Restoring Life's Missing Pieces: The Spiritual Power of Remembering and Reuniting with People, Places, Things and Self

A powerful and thought-provoking look at "reunions" of all kinds as roads to remembering and re-membering ourselves. "Reunions with people, places, things, and ourselves happen every day around us and within us. Whether to participate or not will always be your choice." —from the Introduction Explore humankind's timeless, universal and deeply spiritual desire to reunite for the sake of healing and wholeness. Whether we wander far from home or reminisce from our favorite armchair, people of all faiths or none whatsoever undertake journeys to remember, restore and re-member the missing pieces of our stories, psyches and souls: Do you occasionally Google a person from your past in hopes of “catching up”? Do you leaf through old address books to try to call someone for the first time in decades? When you visit gravesites or memorials, can you pinpoint what drew you there? Have you felt an urge to revisit your birthplace or travel to your ancestors' homelands? Do you feel compelled to attend an upcoming high school, family or other reunion? If not, why not? Delve deeply into ways that your body, mind and spirit answer the Spirit of Re-union’s calls to reconnect with people, places, things and self.

Table of Contents:
Foreword Introduction 1. Living the Questions Exercise: Looking Backward and Forward to Live the Questions 2. Remembering the Past; Re-membering the Self Exercise: Reuniting with Painful Stories 3. Where Friends Fit In Exercise: Reuniting with a Childhood Friend 4. Matters about Things That Matter Exercise: Letting Go 5. Putting Places in Their Place Exercise: Discerning the Power of Place 6. When Saying No Really Means "Yes!" 7. Relatives: Reuniting and Reconciling Exercise: Journaling with Others and Self 8. At Day's End Acknowledgments Notes Resources for Further Exploration Credits

About the Author :
Caren Goldman, award-winning journalist and spiritual retreat leader, is author of Restoring Life's Missing Pieces: The Spiritual Power of Remembering and Reuniting with People, Places, Things and Self and Healing Words for the Body, Mind and Spirit: 101 Words to Inspire and Affirm, associate editor of Bible Workbench and contributing writer to www.explorefaith.org. Hundreds of her freelance articles on spirituality, health and religion have appeared in national magazines including New Age Journal, Natural Health, Yoga Journal, Intuition and Spirituality and Health. She also works as a conflict resolution consultant to churches, synagogues and not-for-profit organizations. Dr. Nancy Copeland-Payton is a spiritual director and ordained clergywoman in the Presbyterian Church (USA). She is author of The Losses of Our Lives: The Sacred Gifts of Renewal in Everyday Loss. A pastor, hospital chaplain and physician who practiced medicine for twenty years, she now leads retreats at church centers, monasteries and with church groups to help people explore their experiences of loss.

Review :
"A joy to read for sheer style and covers a very important topic inside and out…. You won't regret putting this book on the top of your nightstand pile." —Thomas Moore, author, Care of the Soul and Writing in the Sand “With characteristic creativity, humor and insight … equips [you] to embark on a sacred journey toward wholeness…. An intricately designed meditation on the power of reconciliation.” —Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, author, Holy Hunger “Powerful [and] important…. Goldman is a brilliant storyteller. You can sink into her words and allow them to point the way back to yourself in order to remember and retrieve crucial missing pieces of your life.” —Sandra Ingerman, MA, author, Soul Retrieval and How to Thrive in Changing Times “[Stirs] contemplative instincts through the acts of remembering and reuniting…. Leads us on a journey of reconciling who we are and who is important to us.” —Peter L. Steinke, author, A Door Set Open: Grounding Change in Mission and Hope “Invites you to tend your stories and find new beauty in your past. From there, you can create a glorious world of self-acceptance and creative truth. Very highly recommended.” —Jennifer Louden, best-selling author, The Life Organizer “A rich, profound and wide-ranging meditation on time, memory and cohering parts of the self…. Relish these pages!” —Belleruth Naparstek, author, Invisible Heroes: Survivors of Trauma and How They Heal; creator of the Health Journeys guided imagery series “With deep insights and specific exercises that blend psychology, theology, spirituality and sheer humanity … helps us chart a necessary and encouraging course toward wholeness.” —Nina H. Frost, spiritual director; author, Soul Mapping: An Imaginative Way to Self-Discovery “Offer[s] light for our own personal quests, taming the dark corridors into which any who wish to know themselves must venture.” —Gretta Vosper, author, With or Without God: Why the Way We Live Is More Important Than What We Believe “A work of great courage and insight…. [It] cannot be read once and laid aside. Rather, you must let it take you into your own 'deep waters’ and ‘inner passages’ where those fragments longing to be integrated reside…. [Goldman] is a sturdy spiritual mentor in every sense.” —Rev. Sheila D. Ennis, executive director, The Educational Center: Resources for the Spiritual Journey