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Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition

Book by Rachel Naomi Remen · 35 quotes · Way, Listening, Attention

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Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition Quotes

“I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention And especially if it's given from the heart. When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they're saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it. Most of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWayNeedsGivingHeartPersonsImportantEnoughCareValuesGivenUnderstandingPowerfulAttentionTalkingCommunicationImportant ThingsCaringSuspectsOur LoveJust Listen
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“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 and unprecedented. We are in relationship with our expectations and not with life itself.”

GivingExpectationsLabelsMaskCompellingFamiliarityUnprecedentedSuccess FailureLabeling
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words.”

WayLoveInspirationalGivingWellsPersonsImportantPowerfulAttentionSilenceAwarenessListeningImportant ThingsHealSilence IsJust ListenListening To OthersKitchen Table
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“Everybody is a story. When I was a child, people sat around kitchen tables and told their stories. We don't do that so much anymore. Sitting around the table telling stories is not just a way of passing time. It is the way the wisdom gets passed along. The stuff that helps us to live a life worth remembering.”

PeopleWayChildrenHelpingStoriesRememberStuffCommunitySittingTablesPassingPassingsSatKitchenTelling StoriesSitting AroundKitchen Table
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“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 of the quest; in denying our suffering we may never know our strength or our greatness”

PeopleKnowsMayPainCertainSufferingValuesLeftCompassionRiskGreatnessComfortCostPaperSeekingUglyDenyIntimacyRejectsQuestsCheatAvoidingRejectingHidden Things
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing. It is often through the quality of our listening and not the wisdom of our words that we are able to effect the most profound changes in the people around us. When we listen, we offer with our attention an opportunity for wholeness. Our listening creates sanctuary for the homeless parts within the other person. That which has been denied, unloved, devalued by themselves and others. That which is hidden.”

PeoplePersonsHas BeensAbleOpportunityPowerfulHealingAttentionQualityEffectsListeningOffersToolsProfoundMost PowerfulDeniedWholenessHomelessSanctuaryOur WordsUnloved
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“When we haven't the time to listen to each other's stories we seek out experts to tell us how to live. The less time we spend together at the kitchen table, the more how-to books appear in the stores and on our bookshelves. But reading such books is a very different thing than listening to someone' s lived experience. Because we have stopped listening to each other we may even have forgotten how to listen, stopped learning how to recognize meaning and fill ourselves from the ordinary events of our lives. We have become solitary; readers and watchers rather than sharers and participants.”

MayBookDifferentStoriesTogetherReadingOur LivesEventsHavensListeningReaderOrdinaryTablesForgottenStoresExpertsKitchenDifferent ThingsSolitaryParticipantsWatchersBookshelvesKitchen Table
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“I have even learned to respond to someone crying by just listening. In the old days I used to reach for the tissues, until I realized that passing a person a tissue may be just another way to shut them down, to take them out of their experience of sadness and grief. Now I just listen. When they have cried all they need to cry, they find me there with them.”

WayNeedsMayPersonsUsedGriefSadnessCryListeningI RealizedPassingPassingsCriedAnother WayFind MeOld DaysJust ListenTissues
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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“In our instinctive attachments, our fear of change, and our wish for certainty and permanence, we may undercut the impermanence which is our greatest strength, our most fundamental identity. Without impermanence, there is no process. The nature of life is change. All hope is based on process.”

MayLife IsWishProcessChangeIdentityFundamentalsCertaintyAttachmentImpermanencePermanenceFear Of ChangeUndercut
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“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.”

IfsKnowsWayDoeGodEarthAttentionInfinitePay AttentionGravityNever ChangeGod's Presence
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“A human life has seasons much as the earth has seasons, each time with its own particular beauty and power. And gift. By focusing on springtime and summer, we have turned the natural process of life into a process of loss rather than a process of celebration and appreciation. Life is neither linear nor stagnant. It is movement from mystery to mystery. Just as a year includes autumn and winter, life includes death, not as an opposite but as an integral part of the way life is made.”

WayYearsHumansMadeEarthLife IsDeathProcessNaturalLossMysteryMovementParticularSummerOppositesSeasonsWinterAppreciationHuman LifeAutumnCelebrationSpringtimeLinearStagnantProcess Of LifeAutumn And Winter
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“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 wounded people can understand what is needed, for the healing of suffering is compassion, not expertise.”

PeopleImportantAbleRememberSufferingHealingCompassionAliveBecomingNeededWoundsHealCuresExpertsWoundedWholenessHealedExpertise
Book:Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition
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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.”

WayLongHas BeensStoriesWisdomCertainUnderstandingBehindsTeachIssuesGreaterEventsBlessingAgain And AgainLife Teaches
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