The Wisdom of a Soul Friend
FEBRUARY 11, 2008 TAGS:
By Suzanne Strempek Shea
The ad was spotted and reservations at the conference center were immediately secured. The late February weekend was eagerly X-ed on the calendar. The long list of friends I’d have books signed for was made, as was the short list of what I hoped would be my not-too-fawning fan’s comments. Then I got the e-mail. There would be no weekend presentation. John O’Donohue was dead.
The Irish poet, philosopher and Catholic scholar died suddenly Jan. 4 near Avignon, France. He was only 53. But he held the life-guiding wisdom of someone 53 times that age, insight he generously shared in books that encouraged his readers to realize and reach their innermost potential, and to experience the love of heaven by cherishing the smallest particles of clay that compose each of us.
Eleven years ago, my sister-in-law who lived one county south of his native Clare introduced me to John O’Donohue’s work with a gift of Anam Cara: Wisdom from the Celtic World. Released to little notice in 1997 on the day of Princess Diana’s fatal car crash, the book soon scaled bestseller lists, and 13 reprints were needed in the first 12 months. With a title that translates from Irish as “soul friend,” for more than a decade Anam Cara has been just that to countless readers, including this one, who return over and again for meditations on solitude, love and death layered between legend, wisdom and blessings from the Celtic tradition. But don’t expect airy mumbo gumbo. In plain and gentle language, O’Donohue offers a hand through the smallest and greatest of timeless soul challenges.
“You can never love another person,” he tells us in Anam Cara, “unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself. There is within each of us, at the soul level, an enriching fountain of love. In other words, you do not have to go outside yourself to know what love is. This is not selfishness, and it is not narcissism: They are negative obsessions with the need to be loved. Rather this is the wellspring of love within the heart. Through their need for love, people who lead solitary lives often stumble UPON this great fountain. They learn to whisper awake the deep well of love within. This is not a question of forcing yourself to love yourself. It is more a question of exercising reserve, of inviting the wellspring of love that is, after all, your deepest nature to flow through your life. When this happens, the ground that has hardened within you grows soft again.”
Mary had promised that Anam Cara would be one of those books I’d keep on the nightstand and flip open night after night for assurance and guidance, and she was correct, as she was with the same prediction she made about the O’Donohue book she sent the following year, Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong, which leads the reader toward discovering the heart in a postmodern existence.
“We are involved passionately in the world,” O’Donohue reminds us in that work, “yet there is nothing here that can claim us completely. When we forget how partial and temporary our belonging must remain, we put ourselves in the way of danger and disappointment. We compromise something eternal within us. The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within oneself.”
Those first two books became the bestsellers that introduced O’Donohue to an international audience tired from dwelling in a world filled with what he called “the religion of rush.” A further following was built from subsequent works of both prose and poetry set firmly on the sacred earth and containing all the possibility and compassion under the heavens. Readers here eagerly have been awaiting the American release of his latest, To Bless the Space Between Us, filled with spirit maps for the journeys through and beyond life’s milestones. The book’s title was borrowed for the talk I was to have attended on that February weekend, when I finally would have had the chance to meet John O’Donohue. I realize as I write this that I long ago did.
Now, rather than his books, Mary is sending me his obituaries. In one, Irish Labor Party President and former arts minister Michael D. Higgins calls his friend a man whose “very presence was enormously valuable, a blessing in itself, even before he started to speak.”
Even, might I add, if you never got the chance to meet him.
Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of five novels, has a new memoir, Sundays in America, being published in March 2008.
The ad was spotted and reservations at the conference center were immediately secured. The late February weekend was eagerly X-ed on the calendar. The long list of friends I’d have books signed for was made, as was the short list of what I hoped would be my not-too-fawning fan’s comments. Then I got the e-mail. There would be no weekend presentation. John O’Donohue was dead.
The Irish poet, philosopher and Catholic scholar died suddenly Jan. 4 near Avignon, France. He was only 53. But he held the life-guiding wisdom of someone 53 times that age, insight he generously shared in books that encouraged his readers to realize and reach their innermost potential, and to experience the love of heaven by cherishing the smallest particles of clay that compose each of us.
Eleven years ago, my sister-in-law who lived one county south of his native Clare introduced me to John O’Donohue’s work with a gift of Anam Cara: Wisdom from the Celtic World. Released to little notice in 1997 on the day of Princess Diana’s fatal car crash, the book soon scaled bestseller lists, and 13 reprints were needed in the first 12 months. With a title that translates from Irish as “soul friend,” for more than a decade Anam Cara has been just that to countless readers, including this one, who return over and again for meditations on solitude, love and death layered between legend, wisdom and blessings from the Celtic tradition. But don’t expect airy mumbo gumbo. In plain and gentle language, O’Donohue offers a hand through the smallest and greatest of timeless soul challenges.“You can never love another person,” he tells us in Anam Cara, “unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself. There is within each of us, at the soul level, an enriching fountain of love. In other words, you do not have to go outside yourself to know what love is. This is not selfishness, and it is not narcissism: They are negative obsessions with the need to be loved. Rather this is the wellspring of love within the heart. Through their need for love, people who lead solitary lives often stumble UPON this great fountain. They learn to whisper awake the deep well of love within. This is not a question of forcing yourself to love yourself. It is more a question of exercising reserve, of inviting the wellspring of love that is, after all, your deepest nature to flow through your life. When this happens, the ground that has hardened within you grows soft again.”
Mary had promised that Anam Cara would be one of those books I’d keep on the nightstand and flip open night after night for assurance and guidance, and she was correct, as she was with the same prediction she made about the O’Donohue book she sent the following year, Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Yearning to Belong, which leads the reader toward discovering the heart in a postmodern existence.
“We are involved passionately in the world,” O’Donohue reminds us in that work, “yet there is nothing here that can claim us completely. When we forget how partial and temporary our belonging must remain, we put ourselves in the way of danger and disappointment. We compromise something eternal within us. The sacred duty of being an individual is to gradually learn how to live so as to awaken the eternal within oneself.”
Those first two books became the bestsellers that introduced O’Donohue to an international audience tired from dwelling in a world filled with what he called “the religion of rush.” A further following was built from subsequent works of both prose and poetry set firmly on the sacred earth and containing all the possibility and compassion under the heavens. Readers here eagerly have been awaiting the American release of his latest, To Bless the Space Between Us, filled with spirit maps for the journeys through and beyond life’s milestones. The book’s title was borrowed for the talk I was to have attended on that February weekend, when I finally would have had the chance to meet John O’Donohue. I realize as I write this that I long ago did.Now, rather than his books, Mary is sending me his obituaries. In one, Irish Labor Party President and former arts minister Michael D. Higgins calls his friend a man whose “very presence was enormously valuable, a blessing in itself, even before he started to speak.”
Even, might I add, if you never got the chance to meet him.
Suzanne Strempek Shea, author of five novels, has a new memoir, Sundays in America, being published in March 2008.
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COMMENTS (2)
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Jim Crews (North Georgia, USA) wrote on March 2, 2008 8:11am
'I am very sad to hear about the crossing of John. I wish that I had known "about" him before early this morning on 2 March 2008. I intend to know him through the works he left behind--and to make sure that my soul friends know about his works. I definitely resonate with what I have heard--thanks to the radio interview on PBS. Fr. Jim Crews, D.Min. Celtic Sojourner 2 March 2008' [Report Comment]
jeremy clarke (jcwclarke@yahoo.co.uk) wrote on February 18, 2008 4:47pm
'I was shocked to hear of the death of John O'Donohue. One can only hope (as in the untimely death of Thomas Merton) that he had said all that he was meant to say. And had been called Home. God bless you John O'Donohue. I will (as so many will) continue you to be blessed by the words and wisdom you have left us. A beautiful music ringing my ears. Rest in peace.' [Report Comment]
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