Latest Parker J. Palmer Quotes from Interviews

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• If my life is any example, the work that youth workers are doing is very, very important. It tends to get marginalized in the church or seen as less important than being a senior minister in a large, prosperous congregation; but I don't believe that for a minute. I think this is absolutely critical work in the life of the church; and I think my path in life would have been much different if it hadn't been for my youth minister, Burt Randle, and a series of campus ministers in both college and graduate school.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Senior, Believe, School

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Every young person needs some adult who's just wild and crazy about them!

  Parker J. Palmer

  Crazy, Adults, Needs

  Source: www.youthworker.com

• I like to say that before we can create an external space in which to receive people, we have to create an internal space in which to receive them.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Space, People, Internals

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• We can teach a good, formal lesson on forgiveness as a Christian virtue and all the doctrines that are attached to it. But to be in a real-life situation, a work camp or a trip or some other activity with young people where real forgiveness needs to happen, that's a different situation altogether. And that is where the deepest learning will occur.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Christian, Real, People

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• When you are with young people, it is almost inconceivable that things wouldn't arise that you'd have to respond to, such as someone wrestling on the bus. And how you handle that, how you respond to that, how you deal with that is a lesson to the people you are on the bus with.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Wrestling, People, Lessons

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Even though kids may have planned for months for the trip to Disneyland, some may be feeling very homesick, very forlorn, or very marginalized by the group. Your capacity to perceive those kinds of situations and respond to them in a pastoral way is the stuff you are teaching. And even though the kids may appear to be ignoring you, they are very aware of what you are doing and how you are doing it. They are also very aware of what you are missing and not picking up on.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teaching, Kids, Missing

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• I understand that there are forms of entertainment that can make people weep or jazz them up so they feel like they have had an experience. But I also know that an hour later that's faded and you are back to the difficult realities of your own life. And we need to help people know how to go beyond those difficulties to a place where God dwells.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Reality, People, Needs

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• You are much more likely to have a holy experience in a quiet, focused, and communal context than you are when you are being entertained.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Quiet, Holy, Focused

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• I think the church needs to be much more countercultural than that and invite people into slowing down, into a "Be-still-and-know-that-I-am-God" mindset.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Thinking, People, Church

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• There is a tradition that the church represents, without which we wouldn't have the church, that's all about diving deep beneath the surface of the culture and finding those timeless, eternal truths that the whole Christian enterprise is rooted in. And one of those is that you don't come to God at 180 miles an hour.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Christian, Diving Deep, Church

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Technology is incredibly creative and has great potentials; but it is also very seductive in the way it isolates people, in the way it jazzes people up, in the way it makes junkies out of us - junkies who need a constant stimulation, more information, more bells and whistles, more electronic wonders in order not to be bored.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Technology, Order, People

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• I am very, very uneasy with churches that have basically said, "Well, since that's what people want and that's what sells, then were going to do our worship services like Hollywood productions. We're going to have a lot of bells and whistles. We're going to have high entertainment value, and it is going to have a lot of gloss and glitter."

  Parker J. Palmer

  People, Church, Hollywood

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• God ain't finished with any of us yet.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Finished

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Everybody is on a lifelong journey toward trying to live more deeply. There is nobody who can say, "Well, I've got that one checked off my to-do list." We have to be honest with ourselves about where we are on this journey and about the difficulty of living in our own identities and integrity.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Integrity, Journey, Trying

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• When there is a gap between what's on the outside and what's on the inside, that's when people retreat into their foxholes because it is an unsafe situation. You don't know what you are dealing with. What you see is not what you are going to get. And that is when people start withdrawing.

  Parker J. Palmer

  People, Foxholes, Gaps

  Source: www.youthworker.com

• People are always asking, "Is this person in front of me the same on the inside as he or she appears to be on the outside? Is there congruence between what's within that person and the words and actions I'm viewing and hearing externally?" Children ask that about their parents; students ask it about their teachers; parishioners ask it about their pastors and priests; employees ask it about their bosses; and in a democracy, citizens ask it about their political leaders.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Children, People

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Students want to know, "Are you painting by the numbers, or are you really present as a human being to what you are doing; and is it coming from inside of you?" So I would ask teachers this question: "Do you have a wellgrounded personal experience and conviction concerning whatever it is you are trying to teach?"

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Numbers, Trying

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• The teachers who have had the most impact on me and on most learners I know are teachers whose "selfhoods" have been deeply invested in what they are doing.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Impact, Learners

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• You don't become a good teacher by applying techniques; you don't become a good teacher by using the latest hot methodologies that are being promoted in this or that handbook.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Technique, Hot

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Although there are some enormously gifted lecturers and preachers who do create community with oratory, I like to do anything I can to engage my students with each other, with me, and with the subject. And the subject, I think, always has to take prominence.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Thinking, Community, Oratory

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• I don't do a lot of top-down teaching.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teaching, Top Down

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• Connection and connectedness are other words for community and communion.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Community, Connections, Communion

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• At its deepest level, I think teaching is about bringing people into communion with each other, with yourself as the teacher, and with the subject you are teaching.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Teaching, Thinking

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• For me, teaching is about weaving a web of connectedness between myself, my students, the subject I'm teaching, and the larger world.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teaching, World, Weaving

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.

• I'm 67 years old now. I've had a lot of good teachers over the years; and they have been very, very different from one another. They all had passion for what they were doing, but their styles were unique to them as individuals.

  Parker J. Palmer

  Teacher, Passion, Unique

  "The Teacher's Journey: An Interview with Parker J. Palmer". Interview with Ron Jackson, www.youthworker.com.