Thoughts on "Let Your Life Speak" by Parker Palmer

Parker Palmer is an established thought leader that I recently came across via the “On Being” podcast.  In particular, I was drawn into the podcast episode as he described his various adventures in activism, the Quaker community, and his reflective poise in a complex and changing world.
Why read this?
1.  For a wise perspective on finding your life's vocation, a perspective developed after decades of the author finding it, knowing it, losing it, doubting it and starting the cycle over again.
2. For a short and highly quotable series of reflections on the guiding force of change.  Hint: it’s the doors closing behind you more than the clear vision ahead.
3. For a visceral and vulnerable discussion of male depression.  How the well-meaning supporters can do damage, and how one path through became a path of escape, twice.
4. For gentle, descriptive prose that is patient enough to take many forms and undergo many refinements to become the text found in the book.
5. The discussion on leadership shadow which lifts up a mirror any leader should look into on a regular basis.

6. For quotes like these:
Regarding the message of what his clinical depression taught him “I want you to embrace this descent into hell as a journey toward self-hood - and a journey toward God”

On burnout “one sign that I am violating my own nature in the name of nobility is a condition called burnout”

On courage to be true to self in the face of punishment “no punishment anyone might inflict on them could possibly be worse than the punishment they inflict on themselves by conspiring their own diminishment”

On our life as pilgrimage “disabused of our illusions by much travel and travail we awaken one day to find that the sacred center is here and now - in every moment of the journey, everywhere in the works around us, and deep within our own hearts”

On the value of inner work of  the shadow of leadership “The key to this form of  community involves holding a paradox - the paradox of having relationships in which we protect each other’s aloneness.  We must come together in ways that respect the solitude of the soul, that avoid the unconscious violence we do when  we try to save each other,  that evoke our capacity to hold another life without dishonoring its mystery, never trying to coerce the other into meeting our own needs.”

What I struggled with:
1.  I was left wanting more, but I trust the more is to be found in the re-reading.
2. Why it's so hard to see clearly from the next stage of life how misguided the past stages were.
3.  The section on leadership shadow is its own, very needed book
4. This book has quotable lines on almost every page.  However, I would be interested in the how and why behind some of these conclusions are reached.  As presented, they appear as platitudes which require a certain amount of like experiences to understand.