I just finished reading this book by Parker Palmer and thought I would post my review because I love the book so much!!! I hope that my responses to the questions below will lead you to pick up this book for yourself.
1. What could I share with my church from this book?
University Presbyterian Church has been called the “Flagship” Church of the PC(USA). Some of the reasons for this might be our continued line up of quality pastors, our stability as a church older than one hundred years, or our location right on the campus of the University of Washington. Whatever it may be, the church is defiantly “Known” as a church that “Knows;” we are a wordy church. I was having a conversation with the pastor of worship Dave Rohrer a few days ago and we were talking about sermons that were pitched as something you could apply to your life. I asked if he thought the majority of the people really want to do anything about it or just come and listen in the warm pew. He agreed with the latter.
Dave often says he is tired with words. That is why the story that Palmer tells about Abba Felix caught my ear. The illustration that God does not speak to the old men any longer because the young men do not carry out their words struck a cord with me. After I finished this book, I emailed Dave and shared this book with him as a resource for us to continue the discussion between services that merely use words and services that, to use Dave’s phrase, “Wake us up to the presence of God.” Really the discussion is about listening and doing. Another person in the discussion, Jon Epps, pushes back and asks, “What do we do when we wake up?” Dave believes this is evident where Jon believes that the church should show the way. Either way, both are getting at the same issue and one that Palmer talks about so well and that is, what do we do with our knowledge of Truth in Jesus Christ? Palmer suggests that we create a space in which obedience to Truth is practiced. If Palmer was a part of this discussion I think he would say that both Dave and Jon are right. We need to create a space (our work as a Church) in which obedience to Truth (God’s work) is practiced. The applications that Palmer uses are mostly in a classroom setting but I think that they could be used for the church as a whole. For it is the Church’s job to be the light of Jesus Christ in this world.
2. How would I summarize to a friend the key points this book is making?
Palmer argues that the epistemological foundation for knowing and truth are found in a person, Jesus Christ; therefore, learning, education, and knowing are not objective but subjective and relational; we only know because God himself knows us. Palmer is trying to open the reader’s eyes to the fact that knowledge is about relatedness not about wining or finding the exact right answer. He makes this plain right off the bat by telling the story of the scientists who created the atomic bomb. He summarizes a documentary called, The Day after Trinity. Palmer says, “It was not until the day after the first explosion that the scientists stopped to analyze and agonize over the outcome of their work.” (1) Palmers point is this; knowledge carries us toward ends we renounce, toward evil. Palmer’s main concern in this book is to present a way of knowing that will counteract the kind of knowing that produces the horrors such as the atomic bomb.
That way of knowing, for Palmer, is Jesus Christ. The image of knowledge is John 1:14 “The word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth.” Palmer argues that Truth is not something Christ possessed but that he himself was truth incarnate. He uses the words Germanic root “troth” to get at his point, troth means, “ . . . One enters into a covenant with another, a pledge to engage in a mutually accountable and transforming relationship, a relationship forged of trust and faith in the face of unknowable risk.” He also uses the story of Abba Felix, a monk who would not speak a word from God to the younger monks that requested it of him because obedience to the words were not carried out; therefore, God dried up the old men’s words. Out of this story Palmer defines teaching as, “ . . . creating space in which obedience to truth is practiced.”(67) In expanding upon this definition throughout the last two chapters he focuses in on Space and boundaries as the fast wordless time that Abba Felix had the courage to create, as well as obedience. Palmer says, “Obedience does not mean slavish, mechanical adherence to whatever one hears; it means making a personal response that acknowledges that one is in troth with the speaker and with the word he or she speaks.” (89). Palmer wants his readers to “know” in relationship.
3. How does this book build its practices in a way that opens me up to live more fully in a rich God-human relationship and to be transformed in my human relationships?
This book is all about living in a richer God-human relationship in order to transform our human relationships. When Palmer locates Truth as a person, Jesus Christ, he takes truth out of the concept world and into the relational world. This means that one is able to experience their relationship to truth in a tangible sense. Learning, then, is about our relationship to one another. Palmer wants his readers to see that the classroom should be a relational place. It should be a place of prayer. He means this not is the prayer in school sense but in the sense that prayer is the act of living in relatedness. The end of this book does a great job at giving examples of how the classroom can be this place of community where troth is practiced. The practices of this book are shown even in the intentionality of the words Palmer uses. Palmer seems to use only the world that help the reader feel he or she is in conversational relationship to the subject itself, knowledge and truth.
