Sitting in the Circle: Sacred Observations from the Heart and other Internal Organs

These 37 essays are rooted in the inspiration I experience in working with my patients and with participants at the Opening the Heart Workshop. Though they are all very different in tone and content, they are all about love in the small places, off center stage. They may have been about lifting a hosta leaf and findinding a spider's web in diamonds of morning dew, or about watching new grass grow, holding a weeping patient in my office, watching a man outside my office drag his leg behind as he carries groceries home. They are all, I think, small love stories.

Jon Berenson, Ph.D. is a Clinical Psychologist in solo private practice in Providence, Rhode Island. He was the former Chief of Mental Health Services at Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare in Plainville, Massachusetts and has been a senior leader of the Opening the Heart Workshop for over 30 years. He loves tennis, weeding, playing Ba Ba Boots with his new granddaughter, digging clams with his toes at low tide on the Westport River, and playing backgammon with his rescue dog, Fenway. He lives with his amazing wife of 43 years in Providence, Rhode Island.