Here, Take This Gift

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"The soul wants to give us life and wants us to pass that gift along, to become life-givers in a world that deals too much death." —Parker J. Palmer Parker J.

Palmer’s teachings and mine come from a similar dye. Though we have different lineages of teachers, our paths at times have been parallel, for we advocate and teach similar themes: living life from the inside out, understanding and developing our true nature, living with contradictions, trusting our inner truth, and being in authentic relationship.
 
During initial conversations about the possibility of this book (The Clue of the Red Thread), Parker referred to his core teachings as “red threads.”
 
I trusted the arrival of the red thread as a well-timed metaphor. Through Parker’s intuitive nature, the helping spirits, and my own explorations, I chose the red thread as the thematic metaphor for this book. This makes for that perfect blend of an active life that Parker and I so often refer to, one in which we trust what arises out of authentic conversation, we actively engage in contemplative action through our observations, and we acknowledge that there is an underlying filament of Spirit helping bring together what is truly possible. With each turn we take in the metaphorical labyrinth, which represents particular points in our lives, we use a red thread teaching and related practices offered here to help us explore and try on a particular concept for ourselves. We take hold of the red thread clues to go down into the centers of ourselves, confront our fears and limitations, and come back out to our communities truer to our calling and inner nature. In exploring these teachings for ourselves, we come to recognize the potential within each of life’s turns and circumstances. Life is about holding onto and passing on the red thread, which, of course, is a metaphor for the available wisdom and possibilities present in any given situation. The red thread is a rich analogy for how we can unravel the truth contained within us to navigate our outer life at any point, no matter the circumstances. As it turns out, the greatest and most needed adventure of our life is to go inward and, ultimately, live from the inside out.  

This is an excerpt from Here, Take This Gift, in The Clue of The Red Thread: Discovering Fearlessness and Compassion in Uncertain Times

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