Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes about Compassion

All Rachel Naomi Remen Quotes Belief Cancer Children Community Compassion quotes Expectations Focus Giving Grace Healing Heart Inspirational Integrity Joy Letting Go Life Listening Loss Lying Opportunity Pain Prayer Silence Soul Suffering Wisdom

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

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.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Healing, Compassion, People

Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.158, Penguin

Ours is not a culture that respects the sick, the old or the vulnerable. We strive for independence, competence, and mastery. In embracing such 'frontier' values, we may become intolerant of human wholeness, contemptuous of anything in ourselves, and in others, that has needs or is capable of suffering. The denial of a vulnerability is the ultimate barrier to compassion.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Compassion, Sick, Suffering

When you listen generously to people they can hear the truth in themselves, often for the first time.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Compassion, People, Focus

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

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. It is this connection that gives us the power to bless the life in others. Without it, the life in them would not respond to us.

Rachel Naomi Remen

Distance, Heart, Compassion

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

Rachel Naomi Remen

Pain, Greatness, Compassion

Rachel Naomi Remen (2006). “Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal, 10th Anniversary Edition”, p.71, Penguin