The Growing Edge

Join Parker and Carrie for our July podcast where we explore the concept of abundance. The very idea of “the growing edge” is rooted in the confidence that more life, new life, is always possible. In this conversation we discuss how  community not only creates abundance—community is abundance. We explore the life-giving expansion that happens when we abandon the idea that we must “go it alone," risk connecting with others, and generate a sense of "enoughness" in ourselves and in the world.

Our friend Greg Ellison is Professor of Pastoral Care & Counseling at Candler School of Theology at Emory University. He is founder of Fearless Dialogues, a nonprofit that creates unique spaces for unlikely partners to have hard, heartfelt conversations on taboo subjects like racism, classism, and community violence.  Ellison’s research focuses on caring with marginalized populations, pastoral care as social activism, and contemporary mysticism. He is the author of Cut Dead But Still Alive: Caring for African American Young Men, and Fearless Dialogues: A New Movement for Justice. He also has a book in progress with Westminster John Knox Press: Anchored in the Current: The Eternal Wisdom of Howard Thurman in a Changing World. Join us for this lively and heart-opening conversation about Howard Thurman, Fearless Dialogues, and how we can move beyond fear personally and politically.

To live an undivided life, to follow the call to wholeness, may at times feel lonely when others express discomfort, concern, or view what we are doing as dangerous. Join Carrie and Parker as they discuss the May question of the month, “Have you ever needed to follow a path where you felt lonely or misunderstood, perhaps getting active pushback? If so, what helped you persist and carry through?”

Carrie Newcomer and Parker J. Palmer discuss long winters and new seasons of growth and The Growing Edge Quesion of the Month. "What have you learned for the long winters of your life and/or those seasons of new growth and unexpected light?"

Parker and Carrie discuss The Growing Edge Question of The Month for March. March is the season of spring, mud and miracles. How do you hold the eternal mix of mud and miracles in your life? What do you learn from this process? What do you regard as miraculous, and how do you give thanks for it?

Carrie and Parker discuss The Growing Edge February question of the month. In February nature maintains a state of stillness in order to nurture its own growing edges. But we live in a culture that values (and sometimes requires) speeding. Parker and Carrie discuss slowing, stopping, lying low whether by choice or necessity. What do we learn, what can only happen when given time and space? What does it mean to live at the speed of our own souls?

It’s no accident that January takes its name from the Roman god Janus, the god of "gateways and beginnings." Parker and Carrie explore the idea of endings, beginning again, beginner's mind and the question "Where are you feeling called to ‘begin again’? Are there areas of your life and work where you’re feeling stuck, where would it be life-giving for you—and maybe for others—to gather up what you’ve learned and make a fresh start? ”

Parker J Palmer and Carrie Newcomer are joined by special guest the poet, Naomi Shihab Nye. A reading of Naomi's poem "Shoulders" and a conversation about the concept of gift, giving and paying attention.

Carrie and Parker discuss where the personal meets the political at the Growing Edge, focusing on the human heart as the first home of democracy. What personal work will help us navigate the kind of troubled times that ask us to be better people than we ever thought we'd need to be? Parker describes the politics of the broken hearted.

Carrie and Parker discuss the October Growing Edge Question of the Month. "What do you want to name and claim as a way you are flowering today that you could only hope for in the past? What do you want to celebrate about the way your life has opened over the years as it reaches for the sun?” Often we think of personal and spiritual growth as an effort to achieve some goal in the future. But it’s equally important to look back and celebrate the growth we’ve achieved over the past five or ten years ago in that process of “slow blossoming” that we’re barely aware of. If we fail to raise our own growth to consciousness, we may lose some of its benefits.