I am rereading Parker Palmer's book. He begins with the picture of a farmer who ties a rope from the barn to the backdoor at the first sign of a winter blizzard so as to prevent becoming lost in his own backyard during a whiteout.

I like Palmer's optimism that the blizzard of the world can never overturn the order of the soul though it might obscure it for a while.

I feel the need for a spiritual rope to guide me home in the blizzard of my life which is in full swing right now!

Here is the quote:

"So it is easy to believe the poet's claim that "the blizzard of the world" has overturned "the order of the soul," easy to believe that the soul—that life-giving core of the human self, with its hunger for truth and justice, love and forgiveness—has lost all power to guide our lives. But my own experience of the blizzard, which includes getting lost in it more often than I like to admit, tells me that it is not so. The soul's order can never be destroyed. It may be obscured by the whiteout. We may forget, or deny, that its guidance is close at hand. And yet we are still in the soul's backyard, with chance after chance to regain our bearings.

This book is about tying a rope from the back door out to the barn so that we can find our way home again. When we catch sight of the soul, we can survive the blizzard without losing our hope or our way. When we catch sight of the soul, we can become healers in a wounded world—in the family, in the neighborhood, in the workplace, and in political life—as we are called back to our "hidden wholeness" amid the violence of the storm." (Hidden Wholeness, p. 2)