The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the thing… - Rachel Naomi Remen

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The marks life leaves on everything it touches transform perfection into wholeness. Older, wiser cultures choose to claim this wholeness in the things that they create. In Japan, Zen gardeners purposefully leave a fat dandelion in the midst of the exquisite, ritually precise patterns of the meditation garden. In Iran, even the most skilled of rug weavers includes an intentional error, the “Persian Flaw,” in the magnificence of a Tabriz or Qashqai carpet…and Native Americans wove a broken bead, the “spirit bead,” into every beaded masterpiece. Nothing that has a soul is perfect. When life weaves a spirit bead into your very fabric, you may stumble upon a wholeness greater than you had dreamed possible before.

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About Rachel Naomi Remen

Rachel Naomi Remen (born February 8, 1938, New York, New York) is a pediatrician who gained fame as an author and teacher of alternative medicine in the form of integrative medicine. Together with Michael Lerner, she is a founder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, a cornerstone program at Commonweal. She is the founder of the Institute for the Study of Health & Illness. She has been featured on the PBS television series, Thinking Allowed. Remen's most well-known books include Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessing, both of which made The New York Times Best Seller list. Kitchen Table Wisdom has been translated into 21 languages, and has sold over 700,000 copies worldwide. She is also the founder of a medical student curriculum called "The Healer's Art" used in medical schools throughout the United States.

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Additional quotes by Rachel Naomi Remen

From a good teacher you may learn the secret of listening. You will never learn the secret of life. You will have to listen for yourself

If you carry someone else's fears and live by someone else's values, you may find that you have lived their lives.

For more than twenty years I have offered a very simple yet powerful ritual to people before their radiation, chemotherapy, or surgery. I suggest they meet together with some of their closest friends and family the day before their procedure. Before this meeting, I suggest they find an ordinary stone, a piece of the earth, big enough to fit in the palm of their hand, and bring it to the meeting with them. The ritual begins by having everyone sit in a circle. In any order they wish to speak, each person tells the story of a time when they too faced a crisis. People may talk about the death of important persons, the loss of jobs or of relationships, or even about their own illnesses. The person who is speaking holds the stone the patient has brought. When they finish telling their story of survival, they take a moment to reflect on the personal quality that they feel helped them come through that difficult time. People will say things such as, 'What brought me through was determination,' 'What brought me through was faith,' 'What brought me through was humor.' When they have named the quality of their strength, they speak directly to the person preparing for surgery or treatment, saying, 'I put determination into this stone for you,' or, 'I put faith into this stone for you.' After everyone has spoken the stone is given back to the patient, who takes it with them to the hospital, to keep nearby and hold in their hand when things get hard. In an environment which is highly technical and sterile, it connects them to the earth and to each other.

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