Mystery

"Mystery is a way of seeing.  A moment when the mask of habit that makes things familiar falls away and we can catch a glimpse of life itself.  Mystery does not require us to do anything.  Mystery may simply require us to see familiar things in new ways and remember the wonder.  People who wonder rarely burn out.   Maybe we all need to know a little less and wonder a little more."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Grief

"When we have freedom to grieve, loss often turns naturally into compassion."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Ego

"Periodically coming to grips with our faithlessness, and the strength of our ego, is part of the journey."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Meaning

"Most of us lead far more meaningful lives than we know.  Often finding meaning is not so much about doing things differently; it is about seeing familiar things in a new way.   When we find new eyes, the unsuspected blessing in work we have done for many years may take us completely by surprise.   We can see life in many ways, with the eye, with the mind, with the intuition.   But perhaps it is only by those who speak the language of meaning, who have remembered how to see with the heart, that life is ever deeply known or served."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Wisdom

"Wisdom comes most easily to those who have the courage to embrace life without judgment and are willing to not know, sometimes for a very long time.   It requires us to be more fully and simply alive than we have been taught to be.  It may require us to suffer.   But ultimately we will be more that we were when we began."

Life

"Life offers it's wisdom generously.   Everything teaches.  Not everyone learns.   Life asks of us the same things we have been asked in every class.  "Stay awake.  Pay attention."   But paying attention is no simple matter.  It requires us not to be distracted by expectation, past experiences, labels and masks.   It asks that we not jump to early conclusions and that we remain open to surprise." 

A Blessing

"We may not recognize a blessing when it is given, or we may have ideas about life that keep us from experiencing what we already have.   Sometimes we become frozen in the past or unaware of the potential of the present.   We may even come to feel entitled to what has been given by grace.  Or we become so caught up in what is missing in the world that we allow our hearts to break.   There are many ways to feel empty in the midst of our blessings."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Service

"We do not serve the weak or the broken.   What we serve is the wholeness in each other and the wholeness in life.   The part in you that I sense is the same part that is strengthened in me when I serve.   Unlike helping and fixing and rescuing, service is mutual."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Remembering Wholeness

"By making a place for wholeness within our relationships, we offer others the opportunity to be whole without shame and become a place of refuge from everything in them and around them that is not genuine.   We enable people to remember who they are."   Rachel Naomi Remen

A Blessing

"A blessing is a moment of meeting, a certain kind of relationship in which both people involved remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth, and strengthen what is whole in one another."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Recognition

"We are often fooled by someone's appearance, their age or illness or anger, or meanness or just too busy to recognize that there is in everyone a place of goodness and integrity, no matter how deeply buried.   We are too hurried or distracted to stop and bear witness to it.   When we recognize the spark of God in others, we blow on it, no matter how deeply it has been buried or for how long.   When we bless someone, we touch the unborn goodness in them and wish it well."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Prayer and Blessing

"Prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Patience

"Sometimes if you stay the course long enough, divergent paths reveal themselves to have the same destination."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Wisdom and Healing

"Perhaps wisdom is simply a matter of waiting, and healing a question of time.   Anything good you've been given is yours forever."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Reality

"Anything that is real has no beginning and no end."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Meaning

"The ability to seek and find meaning in life is based more than anything on the capacity to hold paradox and maintain unblushing cognitive dissonance.   The objective world and the subjective world lie one atop the other.   So truth may be lass a matter of either/or than both/and."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Story

"At the heart of every story is Mystery.   The reasons we attribute to events may be far different from their true cause.   Often our first interpretation of events is quite different from our last reading of them."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Ritual

"Life can become habit, something done without thinking.  Living life in this way does not awaken us.  Yet any of our daily habits can awaken us.  All of life can become ritual.  When it does, our experience of life changes radically and the ordinary becomes consecrated.   Ritual doesn't make mystery happen.  It helps us see and experience something which is already real.   It does not create the sacred, it only describes what is there and has always been there, deeply hidden in the obvious."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Prayer

"Prayer is a movement from Mastery to Mystery."  Rachel Naomi Remen

Prayer

"At it's deepest, prayer is a statement about causality.   Turning toward prayer is a release from the arrogance and vulnerability of an isolated and individual causality.   When we pray; we stop trying to control life and remember that we belong to life.   It is an opportunity to experience humility and recognize grace."  Rachel Naomi Remen