BEST BOOK FOR SPRING --"Anything good you've ever been given is yours forever."

Dr. Rachel Naomi Ramen ends her book with this sentence.  I wrote about her book My Grandfather's Blessings in the Post "Best Book for the Holidays about Blessings (12/8/18).  Now I have read her earlier book, Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories that Heal.  It is a perfect Spring read because Spring is a time to open our hearts and embrace life, to perennially renew ourselves with the trees and the grass and the flowers, to heal with the warm sun and a soft breeze. 

This book has so much to offer.  Some gems are just snippets.  In her Preface she says that writers are people born to write, while authors are people who do something else and then write about it.  Where do diarists fall, or those of us who journal or blog I wonder? Probably some in one category and some in the other.  Or a bit of cross-over.  But an interesting distinction.  Dr. Ramen says, "Because I am not a writer, when I sat down to write, all I had were my memories."  Isn't that encouraging?  

We all have memories that are stories to be savored and celebrated, especially if we pause in our minds to interpret them, to remember them fully.  And then perhaps tell them or write them down.  Even a painful memory may include something to celebrate:  our bravery, our perseverance, our survival, the way we behaved under pressure, those who helped us, those who love us through thick and thin, how we have grown to help others. . . .

Some issues stay with us our whole life.  Living with chronic illness is one.  Losing someone at a young age is another.  Our children's suffering.  An insecure childhood.  Our own limitations.  Each time we pass through these issues we understand more.  "Most of us live lives that are far richer and more meaningful than we appreciate," Ramen says. 

Because she is a physician, much of the book is about healing.  Not being cured . . . being healed.  And about grieving and loss.  Protecting ourselves from loss by avoiding grief is not the route to healing, she thinks. Avoiding grief distances ourselves from life.  Professionally it leads to burnout.  Grieving, she believes, is a way of self-care even in a work setting.  I've found this in my law practice.  As a lawyer I've met people catastrophically injured by preventable medical errors.  I remember the baby born after prolonged oxygen deprivation; the nurse failed to notice the alarming signs on the fetal heart monitor strip.  The doctor said she wished the nurse had called her earlier.  I cannot forget being racked with sobs over that baby's future.  "We burn out not because we don't care but because we don't grieve," Dr. Ramen says. Grieving is healing.

She also explains that for our wholeness, approval is just as destructive as criticism.  I did not understand that before.  But it rings true.  

"To seek approval is to have no resting place. . .

Like all judgment, approval encourages a constant striving. 

This is as true of the approval we give ourselves as it is of the approval we offer others.

Approval can't be trusted.

It can be withdrawn at any time. . . .

Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it." 

Ramen also explains that our wholeness can be whittled down by family, cultural beliefs (boys don't cry; neither do professionals; girls don't speak their minds), or spiritual beliefs. It made me question whether I have to judge myself against a yardstick of Christian acceptability that always finds me short.  I expect God never intended that.  Such a blessing to outlive our self-judgments, to let go of a standard of excellence.  All love is unconditional Ramen states.  Anything else is just approval.  What a message for us parents, spouses, lovers, friends. . . . 

According to Talmudic teaching, we do not see things as they are, but as we are.  The author calls this a trap.  "Life usually offers us far more than our biases and preferences will allow," she says.  Isn't that wise?  This book is full of wisdom.  Inner peace as a spiritual quality rather than a mental quality.  This fits with the way I practice mindfulness and meditation.  It fits with our weekly liturgy that includes the prayer for the "peace that passes all understanding." 

I am only touching the surface of the life-affirming nature of this book.  This post needs a Part II.  Buy or borrow the book if you wish.  Or just ponder what is written here.  Like My Grandfather's Blessings this book is a slow read.  So much to absorb.  To enjoy this Spring.      Nina Naomi