Let Your Life Speak
by Parker J. Palmer
Chapter II
"Now I Become Myself"
Copyright ©2000 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers
San Francisco, CA

So I took a yearlong sabbatical from my work in
Washington and went to a place called Pendle Hill outside
of Philadelphia. Founded in 1930, Pendle Hill is a Quaker
living-and-learning community of some seventy people whose
mission is to offer education about the inner journey, nonvio-
lent social change, and the connection between the two. It is
a real-time experiment in Quaker faith and practice where res-
idents move through a daily round of communal life: wor-
shiping in silence each morning; sharing three meals a day;
engaging in study, physical work, decision making, and social
outreach. It is a commune, an ashram, a monastery, a zendo,
a kibbutz -- whatever one calls it, Pendle Hill was a life unlike
anything I had ever known.6

Moving there was like moving to Mars -- utterly alien but
profoundly compelling. I thought I would stay for just a year
and then go back to Washington and resume my work. But
before my sabbatical ended, I was invited to become Pendle
Hill's dean of studies. I stayed on for another decade, living in
community and continuing my experiment with alternative
models of education.

It was a transformative passage for me, personally, profes-
sionally, and spiritually; in retrospect, I know how impover-
ished I would have been without it. But early on in that
passage I began to have deep and painful doubts about the tra-
jectory of my vocation. Though I felt called to stay at Pendle
Hill, I also feared that I had stepped off the edge of the known
world and was at risk of disappearing professionally.

Now I Become Myself

23

Next>

<Previous