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Center for Action and Contemplation

Loving When We’re Not At Our Best with Parker Palmer

Thursday, December 11, 2025
Length: 52:05
Size: 125mb

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How can we see others, and ourselves, with love when anger, fear, depression, or division clouds our vision? 

Today’s episode of Learning How to See features an interview with Quaker elder ⁠Parker J. Palmer⁠.  Parker helps us explore how love can become a way of seeing, how we can navigate times of depression, and why listening to each other’s life stories may be our best antidote to polarization. Join us as Parker reflects on encounters that reshaped his assumptions about “the other,” sharing insights from decades of Quaker practice. 

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Meet the Guest

Parker J. Palmer is a writer, speaker and activist who focuses on issues in education, community, leadership, spirituality and social change. He is founder and Senior Partner Emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal, which offers long-term retreat programs for people in the serving professions, including teachers, physicians, non-profit leaders, social change activists and clergy.

He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California at Berkeley, fourteen honorary doctorates, two Distinguished Achievement Awards from the National Educational Press Association, and an Award of Excellence from the Associated Church Press.

Palmer is the author of ten books—including several award-winning titles—that have sold 2.5 million copies and been translated into twelve languages: Healing the Heart of Democracy, The Heart of Higher Education (with Arthur Zajonc), The Courage to Teach, A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, The Active Life, To Know As We Are Known, The Company of Strangers, The Promise of Paradox, and On the Brink of Everything: Grace, Gravity and Getting Old.

Find out more about Parker here.

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