Let Your Life Speak Chapter 6 Summary

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.

Rising To The Call and Let Your Life Speak Chapter 5 Summary.

Rising To The Call
Os Guinness
Chapter 5, Dreamers of the Day

Rising To The Call culminates with an encouragement to utilize human creativity. Os Guinness defines two types of dreamers. The one that indulges in impossible fantasies who are far too common in every era. The other is the human who takes what they know and uses that as a foundation for a better future. He separates these two types of people by describing them as dreamers of the night and dreamers of the day. "Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dreams with open eyes to make it possible." (pg84)
     Everybody has dreams and hopes for the future. Most are impractical unrealistic results of an idle intellect. However, the man or women who is willing to submit their intellect and imagination to Jesus Christ will find that their passions cease to long after castles in the sky, instead the Holy Spirit nurtures in them holy aspirations in which the Kingdom of God is expanded and God's name is glorified on earth as it is in heaven.
     Humans are proud creatures and we like to interact with God on our terms. We give to Him out of our wealth and serve Him out of our time. Instead of realizing that both time and wealth are already His and humans are stewards only. St Francis was once approached by a knight desiring to join him. St Francis responded? Long enough hast though borne the belt, the sword, and the spurs! The time has now come for you to change the belt for a rope, the sword for the Cross of Jesus Christ, the spurs for the dust and the dirt of the road. Follow me and will make you a knight in the army of Christ!"
     Answering the call of Christ does not mean coming to God with our dreams of being great and asking God to give us His power so our dreams can be fulfilled. The knight in the story wanted to be a godly knight. He wanted the stamp of divine favor simply to bless his knighthood. To answer the Call of Christ is to put aside ourselves, and our hopes for what we will be. Let Christ be the potter that shapes your life and the substance which fills and overflows to the world around us. This is what means to answer God's call and walk in the way of the cross.

Let Your Life Speak
by Parker Palmer
Chapter 5 Leading From Within

      Parker Palmer spends his fifth chapter discussing leadership. Leadership is not for some but for all Christians. To varying extents and in various fashions our relationship to God necessitates guiding other people into relationships with God, either directly via discipleship and preaching or indirectly via prayers and setting a good example. The difficulty with leadership is the focus that is placed outside of ourselves. To be a leader requires paying attention to other people and the more we pay attention to other people the harder is it to take care of ourselves.
      Palmer spends this chapter emphasizing the point that the best leader, therefore the best Christian is someone who leads from within. "if people skimp on their inner work, their outer work will suffer as well...we could spread the word that inner work though it is deeply personal matter is not necessarily a private matter: inner work can be helped along in community.
     So the chapter concludes with two powerful takeaways for today's believer. First, if we want to be successful we have to work form the inside out. Second,, we mustn't be afraid to involve other people in that process. America is a tough place to be ourselves in because so much of the cultural expectations are based on appearances. However,  if it is our intent to pursue genuine godliness we must kick this tendency of our culture and be willing to do life together for the sake of our ability to do God's will and be authentic believers in this age so fraught with half men and shadows of truth. 

Rising To The Call and Let Your Life Speak Chapter 4 Summary.

Rising To The Call
by Os Guinness
Chapter 4, Audience of One

The chapters intros with the famous story of Andrew Carnegie's grand entrance into his hometown of Dunfermline.  Carnegie marched through his life with gusto to the beat of his own drum. He's famous for quoting, "Thine own reproach alone do fear" (pg66) Guinness continues "The question is not whether we have an audience but which we have." (pg68) Most people live for the applause of their peers. Many of the worlds greatest lived for their own applause. What people don't realize is that they have the opportunity to decide which audience they are going to please. The first step in this process is realizing that an individual can't please everyone or meet all expectations thus necessitating a choice. Those who fail to make this choice end up pleasing no one, not even themselves and fall into failure.
      We know whose applause we live for by recognizing who can hurt us. Winston Churchill was once insulted by a member of parliament. His response was, "If I respected him, I would care about his opinion. But I don't, so I don't." Churchill knew he was right and didn't give two cents for the opinion for someone who was standing between him and his objective. He had chosen to base his self evaluation on something different then the opinion of a random parliamentarian.
      Throughout life individuals tend to change who they center their lives around. Parents, friends, role models, celebrities, deities, fictional characters all come and go as audiences we perform for. What is always learned too late is that only deity's are worth living for. If we are created for a purpose and if we don't know our purpose then our life must be centered around the creator of that purpose. The General Charles Gordon said, "The more one sees of life, the more one feels, in order to keep from shipwreck, the necessity of steering by the Polar Star, i.e in a word cleave to God alone, and never pay attention to the favors or smiles of man; if He smiles on you, neither the smile or frown of men can affect you." (pg76)
      Using all these historical examples Guinness is trying to illustrate first, that humans live for applause and second that the only applause worth living for is that of God Almighty. It's pretty straightforward lesson flavored by the quotes and stories of real people.


Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter 4 All the Way Down

Palmer intros his chapter by quoting Dantes intro to his Inferno.

"Midway on life's journey, I found myself

In dark woods, the right way lost. To Tell

About those woods is hard - so tangled and rough

And savage that thinking of it now. I feel

The old fear stirring death is hardly more bitter.

And yet to treat the good I found there as well.

I'll tell what I saw...." (pg 56)

Everything in the next sixteen pages is already here just more wordy and less eloquent. Parker Palmer had a mid life crisis in which he fell into serious depression. He was down in the dark woods and had lost his way.  The "good" that he found in those dark woods of depression was Thomas Merton's "true self" The image of God in man. "It is the self planted in us by God who made us in God's own image- the self that wants nothing more, or less, than for us to be who we were create to be. True self is true friend. One ignores or rejects such friendship only at one's peril."(pg69) It is of note that the "Life" in Palmer's title is this true self. When he writes about letting your life speak to you, he's not providing license for following any passion that might seem appealing. So his chapter ends positively with the reality that not even the Valley of the Shadow of Death is a dead end provided we have the right guide.