Episode 22: Revolutionary Love - A Conversation With Author/Activist Valarie Kaur
In this Growing Edge Podcast, Parker and Carrie have a conversation with author, filmmaker, attorney, and activist Valarie Kaur, focusing on her remarkable new book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love.
Two months after the 2016 election, Valarie spoke words that went viral, offering millions of people a lasting image of hope, the kind of hope we desperately need today: “The future is dark. But what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb?” Those words became the seeds of The Revolutionary Love Project, a movement that has spoken to many of us. You can sign the Rev Love Declaration HERE.
In her new book, Valarie chronicles a movement that reframes the tradition of nonviolent social change for our era. Drawing deeply on the gritty love shown by women of color in moments ranging from childbirth to nurturing family and community amid devastating violence, she reaches out to all who understand (with Auden) that “we must love one another or die.” Tested and tempered by suffering, but rising up with hope and joy, Kaur shows us how to love others, opponents, and ourselves in ways that will bring us closer to the Beloved Community.
We're proud to call Valarie a friend, and to feature her important work on The Growing Edge.
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Episode (special extra) : The Movement From Loneliness to Solitude
In This Episode Carrie and Parker discuss the spiritual and personal aspects of loneliness and solitude. How are solitude and loneliness different? What does it mean to follow our soul's true shape and imperative, which may create a sense of loneliness at times? Solitude can be generative and life deepening, but there are also other kinds of loneliness that are created through non generative cultural and personal isolation. Also in this episode Parker's new song "The Music Will Go On" is debuted!
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Episode 21: Gardening In The Dark
In this Growing Edge Podcast Parker & Carrie have an open-hearted conversation about maintaining hope in the time of covid-19, including an exploration of a quote about gardening in the dark, Marge Percy’s powerful poem, “The Seven of Pentacles.” and the many layers of meaning that come up when we ask one another, "How are you?” Please download a Conversation Starter for this episode HERE.
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Episode 20: A Conversation About Living In Uncertain Times
Carrie and Parker explore many questions about living with uncertainty, disruption, and revelation in this time of coronavirus. What helps us grow and still our hearts? What comes up personally and emotionally when we slow down? What do we have no control over, and what is in our realm of care and influence? What experiences in the past can help us navigate what we are experiencing now? What new understanding and skills might we acquire? How do we respond to this new window into what it means to be "at risk”? On the other side of this experience, what opening, what invitation to see and do things differently might we embrace.
(Podcast image by Quint Buchholz: Giacomond, 1984. No restrictions on further use.)
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Episode 19: Conversation with Over The Rhine- Musicians Karin Bergquist & Linford Detweiler
In this Episode Carrie and Parker have a conversation with musicians Karin Bergquist & Linford Detweiler (Over The Rhine). They explore the creative process, the spiritual and person threads in their music, balancing inward and outward engagement, creating community and “thin places in the world.” We discuss of their beautiful songs, “Betting on the Muse” “Broken Angels” and “Meet Me At The Edge Of The World.”
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Episode 18 What We Need Is Here
In this episode Carrie and Parker explore Wendell Berry's poem "The Wild Geese" and idea that what we need is here - within us and between us.
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Episode 17: New Year's Revolutions
Join Parker and Carrie as they ponder The Growing Edge Question of the Month and explore the idea of New Year’s Revolutions.
At the turn of the year many of us engage in the cultural practice of New Year's resolutions. Often these intentions have to do with visiting the gym more frequently, diet or creating a more desirable habit to replace an old one. But what would it be like to begin the year with with a series of New Year's revolutions? What is a New Year's revolution and how could this new way of looking at intention and change be of benefit in the coming year?
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Episode 16: Living The Questions
Join Parker and Carrie for an conversation about the beautiful poem by Jeanne Lohmann, "Questions Before Dark"
“Be patient toward all that is unresolved in your heart… Try to love the questions themselves… Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given because you would not be able to live them—and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answers.” -Rainer Marie Rilke
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Episode 15: The Violence of Overactivity—The Wisdom of Living at the Speed of Soul
Join Parker and Carrie for a conversation about this powerful Thomas Merton quote, and how they personally wrestle with overactivity and try to reclaim the wisdom of living at the speed of soul...
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Episode 14 The Growing Edge and Navigating Conflict
In our September podcast, Carrie and Parker take on the topic of conflict on the personal, vocational, and political growing edges of our lives. We live in divisive times, culturally and politically. For many of us, navigating these complexities with family, friends, and colleagues has become challenging.
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Episode 13: A Conversation with Poet/Author/Educator Mark Nepo
Join Parker and Carrie for a heart opening conversation with Author/Poet/Educator Mark Nepo as they discuss what it means to show up as our authentic self, balancing our inner and outer lives, and how when we are in touch with our deepest human experiences we are in touch with our shared human experience.
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Episode 12: Within Us & Between Us Is Everything We Need
Join Parker and Carrie for our July podcast where we explore the concept of abundance. The very idea of “the growing edge” is rooted in the confidence that more life, new life, is always possible. In this conversation we discuss how community not only creates abundance—community is abundance.
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Episode 11: A Conversation with Author, Educator & Activist, Gregory C. Ellison, II, Ph.D.
Our friend Greg Ellison is Professor of Pastoral Care & Counseling at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is founder of Fearless Dialogues, a nonprofit that creates unique spaces for unlikely partners to have hard, heartfelt conversations on taboo subjects like racism, classism, and community violence.
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Episode 10: The Growing Edge Internal & External Pushback
To live an undivided life, to follow the call to wholeness, may at times feel lonely when others express discomfort, concern, or view what we are doing as dangerous.
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Episode 9: "From Frozen to Fallow to Flowering"
April is a time of transitioning as we emerged for a long winter into the promise of new growth. We. bring with us what we learned from the dark months, as we step into moments of awe and wonder, glimpses of light, encouragement and gratitude.
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Episode 8: "Mud & Miracles"
Carrie and Parker discuss The Growing Edge March question of the month. March 20 is the first day of spring, and spring is the season of mud and miracles-which makes spring a lot like life itself! So our Growing Edge Question of the Month for March is this: How do you hold the eternal mix of mud and miracles in your life? How do you understand the mud, and what do you learn from it? What do you regard as miraculous, and how do you give thanks for it?
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Episode 7: The Fast Track & The Call To Stillness
Carrie and Parker discuss The Growing Edge February question of the month. In February nature maintains a state of stillness in order to nurture its own growing edges. But we live in a culture that values (and sometimes requires) speeding. Parker and Carrie discuss slowing, stopping, lying low whether by choice or necessity. What do we learn, what can only happen when given time and space? What does it mean to live at the speed of our own souls?
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Episode 6: Begin Again
Join us at the turn of the year as we explore the topic of getting unstuck and what it means to begin again. In this episode Carrie and Parker discuss the January question of the month:
“Where are you feeling called to ‘begin again’? Are there areas of your life and work where you’re feeling stuck, where would it be life-giving for you—and maybe for others—to gather up what you’ve learned and make a fresh start?”
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Episode 5: "The Gift" With Special Guest Naomi Shihab Nye
Parker J. Palmer and Carrie Newcomer are joined by a special guest, poet Naomi Shihab Nye, in a lively conversation about gift-giving and -receiving, and paying attention to the everyday gifts of life. Naomi is a much-loved, prize-winning poet with a passion for life, and for justice for the maligned and oppressed.
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Episode 4: The Personal Meets the Political at The Growing Edge
Carrie & Parker discuss where the personal meets the political at the Growing Edge, exploring the human heart as “the first home of democracy.”
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