Three great videos here....
Author, educator and social activist Parker Palmer on Advent and the Word Made Flesh Visit www.couragerenewal.org to connect with Parker's work.
I love this one about the upside down Christmas tree and lots more on upside down thinking.....
His Love Is For Us All
In March 1992 Parker Palmer gave a talk at a United Methodist Church on “Faith or Frenzy.” The following is a synopsis: He opened with a comparison between a historical perspective on the contemplative life vs. an active life. In earlier centuries contemplation was the preferred life, one followed by academic or religious scholars.
An active life was one of tedious toil where one did not have the time to reflect on a higher plane. Over time that changed. An active life became more prominent as technology progressed and the power associated with it. Man was playing God.
A pendulum effect between the two has swung back again as limits to technology have not provided a solution and the lure of a contemplative life and its seclusion has taken hold.
Palmer suggests that a hybrid between the two is the mix where spirituality finds a balance, because “before you can have a spiritual life, you must first have a life,” - a life immersed in the active world.
It is a world where one is alone and also part of a community. A spiritual life is not one which flees the world of action.
He contends that when one becomes disillusioned by an experience or false value system, that person experiences reality.
He believes disillusionment is the journey God takes us on, away from fiction and fantasy toward reality and truth. These experiences can be very painful.
Five examples of illusion he covered during the talk are: the world as a battleground, scarcity, I am what I do, only cultivating rewarded talent, and finally that everything must be measurable.
He states the opposite of faith is not doubt, it is fear - fear of abandoning illusions because of our comfort level with them.
For example, not everything is measurable and yet so much of what we do has that yardstick applied to it.
Another illusion is “I am what I do .... my worth comes from my functioning.
If there is to be any love for us, we must succeed at something.” He says in this example that it is more important to be a “human being” rather than a “human doing.”
We are not what we do.
We are who we are. The rigors of trying to be faithful involves being faithful to one's gifts, faithful to other's reality, faithful to the larger need in which we are all embedded, faithful to the possibilities inherent in our common life."
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