Let Your Life Speak : Listening for the Voice of Vocation

PLEASE NOTE: Some recent copies of Let Your Life Speak included printing errors. These issues have been corrected, but if you purchased a defective copy between September and December 2019, please send proof of purchase to (mailto:josseybasseducation@wiley.com) josseybasseducation@wiley.com to receive a replacement copy. Dear Friends: I'm sorry that after 20 years of happy traveling, Let Your Life Speak hit a big pothole involving printing errors that resulted in an unreadable book. But I'm very grateful to my publisher for moving quickly to see that people who received a defective copy have a way to receive a good copy without going through the return process. We're all doing everything we can to make things right, and I'm grateful for your patience. Thank you, Parker J. Palmer With wisdom, compassion, and gentle humor, Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfillment and joy, illuminating a pathway toward vocation for all who seek the true calling of their lives.

"Is the life I am living the same as the life that wants to live in me?" With this searching question, Parker Palmer begins an insightful and moving meditation on finding one's true calling. Let Your Life Speak is an openhearted gift to anyone who seeks to live authentically.
The book's title is a time-honored Quaker admonition, usually taken to mean "Let the highest truths and values guide everything you do." But Palmer reinterprets those words, drawing on his own search for selfhood. "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it," he writes, "listen for what it intends to do with you. Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent."

Vocation does not come from willfulness, no matter how noble one's intentions. It comes from listening to and accepting "true self" with its limits as well as its potentials. Sharing stories of frailty and strength, of darkness and light, Palmer shows that vocation is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received.

As we live more deeply into the selfhood that is our birthright gift, we find not only personal fulfillment. We find communion with others and ways of serving the world's deepest needs.

A Compassionate and Compelling Meditation on Discovering Your Path in Life

With wisdom, compassion, and gentle humor, Parker J. Palmer invites us to listen to the inner teacher and follow its leadings toward a sense of meaning and purpose. Telling stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, he shares insights gained from darkness and depression as well as fulfillment and joy, illuminating a pathway toward vocation for all who seek the true calling of their lives.

"Parker Palmer's writing is like a high country stream-clear, vital, honest. If your life seems to be passing you by, or you cannot see the way ahead, immerse yourself in the wisdom of these pages and allow it to carry you toward a more attentive relationship with your deeper, truer self."—John S. Mogabgab, editor, Weavings Journal

"An exuberant and passionate book. I was deeply moved and I cannot, nor do I want to, shake off the haunting questions that it raises for me. This book penetrates the soul, and it will definitely stir you to explore more of your own inner territory. What an extraordinary achievement."
—Jim Kouzes, coauthor, The Leadership Challenge and Encouraging the Heart; chairman, Tom Peters Group/Learning Systems

A Compassionate and Compelling Meditation on Discovering Your Path in Life.

In A Hidden Wholeness , Parker Palmer reveals the same compassionate intelligence and informed heart that shaped his best-selling books Let Your Life Speak and The Courage to Teach. Here he speaks to our yearning to live undivided liveslives that are congruent with our inner truthin a world filled with the forces of fragmentation. Mapping an inner journey that we take in solitude and in the company of others, Palmer describes a form of community that fits the limits of our active lives. Defining a circle of trust as a space between us that honors the soul, he shows how people in settings ranging from friendship to organizational life can support each other on the journey toward living divided no more. This paperback edition includes two new and useful features. Circles of Trust is a DVD containing interviews with Parker J. Palmer and footage from retreats he facilitated for the Center for Courage & Renewal ((http://www.CourageRenewal.org) www.CourageRenewal.org ). Bringing the Book to Life, by Caryl Hurtig Casbon and Sally Z. Hare, is a reader's and leader's guide to exploring the themes in A Hidden Wholeness. The DVD illuminates and illustrates the principles and practices behind circles of trust. The guide includes questions that connect the DVD to the book, offering "a conversation with the author" as well as an engagement with the text. Together, these features give readers new ways to internalize the themes of A Hidden Wholeness and share with others this approach to sustaining identity and integrity in all the venues of our lives. Inspired by Palmers writing and speakingand challenged by the conditions of twenty-first century lifepeople across the country, from many walks of life, have been coming together in circles of trust to reclaim their integrity and help foster wholeness in their workplaces and their world. For over a decade, the principles and practices in this book have been proven on the groundby parents and educators, clergy and politicians, community organizers and corporate executives, physicians and attorneys, and many others who seek to rejoin soul and role in their private and public lives. A Hidden Wholeness weaves together four themes that its author has pursued for forty the shape of an integral life, the meaning of community, teaching and learning for transformation, and nonviolent social change. The hundreds of thousands of people who know Parker Palmers books will be glad to find the journey continued In A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer reveals the same compassionate intelligence and informed heart that shaped his best-selling books Let Your Life Speak and The Courage to Teach. Here he speaks to our yearning to live undivided lives—lives that are congruent with our inner truth—in a world filled with the forces of fragmentation. Mapping an inner journey that we take in solitude and in the company of others, Palmer describes a form of community that fits the limits of our active lives. Defining a “circle of trust” as “a space between us that honors the soul,” he shows how people in settings ranging from friendship to organizational life can support each other on the journey toward living “divided no more.” This paperback edition includes two new and useful features. Circles of Trust is a videos containing interviews with Parker J. Palmer and footage from retreats he facilitated for the Center for Courage & Renewal (www.CourageRenewal.org). Bringing the Book to Life, by Caryl Hurtig Casbon and Sally Z. Hare, is a reader's and leader's guide to exploring the themes in A Hidden Wholeness. The videos illuminates and illustrates the principles and practices behind circles of trust. The guide includes questions that connect the videos to the book, offering'a conversation with the author'as well as an engagement with the text. Together, these features give readers new ways to internalize the themes of A Hidden Wholeness and share with others this approach to sustaining identity and integrity in all the venues of our lives. Inspired by Palmer's writing and speaking—and challenged by the conditions of twenty-first century life—people across the country, from many walks of life, have been coming together in circles of trust to reclaim their integrity and help foster wholeness in their workplaces and their world. For over a decade, the principles and practices in this book have been proven on the ground—by parents and educators, clergy and politicians, community organizers and corporate executives, physicians and attorneys, and many others who seek to rejoin soul and role in their private and public lives. A Hidden Wholeness weaves together four themes that its author has pursued for forty years: the shape of an integral life, the meaning of community, teaching and learning for transformation, and nonviolent social change. The hundreds of thousands of people who know Parker Palmer's books will be glad to find the journey continued. At A Time When Many Of Us Seek Ways Of Working And Living That Are More Resonant With Our Souls, This Book Offers Insight Into Our Condition And Guidance For Finding What We Seek, Within Ourselves And With Each Other. Images Of Integrity : Living Divided No More -- Across The Great Divide : Rejoining Soul And Role -- Explorations In True Self : Intimations Of The Soul -- Being Alone Together : A Community Of Solitudes -- Preparing For The Journey : Creating Circles Of Trust -- The Truth Told Slant : The Power Of Metaphor -- Deep Speaks To Deep : Learning To Speak And Listen -- Living The Questions : Experiments With Truth -- On Laughter And Silence : Not-so-strange Bedfellows -- The Third Way : Nonviolence In Everyday Life. Parker J. Palmer. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 187-195) And Index. Drawing on his own journey through darkness and light, Parker Palmer explores the gap between "the life I am living and the life that wants to live in me." With candor and gentle humor, he invites readers to listen to the wisdom of their own experience and follow its leadings toward a sense of purpose.Using stories from his own life and the lives of others who have made a difference, Palmer raises the urgent question, "Is the life I am living my own?" He writes encouragingly about the quest for congruence between our inner and outer worlds: "Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you."Let Your Life Speak offers wisdom for all who seek the true calling of their lives. Discusses our yearning to live undivided lives - lives that are congruent with our inner truth - in a world filled with the forces of fragmentation. Mapping an inner journey that we take in solitude and in the company of others, this title describes a form of community that fits the limits of our active lives. A thoughtful examination of the sources and consequences of the alienation we feel when our inner and outer lives become divorced from each other. Palmer offers a model of community that will help people live with greater integrity and wholeness