Kitchen Table Wisdom

Two of my favorite books are Kithcen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather's Blessing, both by Rachel Remen. Here's a note written a couple of years ago to at least partially explain why:

We've been back from California for over a week. A great trip. One that I recorded assiduously with my little digital camera. When I wasn't gawking at scenery or photographing it, I was reading a book called Kitchen Table Wisdom by Rachel Naomi Remen. The book is really a collection of stories that involve healing or different ways of looking at issues that affect us all. Believe it or not, I had to read it for work. Or at least skim it to find an excerpt that a friend of Ann Bancroft's sent to her before Ann and Liv went to Antarctica. Ann quotes the excerpt in the book she and Liv have written about their expedition. We have to get permission to use the quote from the publisher. So the quote was my needle in a 330 page haystack. It's a wonderful haystack.

Ms. Remen is a doctor who counsels seriously ill patients - mostly those with cancer. It's fair to say that, like most cancer survivors, I am particularly receptive to stories of the grace and pain and joy demonstrated by others who have faced serious illnesses. But the book is much more about wisdom than it is about "fighting" disease. I thought I might share a quote that was much on my mind:

"I accept that I may never know where the truth lies in such matters. The most important questions don't seem to have ready answers. But the questions themselves have a healing power when they are shared. An answer is an invitation to stop thinking about something, to stop wondering. Life has no such stopping places, life is a process whose every event is connected to the moment that just went by. An unanswered question is a fine travelling companion. It sharpens your eye for the road."

So why not write a note about a trip long after it is (at least on the face of it) over? No reason, I suppose. Over the years I've used these little emails to help me to sort out my impressions of whatever trip we are on. This time I used the camera for essentially the same purpose. Imagine my pleasure when I read this passage in Kitchen Table Wisdom:

"In time the camera caused me to see my ordinary surroundings far more clearly, to become aware of the beauty around me in some very unlikely places. It had given me new eyes. A good question is like that Zeiss."

I think the camera (a Canon, not a Zeiss) helped me to look differently at the jellyfish we saw at the Monterey Aquarium.



The camera was a good traveling companion. But not as good as Peter, Madeline and Kate.