We begin a new five-week worship series this Sunday called Healing the Heart of Democracy. We move fully into the election season in which the lines are already drawn. Defenses are up. Attacks are endless. Politics in our day = demonizing the other. It’s breaking our hearts. We pray our Kitchen Tables will provide space for healing the heart of democracy. Our five-week worship series will be based on the writings of Parker Palmer, a Quaker social activist.
Overview
Take time today to read this passage from Parker Palmer’s Healing the Heart of Democracy
“In this book, the word heart reclaims its original meaning. ‘Heart’ comes from the Latin cor and points not merely to our emotions but to the core of the self, that center place where all of our ways of knowing converge—intellectual, emotional, sensory, intuitive, imaginative, experiential, relational, and bodily, among others. The heart is where we integrate what we know in our minds with what we know in our bones, the place where our knowledge can become more fully human. Cor is also the Latin root from which we get the word courage. When all that we understand of self and world comes together in the center place called the heart, we are more likely to find the courage to act humanely on what we know.”
Parker Palmer outlines five habits of the heart that he believes can help heal the heart of democracy. We will focus on one habit of the heart each week throughout this series in our Kitchen Tables and in worship.
1. An understanding that we are all in this together.
1. An understanding that we are all in this together.
2. An appreciation of the value of ”otherness.“
3. An ability to hold tension in life-giving ways.
4. A sense of personal voice and agency.
5. A capacity to create community.
These habits are not intended to be rules; instead they are invitations. As Parker Palmer writes, “At the deepest levels of human life, we do not need techniques. We need insights into ourselves and our world that can help us understand how to learn and grow from our experiences of diversity, tension, and conflict.”
This Week’s Habit of the Heart
Consider Parker Palmer’s description of this first habit:
“An understanding that we are all in this together: Ecologists, economists, ethicists, philosophers of science and religious and secular leaders have all given voice to this theme: despite our illusions of individualism and national superiority, human beings are a profoundly interconnected species, with each other and with all forms of life, as the global economic and ecological crises reveal in vivid and frightening detail. We must understand the simple fact that we are dependent upon and accountable to one another—including the stranger, the ‘alien other.’ At the same time, we need to save this notion from the idealistic excesses that make it an impossible dream. Exhorting people to hold a moment-by-moment awareness of their global or even national interconnectedness is a counsel of perfection that can lead only to self-delusion or discouragement and defeat.”
When do you feel most aware of your interconnection to and interdependence on other people? When do you feel most disconnected? How has technology changed the nature of our interconnection in the last few years?
The questions for our series on Healing the Heart of Democracy are slightly adapted from The Center for Courage & Renewal’s online study guide for Healing the Heart of Democracy. Learn more about The Center for Courage & Renewal and their important work here.
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