Author Parker J. Palmer is known as an author who inspires people in all walks of life. In A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life, he deals with welcoming the soul and the weaving of community in a wounded world. It is a result of his efforts to bring people together to rediscover and reclaim a life of wholeness and a way to live a happier life.
In the Beginning
Palmer believes that individuals live in a type of blizzard of economic injustice, ecological ruin, physical and spiritual violence, and their inevitable outcome is war. That leaves them feeling fear and frenzied, greedy and deceitful and indifferent to the suffering of others. As a result, what he describes as being lost is "the order of the soul" – the life giving core of the human self, with its hunger for truth and justice, love and forgiveness.
He maintains that when humans can catch sight of the soul, they can survive without losing hope along the way. As a result, they can become healers in a wounded world – in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace and in political life.
Defining the Divided Life
According to Palmer, the divided life comes in many and varied forms. He lists these as:
- refusing to invest oneself in the work being done, diminishing its quality and being distant from those it is meant to serve
- making a living at a job that violates the individuals basic values, even when survival does not absolutely demand it
- remaining in settings or relationships that steadily kill off the spirit
- harboring secrets to achieve personal gain at the expense of other people
- hiding beliefs from those when there is disagreement to avoid conflict, challenge, and change
- concealing true identifies for fear of being criticized, shunned or attacked
He concludes that the divided life is not a failure of ethics, but rather a failure of human wholeness.
A Life Divided No More
Rosa Parks and Nelson Mandala are used as examples of individuals whose integrity remained intact and refused to live divided lives. However, reaching wholeness is not always easy and comes with it consciousness and choice. It can also make the individual vulnerable in ways that may not be expected. What it requires is trustworthy relationships and tenacious communities of support. The book explore two things, the source of the dividedness and living a life divided no more.
The Journey
The journey described in A Hidden Wholeness covers:
- a diagnoses of the divided life, examines its personal and social consequences, and tell stories of what integrity looks like from infancy into adulthood
- lays out evidence for the claim that humans arrive in the world with a soul or true self and looks at what happens if it is ignored, defied, or embraced with truth
- explores a paradox– the solitary journey toward rejoining soul and role required in relationships, in a circle of trust
- names the preparations required
- details the practices necessary to create spaces between where the soul feels safe enough to show up and make its claim on lives
- principals and practices to help walk the path of nonviolence in everyday lives.
A Hidden Wholeness offers insights into the human condition and guidance for seeking and finding the soul within and within others. It provides spiritual guidance in an age of anxiety.
About the Author
Parker J. Palmer is the author of six previous books. In 1998 he was named as one of the thirty most influential leaders in higher education by the Leadership Project. He holds a Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley
Palmer, Parker J. A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward a Undivided Life. CA: Josey-Bass, 2009.
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