A lecture entitled “A Call to Integrity in Life and Work: Reclaiming Integrity and Courage in Professional and Public Life” was given by Dr. Parker Palmer yesterday in the Hughes-Trigg Theater.
Palmer, author of 10 books and senior advisor to the Fetzer Institute, founded the Center for Courage and Renewal, which seeks to help restore the professional and personal life through retreats led by facilitators, in 1997.
“It’s very hard for me to believe that Courage and Renewal is 10 years old,” he said. “We feel that this slow organic growth has served us well, and I think and hope that it has served the people well.”
Courage and Renewal now has 160 facilitators in 30 states in 50 cities. Palmer says that the program is intended for those who do “society’s heaving lifting,” such as teachers, healthcare workers, clergy and the law.
In his lecture, Palmer claimed, “In truth, I am not here to promote a book or program. I’m here to contribute to the public dialogue of some of the deeper issues of today.”
Palmer feels that this challenge involves “soul work.” He says that we know how to create places for other things besides the soul, including colleges, therapy groups and task forces, but “we don’t know how to create places that invite the soul.”
“There are 100 synonyms for ‘soul,'” he said. “No one knows its true name. It is the mystery of the ‘being’ in ‘human being.”
The name for it is not important to Palmer. He says that he only cares that it is given a name. “If we don’t name it, we will end up treating each other like empty vessels,” he said.
Palmer says that the soul is the key to identity and integrity; it is our responsibility to one another. Noting “these are hard times,” Palmer cited three problems that the world is facing today. He says that these problems cannot be solved until they are recognized.
“We as a society have become addicted to violence as a solution to a problem,” Palmer said. “Violence comes in many forms, such as the violence in education (in the sense of forcing everyone into the same template) as a fix to control or to create the illusion of control of the educational process.”
Palmer stated, “Like the addict, it does not matter to us that violence does not work-we get the high we seek simply from using. The fix is what is needed.”
“I think we all know that we cannot sustain in a world where violence multiplies geometrically,” he said.
Calling it a “global-cultural problem,” Palmer then discussed what he called a “mid-range” problem: “Our institutions often become the worst enemies of their own missions.”
“The threat isn’t often coming from the outside, but from the inside,” he said.
Citing his work with several organizations, Palmer says that when questioned, many people within the institutions say “we have met the enemy and it is us.”
“The institutions that might help us stem the tide of violence become the stem themselves,” he said.
Palmer used an example of a wounded soldier to illustrate his point. He says that the family of this soldier raised money for an experimental treatment to save his leg from amputation. This experimental surgery was against policy and was denied by the military, which later tried to lessen his disability benefits to save taxpayers’ money.
On the personal level, Palmer says that the “shadows of our time” are caused by a lack of soul work, which leads to a lack of self-authority.
“I believe we are experiencing a resurgence of the ’empty self,'” he said. “There is no authority within us so we must find authority outside. It’s a huge problem. People accept authority because it fill that hole.”
Palmer says that he looks at our society as someone who has experiences severe depression several times in his life. He added, “I think there is a widespread cultural and political depression that is a form of the ’empty self.'”
Theorizing that this is what lead to the inhumanities committed in the last and current century, Palmer says “we can work on the souls in ourselves and then we can work on the souls in the lives of other people” to improve the world.
“This is not simply movement rhetoric, wishful thinking, or porous hopefulness,” he said. “Soul work, when rightly done, makes a difference in the world.”
Palmer claims the three problems he addressed “require more soul work than external work,” adding that, “We need to do a better job of helping people find their own true voices. The empty self arises when people cannot find their inner authority.”
“We don’t believe that people have a voice of truth inside of them and this needs to be reversed,” he said. “There are a million little ways to help people find their voice.”
In addition to this, Palmer says the problems with institutions can be overcome.
“Institutions would not so often defeat their own missions if we were not enslaved to them,” he said. “Declaring freedom is the work of the soul. We become dependent on the sense of who we are through institutions. The key to transforming is to help people find grounding outside institutions. It is about finding your spiritual center in life.”
Palmer notes that finding their “spiritual center” can help people with important decisions find the correct answer. He admits that some people do not follow through on an important decision, but does not feel that this is a bad thing.
“Every time a human hears that voice, the net moral growth increases,” he said. “It’s about human choice making.” Institutions would slowly change their “dance” according to Palmer, which would “help them get out of the way of themselves.”
Concerning his last problem, Palmer says “violence arises when we don’t know what else to do with our suffering. It is the work of the soul to transform suffering into life growing instead of death.”
“For me, the highest authority on the soul is Sam Moore, the original Blues Brother,” he said. “People used to ask him about his song ‘Soul Man’ and what it meant. He said, ‘Whatever the hardships in my life, I’m going to get up and keep moving.'”
