Let Your Life Speak
By Parker Palmer
Chapter 6 There is A Season
The book concludes with a metaphor. The reader is walked through the four seasons and shown how the ebb and flow of the human experience is similar in many ways to the cycles occurring every day in nature. "The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all and to find in all of it opportunists for growth.." (pg96) Few metaphors provide so much insight into the journey that humanity is on, as the seasons. In our modern day we like to think of things in terms of manufacturing, raw materials, production schedules and investment/return. Reminding ourselves that humans grow not merely as individuals but as communities is essential. Humans can't be taken apart and reassembled like legos. Societies and cultures can't simply be unmade and built back up with the same materials. One government can't simply instill a political ideology in another group of people as the USSR learned twenty years ago and the United States is still not learning today.
"We need to challenge and reform these distortions of culture and ego - reform them toward ways of thinking and doing and being that are rooted in respect for the living ecology of life. Unlike 'raw materials" on which we make all the demands, this ecology makes demands on us even as it sustains our lives. we are here not only to transform the world but also to be transformed." (pg97)
Autumn is a season of great beauty but it also a season of decline. The peculiar emotion of autumn is that of the sunset radiance descending into darkness. The majesty of the forest robed in gold is haunted by the darkening days and the chilly nights. This paradox is necessary as all true paradoxes are. Just as the lion will lie down the lamb so does the virliance embrace the darkness for the benefit of all. It is those who fear the darkness of impending winter who miss most of falls splendor. "When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result; artificial light that is glaring and graceless and beyond its borders is a darkness that grows even more terrifying as we try to hold it off." (pg100) The principle is true throughout human experience. Those who demand pleasure at any cost will not only have a cheap unsatisfying pleasure but will be completely incapable of handling life's necessary pains.
Winter is one such necessary pain, a system restart, a recuperation, "a reminder that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living beings." (pg101) Winter sets a bar and the strong jump over and endure while the weak complain and pass away. "Our inward winters take many forms - failures, betrayal, depression, death....'The winter will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.' Until we enter boldly into the fear we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives." Such is Winter's lesson
Spring is autumns counter. First its ugly with mud and muck and wet and moist, then it's glorious. and triumphantly jubilant. As the flowers and the trees burst forth into bloom and excitement seems to exude from nature's every facet we are reminded that sometimes life should be celebrated. "life is not always to be measured and meted as winter compels us to do but to be spent from time to time in a riot of color and growth." (pg104) So we have parties and we dance and invent things like trifles. Imagine the oak tree that won't produce acorns for fear that the squirrels will eat them or the flower that doesn't make pollen because of bees. Those plants will die and Spring would be drab. "if we want to save our lives, we cannot cling to them but must spend them with abandon." (pg105)
Summer is the life that was born from winters womb. "Here is a summer time truth: abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredible complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and in return is sustained by the whole." (pg108) So to think of ourselves simply as an individual, or an individual in communication with God would not tell us who we are. There is so much more in this universe than God and me and it is to my determent when I cut myself off from those other aspects of creation for I was made for them and they were made for me just as God makes me for himself.
By Parker Palmer
Chapter 6 There is A Season
The book concludes with a metaphor. The reader is walked through the four seasons and shown how the ebb and flow of the human experience is similar in many ways to the cycles occurring every day in nature. "The notion that our lives are like the eternal cycle of the seasons does not deny the struggle or the joy, the loss or the gain, the darkness or the light, but encourages us to embrace it all and to find in all of it opportunists for growth.." (pg96) Few metaphors provide so much insight into the journey that humanity is on, as the seasons. In our modern day we like to think of things in terms of manufacturing, raw materials, production schedules and investment/return. Reminding ourselves that humans grow not merely as individuals but as communities is essential. Humans can't be taken apart and reassembled like legos. Societies and cultures can't simply be unmade and built back up with the same materials. One government can't simply instill a political ideology in another group of people as the USSR learned twenty years ago and the United States is still not learning today.
"We need to challenge and reform these distortions of culture and ego - reform them toward ways of thinking and doing and being that are rooted in respect for the living ecology of life. Unlike 'raw materials" on which we make all the demands, this ecology makes demands on us even as it sustains our lives. we are here not only to transform the world but also to be transformed." (pg97)
Autumn is a season of great beauty but it also a season of decline. The peculiar emotion of autumn is that of the sunset radiance descending into darkness. The majesty of the forest robed in gold is haunted by the darkening days and the chilly nights. This paradox is necessary as all true paradoxes are. Just as the lion will lie down the lamb so does the virliance embrace the darkness for the benefit of all. It is those who fear the darkness of impending winter who miss most of falls splendor. "When we so fear the dark that we demand light around the clock, there can be only one result; artificial light that is glaring and graceless and beyond its borders is a darkness that grows even more terrifying as we try to hold it off." (pg100) The principle is true throughout human experience. Those who demand pleasure at any cost will not only have a cheap unsatisfying pleasure but will be completely incapable of handling life's necessary pains.
Winter is one such necessary pain, a system restart, a recuperation, "a reminder that times of dormancy and deep rest are essential to all living beings." (pg101) Winter sets a bar and the strong jump over and endure while the weak complain and pass away. "Our inward winters take many forms - failures, betrayal, depression, death....'The winter will drive you crazy until you learn to get out into them.' Until we enter boldly into the fear we most want to avoid, those fears will dominate our lives." Such is Winter's lesson
Spring is autumns counter. First its ugly with mud and muck and wet and moist, then it's glorious. and triumphantly jubilant. As the flowers and the trees burst forth into bloom and excitement seems to exude from nature's every facet we are reminded that sometimes life should be celebrated. "life is not always to be measured and meted as winter compels us to do but to be spent from time to time in a riot of color and growth." (pg104) So we have parties and we dance and invent things like trifles. Imagine the oak tree that won't produce acorns for fear that the squirrels will eat them or the flower that doesn't make pollen because of bees. Those plants will die and Spring would be drab. "if we want to save our lives, we cannot cling to them but must spend them with abandon." (pg105)
Summer is the life that was born from winters womb. "Here is a summer time truth: abundance is a communal act, the joint creation of an incredible complex ecology in which each part functions on behalf of the whole and in return is sustained by the whole." (pg108) So to think of ourselves simply as an individual, or an individual in communication with God would not tell us who we are. There is so much more in this universe than God and me and it is to my determent when I cut myself off from those other aspects of creation for I was made for them and they were made for me just as God makes me for himself.
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