Book Excerpts:

SpiritSite.com is pleased to offer excerpts from the following books.  You may click on a book's cover to begin, or on the links below:

Selections from Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Selections from My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging:

Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. is one of the most respected pioneers of the mind-body health movement. As medical director of Commonweal, her work with people with cancer touched millions in the Bill Moyers PBS special "Healing and the Mind." She runs one of the first training programs for physicians in relationship-centered care and has cared for thousands of people with cancer and their physicians in her private practice of psycho-oncology over the past twenty years.  She is currently a clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.  

Kitchen Table Wisdom

Dr. Rachel Remen has a unique perspective on healing rooted in her background as a physician, a professor of medicine, a therapist, and a long-term survivor of chronic illness. A deeply moving and down-to-earth collection of true stories, Kitchen Table Wisdom (review or buy) reminds us that the things we cannot measure may be the things that ultimately sustain and enrich our lives. Kitchen Table Wisdom addresses spiritual issues--suffering, meaning, love, faith, courage, and miracles--in the language of our own life experience.

My Grandfather's Blessings

It was Rachel Remen's grandfather, a kabalistic rabbi, who helped her see that service is what heals the isolation and loneliness in us all. As Dr. Remen says, "Every life serves a purpose which is both simple and profound. We are here to grow in wisdom and to learn to love better. What this says is that there are many life paths but all life has a spiritual agenda. And all people are on a spiritual path." The stories in My Grandfather's Blessings (review or buy) give us a profound sense of strength that is achieved by knowing that we belong to each other, and to life itself.