The Growing Edge

Carrie and Parker have a heart opening conversation with musicians Karin Bergquist & Linford Detweiler (Over The Rhine). They explore the creative process, the spiritual and personal threads that run through their music, balancing inward and outward engagement, creating community and “thin places in the world.” We discuss of three of their beautiful songs, “Betting on the Muse” “Broken Angels” and “Meet Me At The Edge Of The World.”

In this episode Carrie and Parker explore Wendell Berry's poem "The Wild Geese" and that what we need is here, within us and between us.

Join Parker and Carrie as they explore the idea of New Year’s Revolutions.

At the turn of the year many of us engage in the cultural practice of New Year's resolutions. Often these intentions have to do with visiting the gym more frequently, diet or creating a more desirable habit to replace an old one. But what would it be like to begin the year with with a series of New Year's revolutions? What is a New Year's revolution and how could this new way of looking at intention and change be of benefit in the coming year?

We hope you'll listen and download our conversation starter pdf, and engage in your own New Year's Revolution conversations by visiting our website www.newcomerpalmer.com/podcast

In this episode is a BRAND NEW unrecorded song by Carrie Newcomer called "On The Day You Were Born"

Join Carrie and Parker as they explore Jeanne Lohmann's, "Questions Before Dark”

“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart… Try to love the questions themselves… Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them—and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.” —Rainer Marie Rilke

Join Parker and Carrie for a conversation about this powerful Thomas Merton quote, and how they personally wrestle with overactivity and try to reclaim the wisdom of living at the speed of soul.

In our September podcast, Carrie and Parker take on the topic of conflict on the personal, vocational, and political growing edges of our lives. We live in divisive times, culturally and politically. For many of us, navigating these complexities with family, friends, and colleagues has become challenging.  When navigating conflict, what helps you stay true to yourself and your deepest values and beliefs? What touchstones and practices give you guidance in engaging other viewpoints creatively, and help you "know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em?"

Join Parker and Carrie for a heart opening conversation with Author/Poet/Educator Mark Nepo as they discuss what it means to show up as our authentic self, balancing our inner and outer lives, and how when we are in touch with our deepest human experiences we are in touch with our shared human experience.

Mark Nepo has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. Beloved as a poet, teacher, and storyteller, Mark has been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our time,” “a consummate storyteller,” and “an eloquent spiritual teacher.” His work is widely accessible and used by many and his books have been translated into more than twenty languages.

To learn more about Mark, his many powerful books and his upcoming retreats and workshops visit www.marknepo.com

Join Parker and Carrie for our July podcast where we explore the concept of abundance. The very idea of “the growing edge” is rooted in the confidence that more life, new life, is always possible. In this conversation we discuss how  community not only creates abundance—community is abundance. We explore the life-giving expansion that happens when we abandon the idea that we must “go it alone," risk connecting with others, and generate a sense of "enoughness" in ourselves and in the world.

Our friend Greg Ellison is Professor of Pastoral Care & Counseling at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is founder of Fearless Dialogues, a nonprofit that creates unique spaces for unlikely partners to have hard, heartfelt conversations on taboo subjects like racism, classism, and community violence. 

Ellison’s research focuses on caring with marginalized populations, pastoral care as social activism, and contemporary mysticism. He is the author of Cut Dead But Still Alive: Caring for African American Young Men, and Fearless Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice. He also has a book in progress with Westminster John Knox Press: Anchored in the Current: The Eternal Wisdom of Howard Thurman in a Changing World.

Join us for this lively and heart-opening conversation about Howard Thurman, Fearless Dialogues, and how we can move beyond fear personally and politically.

To live an undivided life, to follow the call to wholeness, may at times feel lonely when others express discomfort, concern, or view what we are doing as dangerous. Join Carrie and Parker as they discuss the May question of the month, “Have you ever needed to follow a path where you felt lonely or misunderstood, perhaps getting active pushback? If so, what helped you persist and carry through?”