Paul Reads Aloud

(from ‘On letting things alone’, A HIDDEN WHOLENESS: THE JOURNEY TOWARD AN UNDIVIDED LIFE, by Parker J. Palmer, pp. 52-4) But we can learn a more creative way to be present to each other, as the following story shows. It is the story of a conflicted person who was transformed because the people around her chose to trust her inner teacher, overcoming their longtime habit of pulling everything into themselves. It happened in a long-term circle of trust I facilitated for public school teachers. One of them, Linda, was a woman at the end of her rope. After fifteen years of teaching, she had nothing good to say about her supervisors, her colleagues, or her students--all of them, by her account, were misguided and sometimes malevolent. She felt certain that she would be a happier person and a better teacher if only she could replace all these annoying aliens with actual human beings. The teachers who sat with Linda listened to her receptively and respectfully. Occasionally, they asked an honest, open question