Book Review: Healing the Heart of Democracy by Parker Palmer

I received  this book about a year and a half ago, when Parker Palmer was leading a book reading in Minneapolis, MN. I sat in awe as he poetically wove the "broken hearted" issues that America faces and how we can approach them. Also, I must have appeared to be one of those "young people" who had been dragged along because my face was in my smart phone. However, I was not texting, facebooking, or wishing I was elsewhere; in fact, I was taking diligent notes while being in the presence of a beautiful soul who chose to speak.

The book sat upon my shelves and made the cross country journey that I embarked on last year, with good intentions to allow it to be the next on the list. It never quite got there, until I began a spiritual practice of reading while on the treadmill. In my opinion, best spiritual practice, ever!

Healing the Heart of Democracy subtly and concretely addresses the tension among American discourse. Palmer speaks of the tension that we feel as one marked by fear, shame, and anxiety. He names it as "broken hearted," because how else do people respond once their dreams have been broken? When one is broken hearted there is a process of grief and unknowing that occur. He then calls the reader to be broken hearted "openly", meaning to allow themselves to enter into the conversation without judgement or assumptions. By openly processing those moments of pain or confusion, it allows the person to grow and become strengthened. It is also not easy to be open to these moments. People tend to have fight or flight mentalities, in times of stress, and openness does not come naturally. How do we open ourselves up to one we feel oppressed or wronged by? Or vice versa?

For me, this book has been a beautiful way to think about approaching conversations-especially around political hostilities. This past year I heard more anti-Islamic conversations than I ever care to again (and have a strange feeling that I will hear more), and this book gave me ideas of how to approach the beautiful people I am conversing with, without diminishing their character, and also holding firm to my belief that Islam is not inherently bad or evil, but merely a religion that tends to be misunderstood in modern America.

However, I probably would not utilize this book as a book study with a congregation. I can find nuggets of information and beauty, but there were also moments of feeling talked down to. I did not appreciate the chapter recap at the end of every chapter, it felt as though it assumed I was not reading intently. The overall feel of the book felt like it teetered between intellectual conversation and a push into a spiritual practice (without explaining the what or why). That is not something I am willing to enter into with a group of people.