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Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Parker Palmer: Standing in the Gap

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Everything Happens Studios

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 5 November 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How do we stay hopeful in the face of despair and disillusionment—especially when politics threaten to tear us in two? Kate speaks with Parker Palmer, a writer, teacher, and activist. As you’ll hear, he has gone through seasons of deep clinical depression, and has hard-won wisdom to share with us on how to survive, how to regain a sense of agency, how to remain hopeful despite it all. 

In this episode, Kate and Parker discuss:

  1. finding agency in the midst of depression and despair (including his trick of redefining achievement)

  2. why it is important to recalibrate our sense of reality—especially in the face of 24-hour news cycles and social media algorithms

  3. how a broken heart can either shatter or break open into a larger, more compassionate way of being

So on a day like today when we all might be thinking about the state of our nation or the state of our world or the realities at stake for our families and friends (....or perhaps, more tempted to keep our head in the sand to just make it through Thanksgiving), might we pull up close and listen to what Parker has to teach us about how to keep our hearts soft and remain hopeful, still. 

If you liked this episode, you’ll also love: 


 

Watch clips from this conversation, read the full transcript, and access discussion questions by clicking here or visiting katebowler.com/podcasts.

Follow Kate on Instagram, Facebook, or X (formerly known as Twitter)—@katecbowler. Links to social pages and more available at linktr.ee/katecbowler.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hello, Everything Happens, listeners. I wanted to tell you about another podcast called Need a Lift.

0:06.5

It's a show that focuses on bringing people together during tough times.

0:10.8

Host Tim Schreiber talks to guests who demonstrate optimism through their lived experience,

0:16.5

like best-selling author Minjin Lee on why she creates complicated characters who hold the secret to

0:22.7

our transformation, an Olympic athlete Michael Phelps on the importance of cultivating an inner life

0:28.7

in competition, mental health, and in his marriage. Need a Lift is an antidote to the hatred

0:35.0

and despair we're all exhausted of hearing, giving us hope that change is possible.

0:40.6

You can hear more Needalift episodes wherever you get podcasts.

0:45.5

Hi, I'm Rush Missa Johnny, founder of Girls Who Code.

0:49.4

Look, I'd consider myself a pretty successful adult woman.

0:52.9

I've written books, founded two successful

0:55.3

nonprofits, and I'm raising two incredible kids. But here's the thing. I still wake up wondering,

1:02.2

is this it? And if the best years are yet to come, when's that going to start? Join me on my

1:10.0

so-called midlife, my new podcast with Lemonada Media,

1:13.9

where we're building a playbook for navigating midlife, one episode at a time.

1:19.3

Each week, I'll chat with extraordinary guests who've transformed their midlife crisis

1:24.3

into opportunities for growth and newfound purpose.

1:29.1

At some point, we all ask ourselves, is there more to life?

1:34.0

I'm here to discover how to thrive in my second act, right alongside you.

1:39.7

My so-called midlife is out now, wherever you get your podcasts.

1:45.2

There are the ways that things are supposed to be.

1:49.0

Meaningful.

...

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