the wounded gift

One of the great powers of love is balance;
 it helps us move toward transfiguration.  

When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them. 
They also come to each other not with empty hands,
 but with hands full of gifts for each other. 
Often these are wounded gifts; 

this awakens the dimension of healing within love. 
When you really love someone,
you shine the light of your soul on the beloved.  

We know from nature that sunlight brings everything to growth. 
 It you look at flowers early on a spring morning,
they are all closed.  

When the light of the sun catches them,
they trustingly open out and give themselves to the new light.

~ John O'Donohue

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where you are at home

The world of the past has gone...
 Behold I am making all of creation new.

(Book of Revelations)

The new day deepens what has already happened and unfolds what is surprising,
 unpredictable, and creative... Presence is the way a person's individuality
 comes toward you.  Presence is the soul texture of the person... 
If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. 
 Your longing is safe there.  Belonging is related to longing. 
 If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth: 
 Be - Your - Longing.  Longing is a precious instinct in the soul. 
Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity.
 You should belong first in your own interiority.  If you belong there, 
and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, 
unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable
 when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized, or taken away. 
 You will still be able to stand on your own ground, the ground of your soul, 
where you are not a tenant, 
where you are at home.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

the ancient radiance of others

In your clay body, things are coming to expression and to light
 that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape
 in any other individual.  To paraphrase Heidegger, who said,
 "Man is a shepherd of being,"  we could say,  "Man is a shepherd of clay." 
 You represent an unknown world that begs you to bring it to voice.  

Often the joy you feel does not belong to your individual biography 
but to the clay out of which you are formed.  At other times, 
you will find sorrow moving through you, like a dark mist over a landscape.
  This sorrow is dark enough to paralyze you.  It is a mistake to interfere 
with this movement of feeling.  It is more appropriate to recognize
 that this emotion belongs more to your clay than to your mind.  
It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass;  it is on its way elsewhere.  
We so easily forget that our clay has a memory that preceded our minds, 
a life of its own before it took its present form.   

Regardless of how modern we seem, we still remain ancient, 
sister and brothers of the one clay.  In each of us a different part of the mystery
 becomes luminous.  To truly be and become yourself, 
you need the ancient radiance of others.

~ John O'Donohue

from Anam Cara

blessing in the chaos

To all that is chaotic

in you,

let there come silence.

Let there be

a calming

of the clamoring,

a stilling

of the voices that

have laid their claim

on you,

that have made their

home in you,

that go with you

even to the

holy places

but will not

let you rest,

will not let you

hear your life

with wholeness

or feel the grace

that fashioned you.

Let what distracts you

cease.

Let what divides you

cease.

Let there come an end

to what diminishes

and demeans,

and let depart

all that keeps you

in its cage.

Let there be

an opening

into the quiet

that lies beneath

the chaos,

where you find

the peace

you did not think

possible

and see what shimmers

within the storm.

The human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness,
 a place where everything comes together, 
where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform
 into vision, where damage will be made whole, 
where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise,
 where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. 
To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now. 

~ Jan Richardson

art by klimt

walls

When they were building the walls,

How could I not have noticed?

But I never heard the builders,

Not a sound,

Imperceptibly they closed me off

From the outside world.

~ Constantine P. Cavafy

Cavafy articulates something that happens to all of us.  
Your complicity with other people’s images and expectations of you
 allows them to box you in completely.  It takes a long time to recognize
 how some key people on your life’s journey exercise so much control
 over your mind, behaviour, and actions.  Through the image they project
 onto you or through the expectations they have of you, they claim you. 

 Most of this is subtle and works in the domain of the implicit and unstated
 subtext; it is, of course, all the more powerful for not being direct and obvious.
  When you become conscious of these powerful builders and their work
 of housing you in, something within you refuses to comply; 
you begin to send back the building materials.
  
There is no planning permission here, thanks for the kindness! 
 Such projection and expectation is based on their fear and the need to control. 
 Expectation is resentment waiting to happen. 
 In contrast, friendship liberates you.

~ John O’Donohue
 from Eternal Echoes

rediscover yourself

.

.

The wildness of the invisible world is nameless.  It has no name. 
 A first step towards reawakening respect for your inner life may be to become aware 
of the private collage of dead names you have for your inner life.  

Often, the experiences of wilderness can return us to the nameless wildness within.  
Sometime, go away to a wild place on your own. 

 Leave your name 
and the grid of intentions and projects and images which mark you out as citizen Z.  
Leave it all, and let yourself just slip back into the rhythms of your intimate wildness. 
 You will be surprised at the lost terrains, wells, and mountains that you will rediscover,
 territories which have been buried under well-meant but dead names. 

 To go beyond confinement is to rediscover yourself.

.

John O’Donohue
from ‘Eternal Echoes’

.

beyond confinement

A name should never trap a thing.  In the Jewish tradition, for instance, if you knew the name of a thing, you had a inkling of its secret and mystery.  The name was a doorway of reverence.  When you name a dimension of your experience, one of your qualities or difficulties, or some presence within you, you give it an identity.  It then responds to you according to the tone of its name.  We need to exercise great care and respect when we come to name something,  We always need to find a name that is worthy and spacious.

When we name things in a small way, we cripple them.  Often our way of naming things is driven by our addiction to what is obviously visible...  The visible is only the shoreline of the magnificent ocean of the invisible.  The invisible is not empty, but is textured and tense with presences.  These presences cannot be named; they can only be sensed, not seen.  

We have put wrong names on many of our most important experiences.  We have often caricatured and shown disrespect to some of our most faithful desires.  We have kept some of our most beautiful longings as prisoners in our hearts, falsely imprisoned simply because of mistaken identity.

The wildness of the invisible world is nameless.  It has no name. A first step towards reawakening respect for your inner life may be to become aware of the private collage of dead names you have for your inner life.  Often, the experiences of wilderness can return us to the nameless wildness within.  Sometime, go away to a wild place on your own.  Leave your name and the grid of intentions and projects and images which mark you out as citizen Z.  Leave it all, and let yourself just slip back into the rhythms of your intimate wildness. You will be surprised at the lost terrains, wells, and mountains that you will rediscover, territories which have been buried under well-meant but dead names.   To go beyond confinement is to rediscover yourself.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

for grief

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you gets fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence.
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.

Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And, when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time. 

~ John O’Donohue

from To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings 

 

 

 

 

close with us

For too long, we have believed that the divine is outside us. 

This belief has strained our longing disastrously. 

 This is so lonely since it is human longing that makes us holy. 

 The most beautiful thing about us is our longing; 

 this longing is spiritual and has great depth and wisdom. 

 If you focus your longing on a faraway divinity, you put an unfair strain on your longing. 

 Thus it often happens that the longing reaches out towards the distant divine, 

but, because it over-strains itself, it bends back to become cynicism, emptiness or negativity. 

 This can destroy your sensibility. Yet we do not need to put any strain on our longing. 

 If we believe that the body is in the soul and the soul is divine ground, 
then the presence of the divine is completely here, close with us.

~ John O'Donohue

art by Odilon Redon

the primacy and wonder of the dark

There is a touching innocence in the mystery of the human self.  

Even after thousands of years of experience and reflection, 

we still remain a mystery to ourselves...

there is something deeply unpredictable and unfathomable.

... Even when you approach your self tenderly 

with the candle of receptive and reverential seeing, 

all you achieve is a glimpse.  

There is something in the sacred darkness of the mind 

that does not trust the facility and quickness of light.

Darkness resists the name.  

Darkness knows the regions which the name 

can never reach or hold or dream.

  The dark must smile at the proud pretense of words 

to hold networks of identity and meaning, 

but the dark knows only too well the fragile surface on which words stand.  

Darkness keeps its secrets.

 

Light is diverse and plural: 

sunlight, moonlight, dusk, dawn, and twilight.  

The dark has only one name.  

There is something deep in us 

which implicitly recognizes the primacy and wonder of the dark.  

Perhaps this is why we instinctively insist on avoiding and ignoring its mysteries.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

photo by Kathleen Connally

awaken to the mystery of being here

May you awaken to the mystery of being here and enter

the quiet immensity of your own presence.

May you have joy and peace in the temple of your senses.

May you receive great encouragement when new frontiers

beckon.

May you respond to the call of your gift and find the

courage to follow its path.

May the flame of anger free you from falsity.

May warmth of heart keep your presence aflame and may

anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

May you take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that

seek no attention.

May you be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven

around the heart of wonder.

~ John O'Donohue

haunted pilgrims

Fashioned from clay, we carry the memory of the earth. Ancient, forgotten things stir within our hearts, memories from the time before the mind was born. Within us are depths that keep watch. These are depths that no words can trawl or light unriddle. Our neon times have neglected and evaded the depth-kingdoms of interiority in favor of the ghost realms of cyberspace. We have unlearned the patience and attention of lingering at the thresholds where the unknown awaits us. We have become haunted pilgrims addicted to distraction and driven by the speed and color of images.

~ John O'Donohue

from Beauty: The Invisible Embrace

reverence of approach

A reverence of approach awakens depth and enables us

 to be truly present where we are.  When we approach with reverence

 great things decide to approach us.  Our real life comes 

to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things.  

When we walk on the earth with reverence, 

beauty will decide to trust us.  The rushed heart and

 the arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience 

to enter that embrace. 

 Beauty is mysterious, a slow presence who waits for the ready,

 expectant heart.  When the heart becomes attuned to her 

restrained glimmerings, it learns to recognize her intimations

 more frequently in places it would never have lingered before.

~ John O'Donohue

from Beauty, The Invisible Embrace

art by Van Gogh

 

inner hospitality

When you decide to practice inner hospitality, the self-torment ceases. 

The abandoned, neglected, and negative selves come into a seamless unity. 

The soul is wise and subtle it recognizes that unity fosters belonging. 

The soul adores unity. What you separate, the soul joins. 

As your experience extends and deepens, 

your memory becomes richer and more complex. 

Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, 

and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence. 

This liturgy of remembrance, literally re-membering, 

is always at work within you. 

Human solitude is rich and endlessly creative.

~ John O'Donohue

art by georgia o'keeffe

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through the lenses of our thoughts

The world is not simply there. Everything and everyone we see, we view through the lenses of our thoughts. Your mind is where your thoughts arise and form. It is not simply with your eyes but with your mind that you see the world. So much depends on your mind: How you see yourself, who you think you are, how you see others, what you think the meaning of life is, how you see death, belief, God, darkness and beauty is all determined by the style of mind you have.

Your mind is your greatest treasure. We become so taken up with the world, with having and doing more and more that we come to ignore who we are and forget what we see the world with. The most powerful way to change your life is to change your mind.

When you beautify your mind, you beautify your world. You learn to see differently. In what seemed like dead situations, secret possibilities and invitations begin to open before you. In old suffering that held you long paralyzed, you find new keys. When your mind awakens, your life comes alive and the creative adventure of your soul takes off. Passion and compassion become your new companions. As St. Iraneus said in the 2nd Century: The glory of God is the human person fully alive.

~ John O'Donohue

This was the title and description that John wrote for a talk
 he was scheduled to give in March of 2008.

the dream of Earth

Let us bless
The imagination of the Earth,
That knew early the patience
To harness the mind of time,
Waited for the seas to warm,
Ready to welcome the emergence
Of things dreaming of voyaging
Among the stillness of land.

And how light knew to nurse
The growth until the face of the Earth
Brightened beneath a vision of color.

When the ages of ice came
And sealed the Earth inside
An endless coma of cold,
The heart of the Earth held hope,
Storing fragments of memory,
Ready for the return of the sun.

Let us thank the Earth
That offers ground for home
And holds our feet firm
To walk in space open
To infinite galaxies.

Let us salute the silence
And certainty of mountains:
Their sublime stillness,
Their dream-filled hearts.

The wonder of a garden
Trusting the first warmth of spring
Until its black infinity of cells
Becomes charged with dream;
Then the silent, slow nurture
Of the seed's self, coaxing it
To trust the act of death.

The humility of the Earth
That transfigures all
That has fallen
Of outlived growth.

The kindness of the Earth,
Opening to receive
Our worn forms
Into the final stillness.

Let us ask forgiveness of the Earth
For all our sins against her:
For our violence and poisonings
Of her beauty.

Let us remember within us
The ancient clay,
Holding the memory of seasons,
The passion of the wind,
The fluency of water,
The warmth of fire,
The quiver-touch of the sun
And shadowed sureness of the moon.

That we may awaken,
To live to the full
The dream of the Earth
Who chose us to emerge
And incarnate its hidden night
In mind, spirit, and light.

 

 

 

 

~ John O' Donohue 

from To Bless the Space Between Us: 

A Book of Blessings

with thanks to Poetry Chaikhana

 

 

unmasking pretense

We never value or even see some things in our lives until we are just about to lose them.
  This is particularly true of health.  When we are in good health, 
we are so busy in the world that we never even notice how well we are.
  Illness comes and challenges everything about us.  It unmasks all pretension. 
 When you are really ill, you cannot mask it.  

Illness also tests the inner fiber and luminosity of your soul. 
 It is very difficult to take illness well.  
Yet it seems that if we treat our illness as something external
 that has singled us out, and we battle and resist it, 
the illness will refuse to leave. 
 On the other hand, we must not identify ourselves with our illness.
  A visit to a hospital often shows that very ill people are more alive
 to life's possibilities than the medical verdict would ever allow or imagine.

When we learn to see our illness as a companion or friend,
 it really does change the way the illness is present. 
 The illness changes from a horrible intruder to a companion
 who has something to teach us.  When we see what we have to learn
 from an illness, then often the illness can gather itself and begin to depart.
.. Sometimes, when you see a thing as the enemy, 
you only reinforce its presence and power over you... 
Held openly, as a friend, this bit of unknown aliveness 
may take you on an amazing journey to places you may have never anticipated. 
 Such attention enriches and deepens gentleness and presence.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

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pastures of possibility

.

More often than not, we have picked up the habits of thinking of those around us.
  These thought-habits are not yours; they can damage the way you see the world 
and make you doubt your own instinct and sense of life. 
 When you become aware that your thinking has a life of its own,
 you will never make a prison of your own perception. 
 Your vision is your home.  A closed vision always wants to make a small room
 out of whatever it sees.  Thinking that limits you denies you life. 

 In order to deconstruct the inner prison, the first step is learning to see that it is a prison.
  You can move in the direction of this discovery by reflecting on the places
 where your life feels limited and tight.  To recognize the crippling feeling
 of being limited is already to have begun moving beyond it.  
Heidegger said, "To recognize a frontier is already to have gone beyond it." 
 Life continues to remain faithful to us.  If we move even the smallest step
 out of our limitation, life comes to embrace us and lead us out into
 the pastures of possibility.

~ John O'Donohue
 from 'Eternal Echoes'

what we call presence

There is a lovely, disconcerting moment between sleep and awakening.  
You have only half emerged from sleep, and for a few seconds
 you do not know where you are, who you are, or what you are.  
You are lost between worlds.  Then your mind settles, and you recognize
 the room and you take up your place again in your own life.  
And you realize that both you and the world have survived the crossing
 from night to reality.  It is a new day, and the world is faithfully there again, 
offering itself to your longing and imagination, stretching out beyond your room
 to mountains, seas, the countenances behind which other lives hide. 
 We take our world totally for granted.  It is only when we experience the momentary
 disturbance of being marooned in such an interim that we grasp what a surprise
 it is to be here and to have the wild companionship of this world.  
Such disturbances awaken us to the mystery of thereness that we call presence.
  Often, the first exposure to the one you will love or to a great work of art
 produces a similar disconcerting confusion.

Presence is alive.  You sense and feel presence; it comes towards you
 and engages you.  Landscape has a vast depth and subtlety of presence. 
 The more attentive you are, and the longer you remain in a landscape,
 the more you will be embraced by its presence.  Though you may be
 completely alone there, you know that you are not on your own. 
 In our relentless quest for human contact, we have forgotten the solace
 and friendship of Nature.  It is interesting in the Irish language
 how the word for the elements and the word for desire is the same word:
 duil. As the term for creation, its accent is on the elemental nature of creation.   
Duil suggests a vital elemental-ism.  It also means longing. 
 "Duil a chur I gceol" means "to get a longing for music." 
 Duil also holds the sense of expectation and hope..
 Could it be that duil originally suggested that human longing 
was an echo of the elemental vitality of Nature?

You feel the presence in Nature sometimes in great trees that stand 
like ancient totem spirits night and day, watching over a landscape
 for hundreds of years.  Water also has a soothing and seductive presence
 that draws us towards it.  John Montague writes: "Part order, part wilderness 
/ Water creates its cadenced illusion."  Each shape of water - the well, stream, 
lake, river and ocean - has a distinctive rhythm of presence.  
Stone, too, has a powerful presence.  Michelangelo used to say 
that sculpture is the art of liberating the shape hidden and submerged in the rock. 
 I went one morning to visit a sculptor friend.  He showed me a stone 
and asked if I saw any hidden form in it.  I could not.  Then he pointed out 
the implicit shape of a bird.  He said, "For ten years I have been passing that stone 
on the shore and only this morning did I notice the secret shape of the bird." 
 Whereas human presence is immediate, the presences in landscape are mediate; 
 they are often silent and indirect.

~ John O'Donohue

from Eternal Echoes

the mind's desire

.

Thought is the form of the mind's desire.  It is in our thinking that the depth of our longing comes to expression.  This longing can never be fulfilled by any one person, project, or thing.  The secret immensity of the soul is the longing for the divine.  This is not simply a haunted desire for an absent, distant divine presence that is totally different from us.  Our longing is passionate and endless because the divine calls us home to presence.  Our longing is an echo of the divine longing for us.  Our longing is the living imprint of divine desire.  This desire lives in each of us in that ineffable space in the heart where nothing else can satisfy or still us.  This is what gives us that vital gift we have called "the sense of life." 

The wonder of presence is the majesty of what it so subtly conceals.  Real presence is eternity become radiant.   This is why the "sense of life" in us has such power and vitality.  Our deepest longing is like a restless artist who tirelessly seeks to make our presence real in order that the mystery we harbour may become known to us.  The glory of human presence is the divine longing fully alive.

~ John O'Donohue
 from Eternal Echoes