The Courage Way

9

The Courage to Hold Tension in Life-Giving Ways

We engage in creative tension-holding every day in every dimension of our lives, seeking and finding patches of common ground. We do it with our partners, our children, and our friends as we work to keep our relationships healthy and whole. We do it in the workplace—in nonprofits and business and industry—as we come together to solve practical problems.

—Parker J. Palmer

As the only female manager in her department of a metropolitan county government, Jill Boone was in charge of janitorial, landscaping, and sustainability services. That meant, in part, that she had to supervise union workers who had had a difficult history with the person in the manager’s role before Jill.

Jill knew that her predecessor ...