Parker J. Palmer: The Politics of the Brokenhearted

Tears. This is such a powerful, needed, and timely article by Parker Palmer, a man of great heart and wisdom. The essence expressed in this essay touches into the depth of how it is that we humans cope with heartbreak. I have personally experienced both ends of the continuum and everything in-between. Before I entered recovery and a path of discovery and awakening, I unconsciously acted out and acted in all the wounds that I denied and worked so hard to keep at bay. Large walls of protection were built around my heart, walls that were reinforced through addictions and projections and unknowingly causing harm to myself and others, including those I most love. I did, as we all do, the best I could at that time. 

Then the profound gift and miracle began to unfold as I took my first tentative steps into bringing down those walls and exploring what I found within my neglected  and hurting heart and soul. That was 1983. Since then I have learned so many lessons and received so many gifts which have completely transformed my life. 

These are universal gifts and teachings that transcend our seeming differences. Among them is that each time we allow our hearts to break open, more space is cleared for love. Parker Palmer beautifully and eloquently describes this amazing journey of the heart. 

Blessings to us all on our journeys through these challenging times that we share. May we be conscious and mindful of the choices we make. May we act out of our healing and wholeness and the wisdom of our hearts. ~ Molly

Photo by Molly

 On Holding the Tensions of Democracy

by Parker J. Palmer

The human heart is the first home of democracy. 
—Terry Tempest Williams

I write at a heartbreaking moment in American history. This “one nation, indivisible” is deeply divided along political, economic, racial, and religious lines. And despite our historic dream of being “a light unto the nations,” the gaps between us and our global neighbors continue to grow more deadly. The conflicts and contradictions of twenty-first-century life are breaking the American heart and threatening to compromise our democratic values.

We think of heartbreak as a personal, not a political, condition. But I believe that heartbreak offers a powerful lens through which to examine the well-being of the body politic. I want to use that lens to examine the way we hold tensions in politics as well as private life—a critical connection in a democracy that rises or falls on our individual and collective capacity to respond to conflict in a life-giving, not death-dealing way.

The image of a broken heart may seem too sentimental for politics, yet diagnosing, addressing, and sometimes manipulating heartbreak has long been implicit in realpolitik. The “values vote” that helped swing the 2004 presidential election seemed to take the media by surprise. But politicians have long understood that advocacy related to the issues that break people’s hearts—such as abortion, marriage and the family, patriotism, religion in public life, and fear of many sorts, not least of terrorism—always elicits votes. Indeed, railing against the sources of heartbreak, real or imaginary, keeps winning elections even when the rhetoric consistently outstrips legislative results. The word heartbreak may be infrequent in the literature of political science, but the human reality it points to is an engine of political life.

There are at least two ways to picture a broken heart, using heart in its original meaning not merely as the seat of the emotions but as the core of our sense of self. The conventional image, of course, is that of a heart broken by unbearable tension into a thousand shards—shards that sometimes become shrapnel aimed at the source of our pain. Every day, untold numbers of people try to “pick up the pieces,” some of them taking grim satisfaction in the way the heart’s explosion has injured their enemies. Here the broken heart is an unresolved wound that we too often inflict on others.

But there is another way to visualize what a broken heart might mean. Imagine that small, clenched fist of a heart “broken open” into largeness of life, into greater capacity to hold one’s own and the world’s pain and joy. This, too, happens every day. Who among us has not seen evidence, in our own or other people’s lives, that compassion and grace can be the fruits of great suffering? Here heartbreak becomes a source of healing, enlarging our empathy and extending our ability to reach out.

Broken-open hearts are in short supply these days, at least in politics. Formed—or deformed—by an impatient and control-obsessed culture, many of us do not hold social and political tensions in ways that open us to the world. Instead, we shut our hearts down, either withdrawing into fearful isolation or angrily lashing out at the alien “other”: the alien at home becomes unpatriotic, the alien abroad, an enemy. Heartbroken and heavily armed, we act in ways that diminish democracy and make the world an even more dangerous place.

The capacity to hold tensions creatively is the key to much that matters—from a life lived in love to a democracy worthy of the name to even the most modest movement toward peace between nations. So those of us who care about such things must work to root out the seeds of violence in our culture, including its impatience and its incessant drive toward control. And since culture is a human creation, whose deformations begin not “out there” but in our inner lives, we can transform our culture only as we are inwardly transformed.

As long as we are mortal creatures who love other mortals, heartbreak will be a staple of our lives. And all heartbreak, personal and political, will confront us with the same choice. Will we hold our hearts open and keep trying to love, even as love makes us more vulnerable to the losses that break our hearts? Or will we shut down or lash out, refusing to risk love again and seeking refuge in withdrawal or hostility?

For the full essay, please go here: http://www.couragerenewal.org/parker/writings/politics-of-the-brokenhearted/