicted to bravery seeks out and creates circumstances where bravery is required. The fighter seeks out and creates conflicts where fighting is needed. The helper seeks out and creates situations where help is needed. We tend to shape the world to fit our professional skill, reinforcing our identity and creating a world where more peril, conflict, and need exists than need be.

Palmer warns that "… 'goodness' driven primarily by the actor's needs is unlikely to be good at all. Such goodness is often imposed on people who have no desire for it and become objects of the actor's self-serving charity." (47) As someone who has been a student of economic development for most of my adult life, I can't say strongly enough how important this statement is and how resistant so much of the Church is to hear these words.

I remember one pastor telling how his Church would prepare Christmas dinners and buy presents to deliver, in person, to families who lived in a Section 8 housing complex. What began to dawn on him was that fathers were never home when the meals and gifts were delivered. Why? The fathers slipped out the backdoor in humiliation about being unable to provide for their household. The program was revised. The Church still prepared meals, but recipient parents came to the Church to collect a meal for a minimal fee and then brought it home to their families as providers of the feast. The Church bought gifts, but parents came to a store where, for a minimal fee, they could select toys to bring home to their children. Until we escape the lie that what makes us feel helpful is always helpful, we are caught in a self-fulfilling prophecy where our "help" never really helps, wounding people in need while simultaneously generating more opportunities for us to feel helpful to people who are trapped in need, in part due to our own comfortable illusions.

Palmer closes the chapter with an interesting reflection on how we use the verb "make." We make money, make friends, make changes, make time, make love, make peace, make a deal, make our way, make things right, make meaning, make a living and … the all-inclusive … make "it." (49) We see ourselves as fabricators of everything around us, including things over which we clearly have no control. He says, "We seem to regard much of the world as raw material that waits passively to be given shape by our own designs and energies …" (49) While there is no doubt that part of what we do as humans is fabricate, it is also true that we receive from the world things over which we have no control, from a world that is dynamic and shapes us. It is our false belief that we are in control, or ought to be in control, that leads to frenetic behavior and objectification of the world and others.

I thought one of Palmer's most important lines was, "True despair is the failure to learn before we die that the water eventually closes up over everything, that we never manage to leave the indelible marks of our dreams." (51) I'm reminded of Woody Allen saying, "I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve immortality by not dying." We have immortality in God, not through our work. Attempting to achieve immortality through work is a form of idolatry. It is an illusion. But when we embrace this limitation, we are freer to receive what has been given and to participate in transforming our physical and social world into more useful forms with joy and celebration, to be more alive in our work.

Questions

In what ways have you felt your life is driven by reaction? Do you sometimes feel objectified by others? In what ways do you think we might objectify others?

Can you recall instances of creating self-fulfilling prophecies in your own life or the life of others? What were the consequences?

How does Palmer's observation that "water eventually closes up over everything" make you feel? Does it feel more threatening or freeing? Why?

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The Active Life - 2. Action and Contemplation: A Living Paradox. Parker Palmer

Parker Palmer spent the first chapter of his book The Active Life defining the active and contemplative life. He sees the active life in terms of work, creativity, and caring. He briefly explores the dualism that often develops, favoring one. In Chapter 2, he wants us to see how the two are inseparably integrated. He describes it as a “living paradox.” I might have called it a polarity. Rather than “contemplation and action,” Palmer suggests it might be more helpful to speak in terms of “contemplation-and-action,” symbolizing the interconnectedness.

The Living Paradox

Throughout our spiritual formation, Palmer believes we often experience the paradox in terms of separation, moving to alternation, and finally moving to integration. We typically are drawn to one pole or the other. Activity can fly off into frenzy. Contemplation can become escapism. Excess creates a desire for balance, so we move to alternation. Burned out, we take a “vacation” from action to contemplate. Restored, we move back into action until we are so worn out that we move to a contemplative mode again.

While alternation is an improvement, integration is optimal. Palmer defines action and contemplation this way:

• Action – “I understand action to be any way that we can co-create reality with other beings and with the Spirit.” (17) And as we saw in the previous chapter, work, creativity, and caring are forms that our action takes.
• Contemplation – “I understand contemplation to be any way that we can unveil the illusions that masquerade as reality and reveal the reality behind the masks.” (17)

Both action and contemplation have at their root a “ceaseless drive to be fully alive,” but neglect of either undercut the drive for aliveness.

The Nature of Action

Palmer devotes the second part of Chapter 2 to “The Nature of Action.” He opens with this important observation.

“If you are unemployed, if you are forced to do work that brings neither enough money or recognition, if you are young and uncertain about where you are going, or if you are unhappily retired, one of the most painful questions anyone can ask you may be simply “What do you do?” If you are unprepared, if you have not reflected on your situation and found ground to stand on, that simple question can open a dangerous chasm beneath your feet and trigger fierce defenses. Why so?” (19)

His conclusion?

“Perhaps the primitive fear that some of us feel when we cannot answer the question ‘What do you do?’ comes from a deep, unconscious intuition that inaction is a sign of death. When we are not “doing” we are forcibly reminded of our own mortality; we experience a sort of dying through inactivity. But when we are acting we can say to the world and to ourselves that we are here, we are alive, we are making a difference. Indeed, by acting we imagine that we can leave something of ourselves behind, marks that might give us a kind of immortality. In raising a child or shaping an institution or writing a book we may carry the silent hope that our mortal lives can somehow defy the barriers of death.” (20)

But we cannot escape death, and death will sweep away all we have done. We should not count on our work to achieve immortality, but we must not err in another direction by becoming passive, dying before we are dead. God has made us for co-creative work in the world, but we do so as mortal creatures. Furthermore, pride often accompanies our work. Here we face a dilemma in avoiding prideful behavior but not to the point that withdraw from action for fear of pride. Action is risky. “The greatest risk in action is the risk of self-revelation, and that is also action’s greatest joy.” (22) It is in the risk of self-revelation that we are most fully alive.

Palmer distinguishes between Instrumental and expressive aspects of work:

• “The instrumental image, which dominates Western culture, portrays action as a means to predetermined ends, as an instrument or tool of our intentions. … Instrumental action traps us in a system of praise or blame, credit or shame, a system that gives primacy to goals and external evaluations, devalues the gift of self-knowledge, and diminishes our capacity to take the risks that may yield growth.” (23)
• “An expressive act is one that I take not to achieve a goal outside myself but to express a conviction, a leading, a truth that is within me. An expressive act is one taken because if I did not take it I would be denying my own insight, gift, nature.” (24)

Palmer’s concern is not that all action should be expressive but that life becomes deadening when all our action is collapsed into instrumental acts. Expressive action is how we contribute to the larger scheme of things because it brings our unique qualities into play.

The Nature of Contemplation

The third part of Chapter 2 is devoted to “The Nature of Contemplation.” Palmer reminds us that:

“Every action originates in some assessment of reality, no matter how mistaken. No action will have lasting effects if it is inconsistent with reality.” (25)

He also astutely points out that “Contemplation is difficult for many of us because we have invested so much in illusion.” (25) Illusions are usually a joint project between us and society. They keep things orderly. He highlights three circumstances that tend to promote contemplation.

Disillusionment – When someone lets us down, or when some vision we had fails, we become dis-illusioned. We see life more fully for what it is, or at least what it is not. Palmer says, “Pain is one of the sure signs that contemplation is happening.” (27) Contemplation may eventually lead to a happier reality, but emptiness and pain are frequently part of the journey.

Dislocation – “This happens when we are forced by circumstance to occupy a very different standpoint from our normal one, and our angle of vision suddenly changes to reveal a strange and threatening landscape.” (27) A change in our health or employment or sometimes just coming to the world through someone else’s eyes, breaks us out of our limited perspective into a more full-orbed view.

Unbidden solitude – Sometimes, we find ourselves in isolation from the collective life and the reality our community reinforces for us. Sometimes solitude is forced upon us. We may need to make our way without collective support for any number of reasons. But unlike the first two, solitude is something that can grow on us. In fact, disillusionment and dislocation can take us into deeper appreciation of solitude. It can render us less needy and more capable of authentically giving of ourselves. Palmer writes:

“The healthy community is one that leaves the solitude, the integrity, of each individual intact; if its members do not respect their own solitude, they will continually violate the solitude of others. The only thing we have to bring to community is ourselves, so the contemplative process of recovering our true selves in solitude is never selfish. It is ultimately the best gift we can give to others.” (29)

The Hidden Wholeness

In the final section of the chapter, Palmer writes about “The Hidden Wholeness.” We are frequently taught that wholeness can be found in escape or retreat from the world into ethereal abstractions. Palmer says no. It is found by entering more fully into the difficult reality of this world. The answer lies not in getting out of it but in getting into it. Instead of trying to outrun the “monsters” that frighten us, we must turn and embrace them, recognize them as part of us, and be willing to learn what they might teach us. He concludes the chapter with this:

“When we live a full life of contemplation-and-action, the monsters will always be aroused, and we will be compelled to search the depths. It is good to know that those very monsters can take us to the depths we need to explore. It is even better to know that in those depths we can find the hidden wholeness that unites and energizes us, the source and the power that make us fully alive.” (34)

Summary

To summarize, contemplation and action are poles in a polarity that bring wholeness. Through action, we participate in co-creating reality with others and the Spirit. Instrumental work is an inescapable part of our existence, but a life absent of expressive work fails to bring what is unique about ourselves into the mix. But our world is a mixture of truth and illusion. How do we know who we truly are and what we might authentically bring to the world?

Contemplation is what unmasks illusion and reveals truth. Contemplation is often painful, prompted as it often is by disillusionment, dislocation, and solitude. Yet our culture is all about pain avoidance. We are inclined to deny pain, to medicate it, or to seek escape. But only by entering deeply into these painful circumstances do we find truth. With a better appreciation for the truth, we are capable of more authentic action. That action will lead to more disillusionment, dislocation, and solitude, but it will also empower us to be more truly alive in all aspects of our lives.

 

Questions

Have you had the experience of moving from separation to alternation to integration? What happened that moved you along in this progression?

Do you identify with the scariness of being unable to say what you do? Does it unnerve you that you and all you’ve done will soon be forgotten after your death? Why do you think that frightens so many of us?

What experiences of disillusionment, dislocation, or solitude have you experienced as gateways to better understanding yourself and the world?

What do you think about Palmer’s idea of embracing the monsters within us? Does that empower you? Terrify you?

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The Active Life - 1. Spirituality in Action: On Being Fully Alive

(Today, I'm beginning an eight-week book study on Parker Palmer's, The Active Life: A Spirituality of Work, Creativity, and Caring at Pine Ridge Presbyterian Church from 11:30 to 12:30. If you are in the area and want to attend, please join us. Bring lunch if you like. In addition to the face-to-face study, I will post a blog on each chapter here at the Kruse Kronicle every Tuesday, hopefully broadening the conversation.)

Parker Palmer begins The Active Life with this statement: "This book – this exploration of work, creativity, and caring in the world of action – is the result of my long journey toward the knowledge that I am not a monk." (1) Writing a decade ago, Palmer points to a spiritual renaissance in monastic spirituality over the preceding thirty years, a development he attributes to the influence of notable people like Thomas Merton. He welcomes the positive contributions of this renaissance but finds some aspects troubling:

"In the spiritual literature of our time, it is not difficult to find the world of action portrayed as an arena of ego and power, while the world of contemplation is pictured as a realm of light and grace. I have often read, for example that the treasure of the "true self" can be found as we draw back from active life and enter into contemplative prayer. Less often have I read that this treasure can be found in our struggles to work, create, and care in the world of action.

Contemporary images of what it means to be spiritual tend to value the inward search over the outward act, silence over sound, solitude over interaction, centeredness and quietude and balance over engagement and animation and struggle. …" (2)

Palmer says that, like many others, he retreated into a contemplative life when the coherence of his active life became ambiguous. The contemplative life can become a counterweight to, or even an escape from, the activist orientation of our age instead of being an avenue for discovering significance in the active life.

This divide between the contemplative life and the active life has been with the Church almost from the beginning. The ancient Greeks considered work as a means to survival, while contemplation offered the opportunity for transcendence. That mindset influenced Christianity from an early date. Palmer writes:

"Rooted in this bias, the church and the university became the preeminent institutions of Western culture, in part because they harbored the life of contemplation in a world where the active life was merely what the masses did to survive." (6)

But with Enlightenment came the rise of science and technology:

"Now we can use the tools of action to change the world, to invent our own reality, to make an historical mark. Knowledge, once seen as an end in itself, becomes the pathway to personal virtue, social status, and even to "salvation" for many modern men and women."

There is a tendency in our time for people to either embrace one mode (active or contemplative) over and against the other or to compartmentalize the two. Palmer sees the two as a polarity where both poles must be embraced and celebrated, even though we may have a call that gravitates to one another. I don't think Palmer doubts for a minute that our culture has typically overemphasized the active life to the detriment of the contemplative life. But his concern here is that so many in the Church elevate the contemplative life in unhealthy ways as a response. He writes:

"I struggle with those parts of our spiritual tradition in which the energies of the active life are more feared than revered, pictured as wild horses to be brought under control rather than life-giving streams that flow from the source. The feelings of diminishment and guilt that such spiritualties can engender may have some short-term role as prods to self-discovery. But they have no-long-term place in the life of the spirit. People called to the active life need to nurture a spirituality that does not fear the vitalities of action." (7-8)

He then follows with this paragraph, which I think is key:

"The core message of all the great spiritual traditions is "be not afraid." Rather, be confident that life is good and trustworthy. In this light, the great failure is not that of leading a full and vital active life, with all the mistakes and suffering such a life will bring (along with its joys). Instead, the failure is to withdraw fearfully from the place to which one is called to squander the most precious of our birthrights – the experience of aliveness itself." (8)

Palmer says that most of us are not so much seeking meaning, though there is likely an element of this, but seeking the "rapture of being alive." He affirms this quest not in some "narcissistic celebration of self" but in the sense of being connected to life that transcends us.

Finally, Palmer identifies three forms the active life takes:

• Work – "Work is action driven by external necessity or demand. We work because we need to make a living, because we need to solve a problem, because we need to surmount to survive." (9)
• Creativity – "Creativity … is driven more by inner choice than by outer demand. … In creative action, our desire is not to "solve" or "succeed" or "survive" but to give birth to something new …" (9)
• Caring – Caring is freely chosen action where "… we aim not at giving birth to something new; we aim at nurturing, protecting, guiding, healing, or empowering something that already has life." (9-10)

These are not mutually exclusive categories and are often intertwined. Palmer acknowledges that these definitions may seem a little abstract, but that may be partly because they are so deeply embedded in everyday life … we barely notice them. He is also keen for us to know that while a deep richness to life is connected to each of these modes of action, so is there an opportunity for violence and destruction. Palmer writes:

"My aim in this book is to celebrate and criticize the active life, to explore its joys and pains, its problems and potentials, to understand the forces that both drive and deform our activity – but to do all this with reverence for the mystery of self-discovery and creation which is at the heart of human action." (11)

 

Some questions for discussion:

What are some moments when you have felt truly alive? Do you see any connection between those moments and the active or contemplative life? Do you agree with Palmer's statement that what we are seeking most is a sense of aliveness?

Does Palmer's framing of work, creativity, and caring ring true for you? My experience has been that the Church does a much better at identifying value in creativity and caring but much less so in work. Do you agree? Why do you think this is so?

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