Saturday, February 14, 2026: Please Calendar This Upcoming event &  RSVP: Becoming More Fully Alive: The Spiritual Practice of Aging Well: With Parker Palmer

Our final video in the series presented by the Education Committee is the last of the of the 4-part series:

It will be shown, followed by a lively and thoughtful discussion:

 Wednesday, March 11th at 1:00PM

Location: Nancy and Bob’s: at 2404 Marilyn Circle, Petaluma, CA 94954 

Please RSVP to Nancy at (707) 773-0904

Or Via Email at rnmcfar1938@yahoo.com

What if aging isn't about decline-but about becoming more fully alive?

In this session, beloved teacher Parker Palmer invites us to reimagine aging as a season of depth, resilience, and possibility. Drawing from his lived experience and signature gift for storytelling, Parker explores how to stand in "the gap" between the world as it is and the world as it could be-without turning away from the sorrow or joy of being human.

Together, we'll reflect on what it means to live openheartedly in the face of grief, paradox, and uncertainty. With wisdom that bridges the inner life and outer action, Parker shares how tending the soul not only renews us individually but also strengthens our collective capacity for compassion, justice, and community.

This i s an invitation to age with courage, to live truthfully, and to discover the vitality that comes from holding life's beauty and brokenness together.

“I once heard Alan Watts observe that a Chinese child will ask, “How does a baby grow?” But an American child will ask, “How do you make a baby?” From an early age, we absorb our culture’s arrogant conviction that we manufacture everything, reducing the world to mere “raw material” that lacks all value until we impose our designs and labor on it.”

Quotes from Parker Palmer:

“Seasons is a wise metaphor for the movement of life, I think. It suggests that life is neither a battlefield nor a game of chance but something infinitely richer, more promising, more real.”

“Before I can tell my life what I want to do with it, I must listen to my life telling me who I am.”

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Parker J. Palmer is a writer, educator, and activist whose work has transformed the fields of education, leadership, and spiritual formation. He is the author of numerous books, including Let Your Life Speak, A Hidden Wholeness; On the Brink o f Everything: Grace, Gravity, and Getting Old; and Healing the Heart of Democracy, which explore vocation, integrity, and the inner life of communities.

Founder of the Center for Courage & Renewal, Palmer has spent decades helping teachers, leaders, and ordinary people reconnect with their deepest purpose, creativity, and voice. His work integrates contemplative insight with practical guidance for building communities of trust, compassion, and courage.

Palmer has been featured on the On Being podcast with Krista Tippet,[5] and regularly contributes to the On Being blog.[6 Here’s an excerpt from one of his blog entries:

"Age brings diminishments, but more than a few come with benefits. I’ve lost the capacity for multitasking, but I’ve rediscovered the joy of doing one thing at a time. My thinking has slowed a bit, but experience has made it deeper and richer. I’m done with big and complex projects, but more aware of the loveliness of simple things: a talk with a friend, a walk in the woods, sunsets and sunrises, a night of good sleep.

I have fears, of course, always have and always will. But as time lengthens like a shadow behind me, and the time ahead dwindles, my overriding feeling is gratitude for the gift of life.

Above all, I like being old because the view from the brink is striking, a full panorama of my life — and a bracing breeze awakens me to new ways of understanding my own past, present, and future. As one of Kurt Vonnegut’s characters says in Player Piano, “out on the edge you can see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.”

Looking back, I see why I needed the tedium and the inspiration, the anger and the love, the anguish and the joy. I see how it all belongs, even those days of despair when the darkness overwhelmed me. Calamities I once lamented now appear as strong threads of a larger weave, without which the fabric of my life would be less resilient. Moments of fulfillment I failed to relish in my impatience to get on to the next thing now appear as times to be recalled and savored. And I’ve doubled down on my gratitude for those who’ve helped me along with love, affirmation, hard questions, daunting challenges, compassion, and forgiveness.

Looking around at our shared world, its suffering and its promise, I see the courage with which so many live in service of the human possibility. Old age is no time to hunker down, unless disability demands it. Old is just another word for nothing left to lose, a time of life to take bigger risks on behalf of the common good.

Looking ahead to the day when I go over the brink to what Leonard Cohen calls our “invincible defeat,” all I know for sure is that it’s a long way down. Will I spread my wings and fly, fall wordless as a rock, or flame out like a screaming banshee? I have no idea.

But of this I am certain: that I’ve come this far makes me one of the lucky ones. Many people never had a chance to see the view from where I stand, and I might well have been among them. I’ve known days when the voice of depression told me that death was a better idea than trying to carry on. For a long time, I bored my doctors, but over the past fifteen years, I’ve become a “person of interest” to several kinds of specialists.

So I’m not given to waxing romantic about aging and dying. I simply know that the first is a privilege and the second is not up for negotiation."

Life and Career

Palmer was born in Chicago on February 28, 1939, and grew up in Wilmette and Kenilworth, Illinois.[2][3] He studied philosophy and sociology at Carleton College, where he graduated in 1961 before going on to complete a Doctor of Philosophy degree in sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.[3] After moving to the East Coast for a job as a community organizer and a teaching position at Georgetown University, Palmer became involved with the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) at Pendle Hill, where he served as dean of studies and writer in residence.[3] 

Palmer is the founder and senior partner emeritus of the Center for Courage & Renewal,[4] which oversees the "Courage to Teach" program for K–12 educators across the country and parallel programs for people in other professions, including medicine, law, ministry and philanthropy.