** Books mentioned have Amazon or Bookshop affiliate links, meaning I make a few cents if you purchase through my link. I only recommend books that I’ve read.

Parker Palmer (writer, educator, and founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal) and Thomas Merton (contemplative monk, write, photographer, and activist) are two people who have inspired me by the way they live(d) their lives. Merton is the author of this quote: “There is in all things … a hidden wholeness.” He strived to bring out this hidden wholeness in his life and through his photographs. Parker Palmer wrote a book called A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Towards an Undivided Life.

“Wholeness does not mean perfection; it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life.” ― Parker J. Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life

In this article, A Friendship, A Love, A Rescue, Palmer describes four key teachings he learned from Merton. They are summarized below and illustrated with my photographs.

1. The Quest for True Self

True Self

“Most of us,” as Merton brilliantly observed, “live lives of self-impersonation.” I cannot imagine a sadder way to die than with the sense that I never showed up here on earth as my God-given self. If Merton had offered me nothing else, the encouragement to live from true self would be more than enough to call his relation to me “a friendship, a love, a rescue. ~ Parker Palmer

2. The Promise of Paradox

Embracing Brokenness

Paradoxical thinking is key to creativity, which comes from the capacity to entertain apparently contradictory ideas in a way that stretches the mind and opens the heart to something new. Paradox is also a way of being that’s key to wholeness, which does not mean perfection: it means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. ~ Parker Palmer

3. The Call to Community

Community of Solitudes

For the next eleven years, I shared a daily round of worship, study, work, social outreach, and communal meals with some seventy people in a spiritually-grounded community that was as close as I could get to my image of the life Merton lived. That image was of a “community of solitudes,” of “being alone together,” of a way of life in which a group of people could live more fully into Rilke’s definition of love: “that two (or more) solitudes border, protect and salute one another.” ~ Parker Palmer

4. Hidden Wholeness in a Broken World

Hidden Wholeness

There is in all visible things an invisible fecundity, a dimmed light, a meek namelessness, a hidden wholeness. This mysterious Unity and Integrity is Wisdom, the Mother of all, Natura naturals. ~ Thomas Merton

Which of these teachings is most challenging for you? 

I highly recommend any book by Parker Palmer – especially A Hidden Wholeness, The Courage to Teach, and Let Your Life Speak. Find Thomas Merton books here.