Those who are willing to stand out and take the risk of following their gifts place a mirror to our unawakened gifts. To know they are there, day in day out, at the frontiers of their own limitations and vision, probing further into new possibility, enduring at lonely thresholds in the hope of discovery, to know they are willing to risk everything is both disturbing and comforting.
In a small town near us there was a lovely writer and musician who lived a rather bohemian life; he was given sometimes to the drink but he had a beautiful, awakened mind. He was a kind of 'undercover mystic' and many people, especially young people, came to talk to him when they felt their minds troubling them... I once asked him how he had managed to live alone on that edge. He said: 'I was a very young man when I first felt the burn of that old mystical flame within me. I realized immediately what an adventure and danger it would be and that there was no going back. On that day I made a bargain with myself, the bargain was; no matter what came I would always remain best friends with myself. I am old now but I never broke that bargain.'
~ John O'Donohue
from The Invisible Embrace, Beauty
Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness?
~ George Herbert
1 comments:
Oh so lovely... the "hidden mystic" :)
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