A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey
Toward an Undivided Life by Parker
J. Palmer
Wholeness For A Healthy Organization
In A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer reveals the same compassionate
intelligence and informed heart that shaped his best-selling books Let Your
Life Speak and The Courage to Teach. Here he speaks to our yearning to
live undivided lives—lives that are congruent with our inner truth—in a
world filled with the forces of fragmentation. Mapping an inner journey
that we take in solitude and in the company of others, Palmer describes a
form of community that fits the limits of our active lives. Defining a “circle of
trust” as “a space between us that honors the soul,” he shows how people
in settings ranging from friendship to organizational life can support each
other on the journey toward living “divided no more.” This paperback
edition includes two new and useful features. Circles of Trust is a DVD
containing interviews with Parker J. Palmer and footage from retreats he
facilitated for the Center for Courage & Renewal

(www.CourageRenewal.org). Bringing the Book to Life, by Caryl Hurtig
Casbon and Sally Z. Hare, is a readers and leaders guide to exploring the
themes in A Hidden Wholeness. The DVD illuminates and illustrates the
principles and practices behind circles of trust. The guide includes
questions that connect the DVD to the book, offering a conversation with
the author as well as an engagement with the text. Together, these
features give readers new ways to internalize the themes of A Hidden
Wholeness and share with others this approach to sustaining identity and
integrity in all the venues of our lives. Inspired by Palmer’s writing and
speaking—and challenged by the conditions of twenty-first century life—
people across the country, from many walks of life, have been coming
together in circles of trust to reclaim their integrity and help foster
wholeness in their workplaces and their world. For over a decade, the
principles and practices in this book have been proven on the ground—by
parents and educators, clergy and politicians, community organizers and
corporate executives, physicians and attorneys, and many others who
seek to rejoin soul and role in their private and public lives. A Hidden
Wholeness weaves together four themes that its author has pursued for
forty years: the shape of an integral life, the meaning of community,
teaching and learning for transformation, and nonviolent social change.
The hundreds of thousands of people who know Parker Palmer’s books
will be glad to find the journey continued
Personal Review: A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an
Undivided Life by Parker J. Palmer
Parker Palmer takes the title of this book from Thomas Merton who
claimed that "There is in all things...a hidden wholeness." Parker draws
on his own experiences and work with educators, clergy, politicians,
community organizers, parents, doctors, lawyers, and people of other
walks of life to build "circles of trust" where the shy soul can speak its own
truth with conviction without denying the truth of anyone else's soul.
The first chapter offers images of integrity - "the state or quality of being
entire, complete, and unbroken....unimpaired, unadulterated, or genuine
state, corresponding to its original condition." Through his own stories of
disclosure, Parker Palmer invites the reader to look deeply within for the
dividedness of life - where we extinguish parts of ourselves - and to
embrace brokenness as an integral part of who we are. The signs of a
divided life are explored in Chapter 2.
In Chapters 3 - 5 Palmer outlines how the soul and role in life can be
reunited into a life of wholeness. Drawing on his Quaker roots, Palmer
invites the reader to consult the "inner teacher," which Thomas Merton
called the true self, Buddhists call original nature, Hasidic Jews call a spark
of the divine, and humanists call identity and integrity. Palmer explores the
paradox of our solitary journey toward an undivided life in community - a
special community of trust, a circle of trust.

Palmer uses a metaphor to describe the deepest part of our being: the soul
is like a wild animal.
Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-
sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places....If we want to see a wild
animal, we know that the last thing we should do is go crashing through
the woods yelling for it to come out. But if we will walk quietly into the
woods, sit patiently at the base of a tree, breathe with the earth, and fade
into our surroundings, the wild creature we seek might put in an
appearance.
Chapters 5-9 outline the preparations required to embark on the journey to
wholeness and describes in detail practices necessary to create a
community of trust where the soul feels safe enough to show up and make
its claim on our lives. The final chapter challenges the reader to use the
principles and practices developed in the book to walk the path of
nonviolence.
This book is a rich resource for all who yearn for greater wholeness and
integrity in life.
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