Suffering in the Animal Kingdom
Suffering Brings Compassion
Illness: The Land of Desolation
To Befriend the Places of Pain
The Vulnerability and Mystery of the Body
No Wound Is Ever Silent
Celtic Recognition and Blessing of the Dark Side
To Help Carry the Suffering of an Other
Out of the Winter a New Spring
A Blessing
5. Prayer: A Bridge Between Longing and Belonging
The Human Body Gathered in Prayer Configures Our Need
Prayer Is Ancient Longing
Prayer Is the Narrative of the Soul
Prayer and the Desire to Survive
A Prayer Is Never Wasted
In Prayer We Learn to See with the Eyes of the Soul
The Deepest Prayer Happens Silently in Our Nature
The Prayer of Being
What Is It That Prays in Us?
Prayer and Wonder: The Art of Real Presence
Wonder Awakens Us to the Magic of the World
Wonder Invites Mystery to Come Closer
You Cannot Step Outside Your Life
Amidst the Unknown, Prayer Builds an Inner Shelter
The Celtic Art of Approaching the Unknown and Nature
Nature Is Always Wrapped in Seamless Prayer
Prayer: A Clearance in the Thicket of Thought
Prayer and the Voices of Longing
Mystical Prayer as a Mosaic of Presence
Prayer as the Door into Your Own Eternity
On That Day You Will Know as You Are Known
The Soul Is the Home of Memory
To Breathe in Your Soul Light
Praise Is Like Morning Sun on a Flower
Prayer Changes Space
Graced Vision Sees Between Things
“Behold, I Am the Ground of Thy Beseeching.”
Prayer Is Critical Vigilance
A Generous Heart Is Never Lonesome
The Beauty of the Prayer-Gift
To Frame Each Frontier of the Day with Prayer
To Be Great, Be Entire
To Create Your Own Prayer That Speaks Your Soul
My Own Prayer
6. Absence: Where Longing Still Lingers
The Subtle Trail of Absence
Absence and Presence Are Sisters
And the Earth Knew Absence
The Legend of Midhir and Etain
The Longing for Real Presence
The Homeless Mind
Psychology and Self-absence: Talking Ourselves Out
Brittle Language Numbs Longing
Beyond Being an Observer—Becoming a Participant
Memory Is Full of the Ruins of Presence
Ruins: Temples of Absence
The Absence of the Future
Towards a Philosophy of Loss
Grief: Longing for the Lost One
Grief Is a Journey That Knows Its Way
We Grieve for Ourselves
The Imagination and the Altars of Absence
The Artist as Permanent Pilgrim
The Ones We Never Hear From
Addiction: Obsessed Longing
The Emigrants
Language and Belonging
A Philosophy of Dúcas
Fundamentalism: False Longing and Forced Belonging
Cults and Sects
Our Longing for Community
The Shelter of Community
Towards a New Community
Divine Longing Transfigures Absence
A Blessing
Vespers
Suggested Further Reading
About the Author
Other Books by John O’Donohue
Copyright
About the Publisher
Acknowledgments
I WISH TO THANK: DIANE REVERAND, my editor at HarperCollins; Kim Witherspoon and her agency, for her confidence in the work and for its effective mediation; John Devitt, who read the manuscript and offered a creative and literary critique; Dr. Lelia Doolan, who gave a wonderfully encouraging and rigorous critical response to the text; David Whyte, for his brotherly care and our conversations about the world of the imagination; Barbara Conner, for all her work and support; and especially Marian O’Beirn, who suggested this book on longing and “our hunger to belong” and who read and reread successive drafts, keeping a critical eye on structure and content and whose friendship and inspiration are generosity itself; the memory of my former teachers Professor Gerard Watson and Professor Tom Marsh and Miceal O’Regan, O. P., for his wisdom of spirit; to my family, for the shelter, support, and understanding; to Conamara and Clare, for their mystical spirit which awakens such longing and offers such a tenderness of belonging. Agus do mo cáirde a thug foscadh, solas agus solás.
Prologue
I REMEMBER AS A CHILD discovering the echo of sound. It was the first time that my father took me up the mountain to herd the cattle. As we passed a limestone cliff, he called out to the cattle in the distance. His call had barely ended when it was copied exactly and sent forth again by the stone. It was a fascinating discovery. I tried out my own voice and the echo returned faithfully every time. It was as if the solid limestone mountains had secret hearing and voice. Their natural stillness and silence suddenly broke forth in an exact mimic of the human voice, indicating that there is a resonant heart in the depths of silence; the stone responds in a symmetry of sound. Hearing one’s echo out among the lonely mountains seems to suggest that one is not alone. Landscape and nature know us and the returning echo seems to confirm that we belong here. We live in a world that responds to our longing; it is a place where the echoes always return, even if sometimes slowly. It is as if the dynamic symmetry of the echo comprised the radius of an invisible but powerful circle of belonging.
The hunger to belong is at the heart of our nature. Cut off from others, we atrophy and turn in on ourselves. The sense of belonging is the natural balance of our lives. Mostly, we do not need to make an issue of belonging. When we belong, we take it for granted. There is some innocent childlike side to the human heart that is always deeply hurt when we are excluded. Belonging suggests warmth, understanding, and embrace. No one was created for isolation. When we become isolated, we are prone to being damaged; our minds lose their flexibility and natural kindness; we become vulnerable to fear and negativity. The sense of belonging keeps you in balance amidst the inner and outer immensities. The ancient and eternal values of human life—truth, unity, goodness, justice, beauty, and love are all statements of true belonging; they are the also the secret intention and dream of human longing.
Wherever there is distance, there is longing. Yet there is some strange wisdom in the fact of distance. It is interesting to remember that the light that sustains life here on earth comes from elsewhere. Light is the mother of life. Yet the sun and the moon are not on the earth; they bless us with light across the vast distances. We are protected and blessed in our distance. Were we nearer to the sun, the earth would be consumed in its fire; it is the distance that makes the fire kind. Nothing in creation is ever totally at home in itself. No thing is ultimately at one with itself. Everything that is alive holds distance within itself. This is especially true of the human self. It is the deepest intimacy which is nevertheless infused with infinite distance. There is some strange sense in which distance and closeness are sisters, the two sides of the one experience. Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them: to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distant as intimate.