MY GRANDFATHER'S BLESSINGS

Readers may recall my enthusiastic review of Rachel's last book, Kitchen Table Wisdom, to which this is a worthy and inspiring sequel. This new book has understandably reached the same best-seller status and reflects a whole genre of publishing in which we are uplifted by stories that remind us of our common humanity, the life of the heart, as an antidote to the mechanistic and impersonal aspects of modern life. It also puts stories right back on centre stage.

Rachel is a cancer physician who has always striven to unite the personal and the professional, the heart and the mind, in a profession that has tended to prioritise its scientific over its artistic side. She drew early inspiration from her grandfather, an Orthodox rabbi and Kabbalah scholar who was the wise one of her childhood, seeing life as a web of connection and indeed meaning. Subtitled 'stories of strength, refuge and belonging' and gnomically dedicated to 'everyone who has been given more blessings than they have received, the book is divided into six sections with about twenty stories in each: Receiving your Blessings, Becoming a Blessing, Finding Strength and Taking Refuge, The Web of Blessings, Befriending Life, and Restoring the World.

The Introduction sets the scene by saying that we can all bless life, and that 'those who bless and serve life find a place of belonging and strength, a refuge from living in ways that are meaningless and empty and lonely. And what do we serve? 'The wholeness in each other and the wholeness in life. The part in you that I serve is the same part that is strengthened in me when I serve'. This means love and compassion in action, but 'recovering a greater compassion may require us to confront the core values of our culture. We are a culture that values mastery and control, that cultivates self-sufficiency, competence, independence. But in the shadow of these values lies a profound rejection of our human wholeness'. To be mortal is to be vulnerable, and this involves suffering. So the solution to our destructiveness is not more technical knowledge but rather 'to find a deep connection to the life around us, to substitute the capacity to befriend life for our relentless pursuit of greater and greater expertise'. And this is what the book is about.

There are too many poignant moments described to record here: among them, though, an exercise where physicians rank life-values in two lists, personal and professional. How can one achieve wholeness and integrity if these are in conflict? Rachel's mother working out that she had consumed part of more than 8,500 chickens in her lifetime. In reviewing her life to see if she had been worth that sacrifice she concluded that she had never deliberately caused pain or harm to anyone and muses finally: 'I believe I have been worthy of my chickens, Rachel'. Students confronting the tragedy of a young mother in a class on genetic disease. Their natural human response is swallowed up in technical discussion, but 'science is not a place of refuge. It cannot protect us from suffering. Hiding from suffering only makes us more afraid'. And, more importantly, 'we avoid suffering only at the great cost of distancing ourselves from life'. Then an extraordinary day at a hospice where Rachel led a workshop for the staff, inviting them to bring a significant object that represented the meaning of their work at the hospice. The results were remarkable as everyone shared their humanity and each had a special role to play: a crystal paperweight in the shape f a heart representing listening with the heart, and a rock from the director with the assurance that it can be counted on and built on.

All the stories are about meeting, presence and service. Listening and receiving as well as acting and giving. They are parables for our time, reminding us that the heart is as central as the mind, but that there is always a residual mystery that keeps us asking questions and searching. As many reviewers have observed, the book itself is a blessing that can inspire us to 'go and do (or be) likewise.