Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• God's presence. . . is an inner experience that never changes. It's a relationship that's there all the time, even when we're not paying attention to it. Perhaps the Infinite holds us to Itself in the same way the earth does. Like gravity, if it ever stopped we would know it instantly. But it never does.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  God, Doe, Attention

  Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.188, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Mystery has great power. In the many years I have worked with people with cancer, I have seen Mystery comfort people when nothing else can comfort them and offer hope when nothing else offers hope. I have seen Mystery heal fear that is otherwise unhealable. For years I have watched people in their confrontation with the unknown recover awe, wonder, joy, and aliveness. They have remembered that life is holy, and they have reminded me as well. In losing our sense of Mystery, we have become a nation of burned-out people. People who wonder do not burn out.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Cancer, Years, People

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• At the deepest level, the creative process and the healing process arise from a single source. When you are an artist, you are a healer; a wordless trust of the same mystery is the foundation of your work and its integrity.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Art, Integrity, Healing

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• When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Opportunity, Attention, Offers

  Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.159, Penguin

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• Until we stop ourselves or, more often, have been stopped, we hope to put certain of life's events "behind us" and get on with our living. After we stop we see that certain of life's issues will be with us for as long as we live. We will pass through them again and again, each time with a new story, each time with a greater understanding, until they become indistinguishable from our blessings and our wisdom. It's the way life teaches us to live.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Wisdom, Blessing, Issues

  Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.23, Penguin

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• I have no idea about what death is, but because I have been in association with it so intimately, I have a much greater sense of the value of life and of what life can be.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Inspirational, Ideas, Association

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• We are, in a certain way, defined as much by our potential as by its expression. There is a great difference between an acorn and a little bit of wood carved into an acorn shape, a difference not always readily apparent to the naked eye. The difference is there even if the acorn never has the opportunity to plant itself and become an oak. Remembering its potential changes the way in which we think of the acorn and react to it. How we value it. If an acorn were conscious, knowing its potential would change the way that it might think and feel about itself.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Eye, Opportunity, Thinking

  18 Copy quote

• When we pray, we don't change the world, we change ourselves.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Prayer, World, Praying

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• Those who wish to change things may face disappointment, loss, or even ridicule. If you are ahead of your time, people laugh as often as they applaud, and being there first is usually lonely. But our protection cannot come between us and our purpose. Right protection is something within us rather than something between us and the world, more about finding a place of refuge and strength than finding a hiding place.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Spiritual, Lonely, Disappointment

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• An unanswered question is a fine traveling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Eye, Unanswered Questions, Fine

  Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.205, Penguin

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• Freedom is as frightening now as it was thousands of years ago. It will always require a willingness to sacrifice what is most familiar for what is most true. To be free we may need to act from integrity, on trust, sometimes for a very long time. Few of us will reach our promised land in a day. But perhaps the most important part of the story is that God does not delegate this task. Whenever anyone moves toward freedom, God Himself is there.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Freedom, Integrity, Moving

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• How strange to think that great pain may be impermanent. Something in us all seems to want to carve it in granite, as if only this would do full honor to its terrible significance. But even pain is blessed with impermanence... p 259

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Pain, Blessed, Thinking

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• Unexplained pain may sometimes direct our attention to something unacknowledged, something we are afraid to know or feel. Then it holds us to our integrity, claiming the attention we withhold. The thing which calls our attention may be a repressed experience or some unexpressed and important part of who we are. Whatever we have denied may stop us and dam the creative flow of our lives. Avoiding pain, we may linger in the vicinity of our wounds, sometime for many years, gathering the courage to experience them.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Pain, Integrity, Years

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• It is said that the Christian mystic Theresa of Avila found difficulty at first in reconciling the vastness of the life of the spirit with the mundane tasks of her Carmelite convent: the washing of pots, the sweeping of floors, the folding of laundry. At some point of grace, the mundane became for her a sort of prayer, a way she could experience her ever-present connection to the divine pattern which is the source of life. She began then to see the face of God in the folded sheets.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Christian, Prayer, Grace

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• Most of us encounter a great deal more Mystery than we are willing to experience. Sometimes knowing life requires us to suspend disbelief, to recognize that all our hard-won knowledge may only be provisional and the world may be quite different than we believe it to be. This can be very stressful, even frightening. But if we are not willing to wonder, we may have to hang up the phone on life.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Believe, Phones, Knowing

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• It has been said that sometimes we need a story more than food in order to live. p 374

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Order, Needs, Stories

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• It is not that we have a soul, but that we are a soul.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Soul

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• I had thought joy to be rather synonymous with happiness, but it seems now to be far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be a part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Attachment, Expectations, Joy

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• For many years now I have listened to the stories of people with cancer and other life-threatening illnesses as their counselor. From them I have learned how to enjoy the minute particulars of life once again, the grace of a hot cup of coffee, the presence of a friend, the blessing of having a new cake of soap or an hour without pain. Such humble experience is the stuff that many of the very best stories are made of. If we think we have no stories it is because we have not paid enough attention to our lives. Most of us live lives that are far richer and more meaningful than we appreciate.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Meaningful, Pain, Cancer

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• Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Sunset, Night, Darkness

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• Chances are that any helpful two-year-old will break some eggs. We are often not very good at things when we are new. But there may be an important choice to make at such moments. Do we support and protect the innate wish to be of help to others in our children, or do we protect the eggs? Hard as it seems, the greater mother wisdom may lie in a willingness to clean up broken eggs or replace a mitten and a box of crayons.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Mother, Children, Lying

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• Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting, and healing a question of time. And anything good you've ever been given is yours forever.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Life, Wisdom, Healing

  Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.230, Penguin

  8 Copy quote

• From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secret of life. You will have to listen for yourself

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Life, Teacher, Secret

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• The choice people have to make is never between slavery and freedom. We will always have to choose between slavery and the unknown.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Freedom, People, Choices

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• The way towards freedom from a situation often lies in acceptance of the situation.

  Rachel Naomi Remen

  Lying, Acceptance, Way

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