BEST BOOK FOR SPRING,PART II

"MISTAKING ILLUSION FOR REALITY IS SAID TO BE 

THE ROOT CAUSE  OF OUR SUFFERING"

"Integrity usually comes to people slowly and takes them unawares, as part of a natural process of maturing or through the need to be there for someone else who is counting on them.  But it can appear full-blown in times of crisis or loss."  

Dr. Rachel Naomi Ramen has learned these truisms through her years as a medical doctor counseling cancer patients.  Her book is their stories, her story and, miraculously, often our story as well.  My copy of Kitchen Table Wisdom is filled with marginalia.  After the first quotation above I wrote a simple "Wow."  A wonderful person we love has an illness that when untreated causes delusion.  This mistaking of an illusion for reality brings great hardship. Everyone suffers, together and separately.   

The second quotation also brought an event about loved ones to mind.  When his grandparents were hospitalized our son intervened and met with the doctors.  He wanted to step up.  He was young.  Then he turned to me where I was waiting down the hall.  "See, I'll be able to take care of you when you need it," he said.  He wanted me to see his maturity.  By being competent in this crisis he was instilling confidence in his readiness for the next one. Ramen says that sometimes it takes a crisis to initiate growth.  

She also writes about anger, not giving it the bad press it usually gets.  I remember my mother being angry just about every time we went to the doctor's. Angry and unreasonable.  If you're a care-taker, that may be your experience too.  My mother  had cancer.  She could have used a counselor like Dr. Ramen. "Anger is just a demand for change," Ramen says, "a passionate wish for things to be different."  It can be a way to assert personal worth in the face of a trauma.  Anger can flare if we are sad, fearful or in despair--difficult emotions we all share.  But the book addresses this as well.  Over time, Dr. Ramen says, she realized that some things that can never be fixed can still be healed.  We all need this promise, don't we?  

The book is full of promises.  "Listening is the oldest and perhaps the most powerful tool of healing."  And it is something we all can provide.  We can listen generously, to ourselves as well to others.  We can create listening sanctuaries.  We can be mindful of our own needs and the needs of others.  

This book dovetails so well with the loving kindness I'm learning about in mindfulness and meditation training. At this stage my life has been both better and worse than I expected.  This may be true for each of us.  Wonders we never expected have helped us bear hardships we could not have foreseen.  For me some of the wonders have come from prayer.  

"WHEN WE PRAY, WE DON'T CHANGE THE WORLD,

WE CHANGE OURSELVES."

"WHEN WE PRAY, 

WE STOP TRYING TO CONTROL LIFE

AND REMEMBER THAT WE BELONG TO LIFE."

Aren't these thoughts helpful?  Dr. Ramen says that with prayer we can relinquish our attachments, our attachment to fear, for example, and even our attachment to hope. The most beautiful prayer I ever heard was, "Dear God, please protect the one I love."  A prayer like that goes a long way toward healing anything doesn't it?  With love, Nina Naomi