In this episode, I spoke with Parker Palmer about the connection between teaching and learning, healing the heart of democracy, and following the path of integrity.

I’ve been reading Parker J Palmer’s books for years. He's the author of 10 books about education, community leadership, spirituality, and social change. Three of these particularly resonated with my own experience:  Let Your Life Speak, The Courage to Teach, and On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old. and one of them stood out as the scariest book I had ever read.

Parker J. Palmer is also the founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage and Renewal.

Key Topics:

03:33 The interplay of aging and vocation: How to keep learning through experience with the limitations that come with age;

09:38 The connection between teaching and learning: Teaching as an expert with relatively static knowledge versus teaching as a more dynamic process;

13:34 The community of truth: How we know what we know and the validity of our knowledge;

19:53 The scariest book I had ever read: Why this book resonated so deeply and prompted a perspective shift around leadership, epistemology, faithfulness, and effectiveness;

29:12 Putting wheels on ideas: Creating a vehicle that will allow other people to ride an idea and reshape it as they go toward destinations of their own choosing;

35:43 Following the path of integrity: Despite our greatest ambitions and clear intentions to live a life of virtue aligned with our values, it can be hard in practice.

Additional Resources from Parker

Website

Facebook