Audiobooks by Parker J. Palmer

A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life, 20th Anniversary Edition

A Hidden Wholeness has helped people in every walk of life rise to the challenge of living 'divided no more.' What leads us to live divided lives that defy our own sense of identity and integrity? When we do, what price do we and the world pay? How can we recover the wholeness that is our birthright gift? Palmer examines the forces that deflect us from the soul's true north and gives us the tools we need to regain our bearings. Palmer explores perspectives and practices that can help us embody integrity in a world where it often feels risky to be who we are. As we learn how to be present to others in spaces where it's safe for the soul to speak., we find ways to rejoin soul and role in our personal, vocational, and public lives. Inspired by A Hidden Wholeness—and by the work of the Center for Courage & Renewal, a nonprofit Palmer founded—tens of thousands of people have participated in circles of trust to deepen their sense of “true self” and contribute to the common good. In the midst of our broken world, the principles and practices in this book can ground us in the 'hidden wholeness,' giving us a place to stand as we seek to live with deeper integrity at every level of our lives.

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Stephen Bel Davies (Narrator)

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Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation, 25th Anniversary Edition

'Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?' With this searching question, bestselling author Parker J. Palmer begins his insightful and moving meditation on finding our way toward meaning and purpose. As readers of many ages, backgrounds, and walks of life will attest, Let Your Life Speak is an elegant and openhearted gift to all who seek to live authentically. Let Your Life Speak offers no simplistic formulas for finding a meaningful path through life's complexities. Instead, it offers real-life experience, thoughtfully mined for insight and wisdom: - Learn how to listen to your inner teacher and follow its guidance toward a sense of meaning and purpose - Reframe your life as a series of 'experiments with truth,' learning from those that fail as well as those that work - Understand that the doors that close behind you can offer as much guidance as those that open up - Gain inspiration and resolve from the lives of seekers who have walked this path before you Enjoy the wisdom, compassion, gentle humor, and companionship of a master teacher in a beloved book that has helped hundreds of thousands of people find their way toward meaning and purpose.

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Stephen Bel Davies (Narrator)

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Healing the Heart of Democracy: The Courage to Create a Politics Worthy of the Human Spirit

In his newest book, Parker J. Palmer builds on his own extensive experience as a an inner life explorer and social change activist to examine the personal and social infrastructure of American politics. What he did for educators in The Courage to Teach he does here for citizens by looking at the dynamics of our inner lives for clues to reclaiming our civic well-being. In Healing the Heart of Democracy, he points the way to a politics rooted in the commonwealth of compassion and creativity still found among We the People. Democracy, writes Palmer, is a non-stop experiment in the strengths and weaknesses of our political institutions, local communities, and the human heartand its outcome can never be taken for granted. The experiment is endless, unless we blow up the lab, and the explosives to do the job are found within us. But so also is the hearts alchemy that can turn suffering into compassion, conflict into community, and tension into energy for creativity amid democracys demands. Healing the Heart of Democracy names the habits of the heart we need to revitalize our politics and shows how they can be formed in the everyday venues of our lives. Palmer proposes practical and hopeful methods to hold the tensions of our differences in a manner that can help us restore a government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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The Heart of Higher Education: A Call to Renewal

A call to advance integrative teaching and learning in higher education. From Parker Palmer, best-selling author of The Courage to Teach, and Arthur Zajonc, professor of physics at Amherst College and director of the academic program of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, comes this call to revisit the roots and reclaim the vision of higher education. The Heart of Higher Education proposes an approach to teaching and learning that honors the whole human being--mind, heart, and spirit--an essential integration if we hope to address the complex issues of our time. The book offers a rich interplay of analysis, theory, and proposals for action from two educators and writers who have contributed to developing the field of integrative education over the past few decades. Presents Parker Palmer's powerful response to critics of holistic learning and Arthur Zajonc's elucidation of the relationship between science, the humanities, and the contemplative traditions Explores ways to take steps toward making colleges and universities places that awaken the deepest potential in students, faculty, and staff Offers a practical approach to fostering renewal in higher education through collegiality and conversation The Heart of Higher Education is for all who are new to the field of holistic education, all who want to deepen their understanding of its challenges, and all who want to practice and promote this vital approach to teaching and learning on their campuses.

Arthur Zajonc, Arthur Zajonc, Mark Nepo, Megan Scribner, Parker J. Palmer (Author), Scott Woodside (Narrator)

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On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old

From beloved and bestselling author Parker J. Palmer (Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, Healing the Heart of Democracy) comes a brave and beautiful book of reflections on eight decades of life and work. Reframing aging as "a passage of discovery and engagement," Palmer says, "Old is just another word for nothing left to lose, a time to take bigger risks on behalf of the common good." On the Brink of Everything is not a "guide to" or "handbook for" getting old. Instead, it's Palmer turning the prism of insight on his experience as a way of encouraging readers to do the same with theirs. In elegant prose and lyrical poetry, he offers a set of meditations on the meanings of one's life, past, present, and future. "The laws of nature that dictate the sunset dictate our demise," Palmer writes. "But how we travel the arc between our own sunrise and sundown is ours to choose: will it be denial, defiance, or collaboration?" With gravity and levity, compassion and chutzpah, Palmer writes about cultivating a robust inner and outer life, a sense of meaning and purpose amid pain as well as joy, and the intergenerational relations that enhance the lives of young and old alike. Here's a book not only for elders but also for those younger folks we call "old souls." And this book sings! It includes three songs by Palmer's longtime friend and colleague, singer-songwriter Carrie Newcomer, written in response to themes in the book. At the download site for the songs, Palmer and Newcomer hope to engage readers in an ongoing conversation about what Howard Thurman called "the growing edge" of our personal and public lives. Ultimately, Palmer sees age as a precious gift: "The fact that I've come this far makes me one of the lucky ones." Surprised by the fact that he likes being old, he writes, "Welcome to the brink of everything. It takes a lifetime to get here, but the stunning view and the wake-up breeze in your face make it worth the trip."

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Steve Carlson (Narrator)

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A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey toward an Undivided Life

A Hidden Wholeness is a thoughtful and heartfelt examination of sources and consequences of the alienation we feel when our inner and outer lives become divorced from each other, when external forces pressure us to depart from our soul's true yearnings. The book lifts up the problem of the "divided life," diagnoses its sources, assesses its personal and social costs, and offers a model of community that will help people live with greater integrity and wholeness. As he did for vocation in Let Your Life Speak and for inner lives of teachers in The Courage to Teach, best-selling author and teacher Parker J. Palmer speaks to the heart of our yearning for integrity, authenticity, and wholeness in a fractured world. "Parker J. Palmer's latest book is a gift...a guide for living...compassionate, deeply insightful...heart opening and transforming."—BookSense

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

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Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation

Finding one's calling is not just about finding something we can do-it is about finding what we can't not do. "Let your life speak" is a time-honored Quaker admonition to live one's life as witness to the deepest truths one knows. But as Parker Palmer explains, those words can also mean "listen to your life, and let it tell you what your truth is." Vocation, he writes, comes not from external demands but from listening to the true self, a listening that will always call us into some form of service to others. Though the details of our journey are singular, we draw from it that which is universal. This book is a moving and illuminating guide for anyone who seeks not just a job but a calling and companionship along the way.

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

Audiobook

The Courage to Teach, 10th Anniversary Edition: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher's Life

This book builds on a simple premise: good teaching cannot be reduced to technique but is rooted in the identity and integrity of the teacher. Good teaching takes myriad forms but good teachers share one trait: they are authentically present in the classroom, in community with their students and their subject. They possess "a capacity for connectedness" and are able to weave a complex web of connections between themselves, their subjects, and their students, helping their students weave a world for themselves. Connections made by good teachers are held not in their methods but in their hearts-the place where intellect, emotion, spirit, and will converge in the human self.

Parker J. Palmer (Author), Stefan Rudnicki (Narrator)

Audiobook