## Metadata - Author: [[Parker J. Palmer]] - Full Title: On the Brink of Everything - Category: #books ## Highlights - Looking back, I’m awed by the way that embracing everything—from what I got right to what I got wrong— invites the grace of wholeness. When psychologist Florida Scott-Maxwell was eighty-five, she wrote, “You need only claim the events of your life to make yourself yours. When you truly possess all you have been and done . . . you are fierce with reality.”4 Fierce with reality is how I feel when I’m able to say, “I am that to which I gave short shrift and that to which I attended. I am my descents into darkness and my rising again into the light, my betrayals and my fidelities, my failures and my successes. I am my ignorance and my insight, my doubts and my convictions, my fears and my hopes.” Wholeness does not mean perfection—it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. I’m grateful for this truth as age leads me to look back on the zigzagging, up-and-down path I’ve hacked out during my far-from-perfect life. ([Location 337](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=337)) - It’s unfair to lay all responsibility for the future on the younger generation. After all, the problems they face are partly due to the fact that we, their elders, screwed up. Worse still, it’s not true that the young alone are in charge of what comes next. We—young and old together—hold the future in our hands. If our common life is to become more compassionate, creative, and just, it will take an intergenerational effort. Let’s stop talking about “passing the baton” to the young as we elders finish running our laps. Since most of us are more skilled at sitting than at running, let’s change the metaphor and invite young adults to join the orchestra. As we sit together, we can help them learn to play their instruments—while they help us learn the music of the emerging world, which they hear more clearly than we do. Together we can compose something lovelier and more alive than the current cacophony, something in which dissonance has a place but does not dominate. ([Location 565](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=565)) - The tighter we cling to the norm of effectiveness, the smaller the tasks we’ll take on, because they are the only ones that get short-term results. Public education is a tragic example. We no longer care about educating children—a big job that’s never done. We care only about getting kids to pass tests with measurable results, whether or not those tests measure what matters. In the process, we’re crushing the spirits of a lot of good teachers and vulnerable kids: there are millions of kids in this country who long to be treasured, not measured. ([Location 755](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=755)) - Necessity being the mother of invention, it struck me that contemplation didn’t depend on a particular practice. All forms of contemplation share the same goal: to help us see through the deceptions of self and world in order to get in touch with what Howard Thurman called “the sound of the genuine” within us and around us.1 Contemplation does not need to be defined in terms of particular practices, such as meditation, yoga, tai chi, or lectio divina. Instead, it can be defined by its function: contemplation is any way one has of penetrating illusion and touching reality. ([Location 844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=844)) - I envy people who have whatever it takes to practice classic contemplative disciplines day in and day out—practices that help them get beyond the smoke and mirrors and see the truth about themselves and the world. I call these people “contemplatives by intention,” and some I’ve known seem to be able to get ahead of the train wreck. But I’m not a member of that blessed band. I’m a “contemplative by catastrophe.” My wake-up calls generally come after the wreck has happened and I’m trying to dig my way out of the debris. ([Location 873](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=873)) - When we feel certain that the human soul is no longer at work in the world, it’s time to make sure that ours is visible to someone, somewhere. ([Location 884](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=884)) - I stand among you as one who offers a small message of hope, that first, there are always people who dare to seek on the margin of society, who are not dependent on social acceptance, not dependent on social routine, and prefer a kind of free-floating existence under a state of risk. And among these people, if they are faithful to their own calling, to their own vocation, and to their own message from God, communication on the deepest level is possible. And the deepest level of communication is not communication, but communion. It is wordless. It is beyond words, and it is beyond speech and beyond concept. ([Location 888](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=888)) - Rilke’s definition of love: “that two [or more] solitudes border, protect and salute one another.” ([Location 979](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=979)) - [W]e can no longer rely on being supported by structures that may be destroyed at any moment by a political power or a political force. You cannot rely on structures. They are good and they should help us, and we should do the best we can with them. But they may be taken away, and if everything is taken away, what do you do next? ([Location 993](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=993)) - As long as we’re wedded to results, we’ll take on smaller and smaller tasks, the only ones that yield results. If we want to live by values like love, truth, and justice—values that will never be fully achieved—“faithfulness” is the only standard that will do. When I die, I won’t be asking about the bottom line. I’ll be asking if I was faithful to my gifts, to the needs I saw around me, and to the ways I engaged those needs with my gifts—faithful, that is, to the value, rightness, and truth of offering the world the best I had, as best I could. ([Location 1026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1026)) - When I was in my forties, struggling to survive a bout with depression, my therapist said, “You seem to image what’s happening to you as the hand of an enemy trying to crush you. Would it be possible to image it instead as the hand of a friend pressing you down to ground on which it’s safe to stand?”* My first thought was, “I need a new therapist.” When you’re depressed, it seems insulting, even insane for someone to suggest that the soul-sucking Spawn of Satan who has sunk its teeth into you is your BFF. And yet, as time went by, the image of depression as a befriending force began to work on me, slowly reframing my misery and helping me reclaim my mental health. Something in me knew that my therapist spoke the truth: down is the way to well-being. ([Location 1034](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1034)) - “In the depths of winter,” said Camus, “I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. ([Location 1112](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1112)) - I slept poorly last night, and I know why. An hour before bedtime, I binge-ate a box of Jujyfruits while reading a book about spiritual discipline. The book made a few good points but was not well written, and I scarfed down the Jujyfruits as a stimulus to stick with it. My bad, but clear evidence that I could use some discipline. I feel better now because the oatmeal I made for breakfast—on my second try—was healing. Pure comfort food. On the first try, I got the ratio of oatmeal to water wrong and left it on the burner too long. The pan looked like an avant-garde sculpture of metal fused with grain: Agrarian Culture in the Machine Age. Again, my bad, but my kitchen klutz credentials have been fully restored. I guess my theme today is “Screw-ups in Solitude.” In solitude, my bads make me grin. If I committed them in front of others, I’d be embarrassed or angry with myself. Self-acceptance is easier when no one is around. ([Location 1117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1117)) - The Taoist master Chuang Tzu tells about a man crossing a river when an empty skiff slams into his. The man does not become angry, as he would if there was a boatman in the other skiff. So, says Chuang Tzu, “Empty your own boat as you cross the river of the world.” ([Location 1124](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1124)) - Tags: [[favorite]] - Most of my heroes are no strangers to laughter. Grandpa Palmer comes quickly to mind. The man was proof-positive of William James’s claim that “common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds.” ([Location 1148](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1148)) - I recall a story that my businessman dad told me about how he dealt with pressure. In his office, he had a pedestal desk with five drawers in the right-hand pedestal. He’d put today’s mail in the bottom drawer, after moving yesterday’s mail up to the next drawer, and so on. He’d open letters only after they had made it to the top drawer. By that time, he said, half of the problems people had written him about had taken care of themselves, and the other half were less daunting than they would have been if he’d read the letters the moment they arrived. ([Location 1170](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1170)) - Novices are often advised, “write about what you know.” I wouldn’t call that bad counsel, but I’d extend it a bit: “Write about what you want to know because it intrigues and puzzles you.” That’s the hunger that keeps me engaged with a craft I find endlessly challenging, of which sportswriter Red Smith said, “There’s nothing at all to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.” ([Location 1300](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1300)) - Here’s a place where faith and writing converge: no matter which path you’re on, it’s often hard to tell whether you’re wrestling with angels or demons. ([Location 1320](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1320)) - As Mark Twain said, “Go to Heaven for the weather, Hell for the company.” ([Location 1322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1322)) - Speaking of fakery, one of the great temptations of being a writer is to absorb the projections of readers who think you’re an expert on some subject just because you’ve written a book about it. When I was young, my ego often became bloated with those projections. I forgot the counsel my father gave me when I was a kid: “Remember, Park, today’s peacock is tomorrow’s feather duster.” ([Location 1360](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1360)) - Books about “tips, tricks, and techniques” tend to leave me cold; telling your story truly and well is more than enough for me. When you share your story of struggle, you offer me companionship in mine, and that’s the most powerful soul medicine I know. ([Location 1372](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1372)) - I’ve also been feeling stuck as a writer, having recently watched a book die at my keyboard. Forgive me for adding a trivial personal problem to my list of major social ills, but we all live at the intersection of our small worlds and the big one around us. If we want to serve others, we must attend to both. Since writing is one of my main ways of making meaning, writer’s block is a vexing problem for me. ([Location 1564](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1564)) - As Zen teacher Shunryu Suzuki said, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.” ([Location 1593](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1593)) - There are three kinds of patriots, two bad, one good. The bad ones are the uncritical lovers and the loveless critics. Good patriots carry on a lover’s quarrel with their country, a reflection of God’s lover’s quarrel with the world. ([Location 1759](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1759)) - Facts are so tedious, aren’t they? And they won’t change the minds of true believers. But we need to preserve them for the same reason medieval monasteries preserved books: the torches have come to town. Let’s try to remember that science and the Enlightenment gave us ways to test the truth claims of potentates and prelates, laying the foundations for our experiment in democracy. Until someone blows up the lab, we must proclaim the facts, then secure them in a fireproof vault, until the next time we need them, which probably will be afternoon. ([Location 1784](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1784)) - I urge those of you who cling to your dream of the “good old days”—good for you, anyway—to take a nice long nap and dream on, dream on. The rest of us will stay awake and help midwife the rebirth of America, hoping that our national nausea in this moment is just another symptom that our country is pregnant with change. ([Location 1914](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=1914)) - the painter Walter Sickert, who once told an annoying guest, “You must come again when you have less time.” ([Location 2063](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=2063)) - violence is what happens when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering. ([Location 2203](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07B4LQW6Z&location=2203))