Perhaps we can only truly serve those we are willing to touch, not only with our hands but with our hearts and even our souls. Professionalism has embedded in service a sense of difference, a certain distance. But on the deepest level, service is an experience of belonging, an experience of connection to others and to the word around us.… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
When you listen generously to people they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time. — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
Everyone alive has suffered. It is the wisdom gained from our wounds and from our own experiences of suffering that makes us able to heal. Becoming expert has turned out to be less important than remembering and trusting the wholeness in myself and everyone else. Expertise cures, but wounded people can best be healed by other wounded people. Only other… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
Most people have come to prefer certain of lifes experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain and even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all costs, we may be left without intimacy or compassion; in rejecting change and risk we often cheat ourselves… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
“Those who don't love themselves as they are rarely love life as it is either. Most people have come to prefer certain of life's experiences and deny and reject others, unaware of the value of the hidden things that may come wrapped in plain or even ugly paper. In avoiding all pain and seeking comfort at all cost, we may… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do. — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
Our listening creates a sanctuary for the homeless parts within another person. — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
Ours is not a culture that respects the sick, the old or the vulnerable. We strive for independence, competence, and mastery. In… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
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… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
Big messages come in small packages. All it may take to restore someone's trust in life may be returning a lost earring or a… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
Many people do not know that they can strengthen or diminish the life around them. The way we live day to day simply may not reflect back to us our power to influence life or the web of relationships that connects us. Life responds to us anyway. We all have the power to affect others. We may affect those we… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
A label is a mask life wears. We put labels on life all the time. 'Right,' 'wrong,' 'success,' 'failure,' . . . Labeling sets up an expectation of life that is often so compelling we can no longer see things as they really are. This expectation often gives us a false sense of familiarity toward something that is really new… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you - all of the expectations, all… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
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… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share
Goose bumps happen when your soul is close to you, breathing lightly on the back of your neck, and wakes you up. — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
We have become terribly vulnerable, not because we suffer but because we have separated ourselves from each other. A patient once told me that… — Rachel Naomi Remen Copy Share Image
