i n t e g r a l c o u n s e l i n g i n s t i t u t e
January/February Book Review and Quotes Archive
John O'Donohue (1954-2008): Our New Friend on the Other Side
Posted January 9, 2008 | 01:13 PM (EST)
Written byJesse Kornbluth
Read More: Anam Cara, Author, Catholic, Catholic
Church, Catholicism, Celtic Wisdom, Ireland, Irish Mysticism, John O'Donohue,
Priest, Breaking Living News
"Endings seem to lie in wait," John O'Donohue wrote. His certainly did. He died
in his sleep, January 3, 2008, on vacation near Avignon. He was just 53.
I knew John O'Donohue very slightly. I had read Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic
Wisdom, the 1997 book that made him deservedly famous. "Read" is wrong. At 100
words a minute, I had, over weeks, absorbed enough of this deceptively simple
exploration of "soul friendship" to grasp that here was an original thinker, a
gifted poet and, most astonishing of all, a philosopher who had forged a way of
looking at the world that was painfully aware of human frailty but insistent on
the triumphal power of divine love. And he wrote beautifully.
A book this exciting, you have to talk about it. I mentioned O'Donohue to Sarah
Ban Breathnach, the author of the Oprah-annointed Simple Abundance. As luck
would have it, she and O'Donohue were friends. And when he came through New
York, Sarah generously arranged a dinner.
That was the night I learned to drink single malt. And was there ever a better
teacher in the art of sipping than an Irish philosopher and mystic who had worn
the collar for 19 years? I don't recall what we talked about, and neither can my
wife, who does not drink; all I remember is the cascades of laughter, the
unbuckled happiness of people who are thrilled to be alive, and together, and
sharing good fellowship with sympathetic souls in a nice restaurant on a rainy
New York night.
An evening like that is so rare I think of it as a religious experience. John
O'Donohue, a holy man if ever there was one, had a lot of nights like that. A
recent interviewer wrote, in memoriam, about a morning when O'Donohue came to
breakfast with a hangover, having polished off an entire bottle of single malt
with friends the night before. "The bottle didn't die," he announced, "without
spiritual necessity."
That offhand remark was quintessential O'Donohue. He never failed to connect the
worldly with the sacred --- and see it all as holy. As a writer and a man, he
reminded me of the priest who was a friend of Proust's. Yes, he believed there
was a Hell. But he didn't believe anyone went there.
Where do our deepest beliefs come from? Generally from childhood, and then not
from what our parents and teachers say, but from what they do and who they are.
In John O'Donohue's case, his mother was a loving rock. His father was a
stonemason and farmer --- and, O'Donohue thought, the "holiest man I ever met,
priests included." Sometimes the boy would bring tea to his father as he worked
the fields. Often, he heard him --- praying --- before he saw him.
O'Donohue had a superlative education, earned a Ph.D. in philosophical theology
from the University of Tubingen, became known as an expert on Hegel and, later,
Meister Eckhart. As a priest, he loved the Church's sacramental structure and
its mystical and intellectual traditions. He also loved writing. Eventually, an
officious bishop made him choose. "The best decision I ever made was to become a
priest," O'Donohue would say, years later, "and I think the second best decision
was to resign from public priestly ministry."
In fact, he had his issues with Catholicism, especially its views on sex and
women. The Church, he said, "is not trustable in the area of Eros at all." And
it "has a pathological fear of the feminine --- it would sooner allow priests to
marry than it would allow women to become priests."
He was just as hard on other denominations. Religious fundamentalists, he said,
"only want to lead you back, driven by nostalgia for a past that never existed,
to manipulate and control you.... [Their] God tends to be a monolith and an
emperor of the blandest singularity." New Age spirituality, he felt, was a
smorgasbord, and undisciplined. Not that he found any comfort in secular life.
He scorned the mall, feared for the spiritual health of the young, and had a
special dislike for media folk, who he described as "non-elected custodians of
sensationalism."
His bedrocks were his faith and "the Celtic imagination," which, he said,
"represents a vision of the divine where no one or nothing is excluded." The
blend he created was pure joy: "I think the divine is like a huge smile that
breaks somewhere in the sea within you, and gradually comes up again."
O'Donohue was no Pollyanna. He was deeply troubled by bad things happening to
good people. But he also saw that "a lot of suffering is just getting rid of
dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often --- I say
this against myself --- a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the
light."
So it makes sense that O'Donohue's last book, To Bless the Space Between Us,
would be nothing but invocations and blessings --- a simple, how-to book that,
in effect, takes him back to his father praying in the fields. By the fact that
we live, we are blessed; by the light that shines in our hearts, we have the
power to bless others and be blessed by them. Is there a purer, more elementary
form of the divine in action?
He asks: What is a blessing? His first answer is formal, and expected: "A
blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and
strengthen." But then the poetry enters: "It is a gracious invocation where the
human heart pleads with the divine heart." And then there's the magical factor:
"When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time."
We need to impact one another's lives in this spiritual way, he writes, because
the process of living in a post-industrial, media-drenched world moves us
further and further from our innate wholeness. Only direct action can breach the
distance. Happily, it takes no special training to bless one another. It's just
a matter of gathering yourself --- and finding the words.
In "To Bless the Space Between Us," the poet in O'Donohue seeks to break the
shackles of dead language. He offers fresh blessings, and on topics the Church
might overlook --- not just for a new home, marriage and child, but for the
parents of a criminal, for parents who have lost a child, for those experiencing
exile, solitude and failure.
These blessings look hardship in the face, but only as a challenge. In our
souls, and, especially, in our hearts, O'Donohue believed, we are all home. We
never left, we never will. How hard it is to hold that thought. And yet, when we
take the care of others into our hearts, something happens.....
You may not have a problem with the plainspoken language of O'Donohue's
blessings. I do. Maybe it's just a writer's discomfort with another writer's
words. But the invocations that dot the book -- my God, could this man write!
Just one example:
"Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless. Regardless of how
we configure the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of
wholeness, that 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 life's journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to
call some of that wholeness upon a person now.
Death was nothing to John O'Donohue --- a silent friend who walks beside us all
our days. And on the other side? "I believe that our friends among the dead
really mind us and look out for us," he wrote. "Often there might be a big
boulder of misery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends among
the dead hold it back until you have passed by."
Let it be.
Republished from HeadButler.com
January/February Quotes of the Month
"Of what is the world made? it is made of emptiness and Rhythm. At
the ultimate heart of the body, of the world, of the
universe, there is no substance. There is only the dance." ~ from "Heart Sutra, Ancient Buddhist Wisdom in the Light of
Quantum Reality" by Mu Soeng Sunim
A Beauty Blessing
As stillness in stone to silence is wed
May your heart be somewhere a God might dwell.
As a river flows in ideal sequence
May your soul discover time is presence.
As the moon absolves the dark of distance
May thought-light console your mind with brightness.
As the breath of light awakens colour
May the dawn anoint your eyes with wonder.
As spring rain softens the earth with surprise
May your winter places be kissed by light.
As the ocean dreams to the joy of dance
May the grace of change bring you elegance.
As clay anchors a tree in light and wind
Mazy your outer life grow from peace within.
As twilight fills night with bright horizons
May Beauty await you at home beyond.
John O'Donohue
Beauty - The Invisible Embrace
Thought Work
In memory of Joe Pilkington
Off course from the frail music sought by words
And the path that always claims the journey,
In pursuit of a more oblique rhythm,
Creating mostly its own geography,
The mind is an old crow
Who knows only to gather dead twigs,
Then take them back to the vacancy
Between the branches of the parent tree
And entwine them around the emptiness
With silence and unfailing patience
Until what was fallen, withered and lost
Is now set to fill with dreams as a nest.
John O'Donahue