How radically different our world would be if more people used the power they have to bless others rather than engage in the vitriol that has come to define so much of our social discourse….May you cultivate the healing, transformative practice of offering blessing.          Rev. Diane Berke, Founder & Spiritual Director, One Spirit Learning Alliance

If up to now you have never heard of Rachel Naomi Remen, you have thus far missed knowing one of today’s saints.  Her manner is velvet soft, and her thoughts and story-telling bring healing as you listen.

I heard her in person at a conference many years ago, have never forgotten her, and her thinking has helped to gentle my own being:  This thought in particular- “When people are blessed they discover that their lives matter, that there is something in them worthy of blessing.”

Rachel Naomi Remen, M.D. is today the Clinical Professor of Family and Community Medicine at UCSF School of Medicine.  She is also the Founder and Director of the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal, where she has worked for years with cancer patients, and was featured in Bill Moyer’s 1993 PBS series, Healing and the Mind.

As an early pioneer of Wholistic and Integrative Medicine, she is one of the best known in the field. She has helped many thousands of physicians to practice medicine from the heart and thousands of patients to remember their power to heal, through her roles as an educator, teacher and therapist.

The Healer’s Art, her integrative curriculum for medical students, is being taught in 90 of America’s medical schools and medical schools in 7 countries abroad.

Rachel is a masterful storyteller and an acute observer of life.  Her two books,  Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings, have sold more than a million copies and are translated into 23 languages.

Dr. Remen has had Crohn’s disease for more than 60 years and her work is a unique blend of the wisdom, strength and viewpoints of both doctor and patient.

When Rachel was asked who in life mentored her, she responded:

“I had three:

Saint Luke, who demonstrated to me that despite its scientific power, medicine is in its essence a spiritual path characterized by compassion, harmlessness and service.

Maimonedes, who defined medicine for me as a special kind of love, a befriending of the life in others. “Inspire me with love for all of Thy creatures, May I see in all who suffer only the fellow human being.”

Rabbi Meyer Ziskind, my grandfather, who showed me what it means to live so simply and honestly that you become a light in the world.” (from Changing the Face of Medicine)

Rachel’s compassion is so evident.  She said “A woman once told me that she did not feel the need to reach out to those around her because she prayed every day. Surely, this was enough.

But a prayer is about our relationship to God; a blessing is about our relationship to the spark of God in one another. God may not need our attention as badly as the person next to us on the bus or behind us in line in the supermarket. Everyone in the world matters, and so do their blessings. When we bless others, we offer them refuge from an indifferent world.”

Rachel asserts that “A blessing is not something that one person gives another. A blessing is a moment of meeting, a certain kind of relationship in which both people involved remember and acknowledge their true nature and worth, and strengthen what is whole in one another.”

The following video, given by Rachel at a Bioneers’ Conference, is called Becoming a Blessing: Living As If Your Life Makes a Difference.

Perhaps Dr. Remen is one of “the 36.”  See what you think

 “Many people do not know that they can strengthen or diminish the life around them. The way we live day to day simply may not reflect back to us our power to influence life or the web of relationships that connects us. Life responds to us anyway. We all have the power to affect others. We may affect those we know and those we do not even know at all. . . . Without our knowing, we may influence the lives of others in very simple ways.”   Rachel Naomi Remen

The Healing Song- Debbie Friedman