Parker J. Palmer - A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

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BRINGING THE BOOK TO LIFE: A Reader's and Group Leader's Guide to Exploring the Themes in A Hidden Wholeness

FOR MARCY JACKSON AND RICK JACKSON WITH GRATITUDE AND LOVE

his book brings together four themes I have been musing on since my mid-twenties: the shape of an integral life, the meaning of community, teaching and learning for transformation, and nonviolent social change.

As six previous books and forty years of lecturing prove, I love to think, talk, and write about these things. But-knowing how quickly words can cut loose from human reality-I love it even more when language comes to life. So I take deep satisfaction in the fact that the most important words in this book have already found embodiment, thanks to the gifted people I am privileged to call colleagues and friends.

In cities across the country, these people have created settings where others can join in "the journey toward an undivided life." They are so numerous I cannot list them by name, but I want to point toward them with gratitude for their caring, competence, and commitment:

The staff and board of the Fetzer Institute, who have supported so much of the work on which this book is based

The staff and board of the Center for Teacher Formation, who provide educators and people from many other walks of life with opportunities to deepen their personal and professional integrityi

The one hundred-plus people and counting in the United States and Canada who have gone through the center's facilitator preparation program, learning how to create "circles of trust" where people can take an inner journey toward living "divided no more"

The countless educators, philanthropists, physicians, attorneys, businesspeople, community organizers, clergy, and others who participate in such circles because they know their own need, and the world's, for rejoining soul and role

The staff of Jossey-Bass and John Wiley, who actively support this book, and others related to it, because they believe in the work that it advocates

A few people have made special efforts to help this book and its author along. They all have my gratitude and love:

Marcy Jackson and Rick Jackson are codirectors of the Center for Teacher Formation. For nearly a decade they have led the effort to create circles of trust in far-flung places, doing so with skill, patience, wisdom, vision, and love. I dedicate this book to them to honor their remarkable work and to let them know again how much their friendship means to me.

Rob Lehman is president emeritus of the Fetzer Institute and chair of its board of trustees. He has a strong and abiding vision of how vital it is to join the inner and outer life. Without his friendship and encouragement, much of the work on which this book is based might well have remained undone.

Tom Beech is president of the Fetzer Institute. A much-valued friend since our days as college classmates, he was an early advo- care of the local and national work of the Center for Teacher Formation. As long as I have known him, he has modeled the undivided life.

David Sluyter is a senior adviser to the Fetzer Institute, and Mickey Olivanti is a Fetzer Institute program officer. They helped me launch the teacher formation program in the early 1990s and have supported it faithfully ever since. They are good friends and colleagues whose confidence and companionship mean a great deal to me.2

Mark Nepo, Chip Wood, and Roland Johnson are, respectively, a poet and essayist, a public school principal, and an attorney. They are also good friends and fellow travelers who gave various versions of this manuscript a thoughtful reading, and I am grateful for their generous help.

Earlene Bond, Ann Faulkner, Guy Gooding, Sue Jones, Elaine Sullivan, and Bill Tucker are leaders in the Dallas County Community College District who have brought formation into their part of the educational world through the Center for Formation in the Community College.' I am grateful for their friendship and support.

David Leach, M.D., executive director of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, and Paul Batalden, M.D., professor of pediatrics and community and family medicine at Dartmouth Medical School, are leaders in transforming medical education and health care. They have shown me how the key ideas in this book speak to a profession that I know little about, and I value their encouragement and friendship. 4

Sheryl Fullerton is my editor. She is a gifted maker and marketer of books with great wisdom about that arcane craft, as well as a treasured friend who knows when I need consolation and when I need a challenge. I thank her and her talented colleagues at Jossey-Bass and John Wiley who have worked hard to bring this book into being: Joanne Clapp Fullagar, Paula Goldstein, Chandrika Madhavan, Sandy Siegle, and Bruce Emmer.

Sharon Palmer is my best friend, my most trusted critic, and my love. She is the first reader of everything I write-and since I throw out twenty pages for every one I keep, she does a lot of reading. When I asked her what she looks for when she edits, she answered with three questions: Is it worth saying? Is it said clearly? Is it said beautifully? That should explain both my throw-out ratio and why I need to keep working on my writing.

We are grateful to the Lilly Endowment, Inc., for their generous support of the production of this Leader's Guide and of the Circles of Trust DVD.

Twenty years ago, during a summer teaching stint in England, I picked up a small volume of poetry in a Cambridge bookstore. In it was a haunting little poem by D. M. Thomas called "Stone," which I copied and put into my briefcase, where it can be found to this day. Thomas muses on the titles of a series of books that "the poet" will write over his or her lifetime and ends with these lines:

From the moment I first read "Stone," I sensed that it held a message for me. Last year, when I suddenly realized that A Hidden Wholeness would be my seventh book, I began to wonder if the message was that I should not publish it! Some critics may wish that I had come to that conclusion, but obviously I did not.