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

was tired, her heart was tired, her whole being was tired of
playing by racist rules, of denying her soul's claim to selfhood.8

Of course, there were many forces aiding and abetting
Rosa Parks's decision to live divided no more. She had studied
the theory and tactics of nonviolence at the Highlander Folk
School, where Martin Luther King Jr. was also a student. She
was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, whose
members had been discussing civil disobedience.

But in the moment she sat down at the front of the bus on
that December day, she had no guarantee that the theory of
nonviolence would work or that her community would back
her up. It was a moment of existential truth, of claiming
authentic selfhood, of reclaiming birthright giftedness -- and
in that moment she set in motion a process that changed both
the lay and the law of the land.

Rosa Parks sat down because she had reached a point
where it was essential to embrace her true vocation -- not as
someone who would reshape our society but as someone who
would live out her full self in the world. She decided, "I will
no longer act on the outside in a way that contradicts the truth
that I hold deeply on the inside. I will no longer act as if I were
less than the whole person I know myself inwardly to be."

Where does one get the courage to "sit down at the front
of the bus" in a society that punishes anyone who decides to
live divided no more? After all, conventional wisdom recom-
mends the divided life as the safe and sane way to go: "Don't

Now I Become Myself

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