READINGS AND AUDIOVISUAL RESOURCES

My Grandfather's Blessings: Stories of Strength, Refuge, and Belonging
Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
New York: Riverhead Books, Available in Paperback

Dr Rachel Naomi Remen, a cancer physician and master storyteller, uses her luminous stories to remind us of the power of our kindness and the joy of being alive. Dr Remen's grandfather, an orthodox rabbi and scholar of the Kaballah, saw life as a web of connection and knew that everyone belonged to him, and that he belonged to everyone. He taught her that blessing one another is what fills our emptiness and heals the loneliness in us all. Life has given us many more blessings than we have allowed ourselves to receive. My Grandfather's Blessings is about how we can receive our blessings and share life's blessings with others. Through our blessings we will discover our own wholeness and the way to restore the hidden wholeness in the world.

Kitchen Table Wisdom: Stories That Heal
Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
New York: Riverhead Books, 1996

In this book, Dr Remen addresses all the spiritual issues, suffering, meaning, love, faith, mystery and miracles with the simplicity and absolute authority of one who has long occupied a front row seat on life as a patient and physician. "Everybody is a story," writes Dr Remen in her introduction. "When I was a child, people sat around the 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 wisdom gets passed along. Despite the awesome powers of technology many of us still do not live very well. We may need to listen to one another's stories again."

Wounded Healers
Edited by Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
Mill Valley, Wounded Healer Press, 1994

This collection of poetry written by people who have had cancer, and by their friends, families and health professionals, offers professionals and the public an-other perspective on the meaning of life-threatening illness.

Healing The Heart And Soul Of The Health Professional
Rachel Remen
Contact ISHI website for this and other tapes at http://www.commonweal.org/ishi/resources/store.html

A set of 3 tapes explains that the process by which we are trained to professional expertise often wounds our hearts, our souls and diminishes our wholeness. Yet only whole people can serve the wholeness in others. Join Dr Rachel Naomi Remen in exploring your own experience of loving service and reclaiming your sense of the Mystery and holiness of your work. Through meditations and other exercises, this talk shows a way to go beyond professional expertise and recommit to the service dimension of your work, whatever that work may be.

MidLife and The Great Unknown (audiotape)
David Whye
Sounds True 

Yorkshire born poet and bestselling author of The Heart Aroused and Crossing the Unknown Sea — brought the poetic imagination to the most unlikely place: the strategic, corporate world. Now, with Midlife and the Great Unknown, Whyte shows listeners how the language of poetry can be our guide through the unexplored terrain of our middle years of our lives. With over 75 million people between the ages of 35 and 55 living in the United States today, David Whyte inspires a wide new audience, offering ways to bring courage and clarity to face what he calls the "fierce edges" of our lives. This program is distilled from his popular six-session set Clear Mind, Wild Heart

Let Your Life Speak
Parker Palmer
Jossey-Bass; 1st edition September 10, 1999)

A gifted academic who formerly combined a college teaching career with community organizing, Palmer took a year's sabbatical to live at the "intentional" Quaker community of Pendle Hill in Pennsylvania. Instead of leaving at year's end, he became the community's dean of studies and remained there for 10 years. Palmer (The Courage to Teach) shares the lessons of his vocational and spiritual journey, discussing his own burnout and intense depression with exceptional candor and clarity. In essays that previously appeared in spiritual or educational journals and have been reworked to fit into this slim volume, he suggests that individuals are most authentic when they follow their natural talents and limitations, as his own story demonstrates. Since hearing one's "calling" requires introspection and self-knowledge (as suggested by the eponymous Quaker expression), Palmer encourages inner work such as journal-writing, meditation and prayer. Recognizing that his philosophy is at odds with popular, essentially American attitudes about self-actualization and following one's dreams, Palmer calls vocation "a gift, not a goal."

Facing Death and Finding Hope
Christine Longaker
Main Stream Books 1988

Christine Longaker's experience with death and care of the dying began in 1976 when her husband was diagnosed with acute leukemia at the age of twenty-four. Since his death, she has devoted her life to ease the suffering of those facing death. In Facing Death and Finding Hope, she clearly and compassionately identifies the typical fears and struggles experienced by the dying and their families. The core of this book is presented in "Four Tasks of Living and Dying," using the Tibetan Buddhist perspective on death to provide a new framework of meaning. A book of great depth and grace, it is destined to become a classic in the literature on death and dying.

The Healer's Calling
Daniel Sulmasy
Paulist Press  1997

Integrates faith and healthcare, offering professionals insight on how to find spiritual meaning in clinical practice and take seriously their Christian vocation to transform the world through caring for patients in light of the Gospel.

Spirituality and Health Magazine

This bimonthly magazine provides an excellent of recent trends and research on matters relating to health, healing and spirituality.

WORKSHOPS

The Institute for the Study of Health and Human Illness - http://www.commonweal.org/ishi/programs/index.html

Founded and run by Rache Remen, ISHI sponsors programs intended to support the wellness of physicians. In addition, ISHI has developed The Healer's Art program which is currently being taught in many medivcal schools around the United States.