Contemplative Life

In a season of national disorientation, Mark Labberton replays a luminous conversation with Quaker writer and contemplative Parker J. Palmer, whose voice from a few years back still sounds like it was recorded this morning.

In this episode with Mark Labberton, Palmer reflects on contemplation as penetrating illusion and touching reality, and how that work shows up in vocation, suffering, and public life. Together they discuss the difference between true and false crosses, mistaking the vessel for the treasure, and why wholeness isn’t perfection. They also examine the pre-political work of weaving civic community and what the church owes a fractured democracy.