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80d9926
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Even though life may have moved wearily and painfully through such a person, they have still managed not to let it corrode their soul. In such a face a lovely luminosity shines out into the world. It casts a tender light that radiates a sense of wholeness and wholesomeness.
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John O'Donohue |
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c228dde
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Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.
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John O'Donohue |
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0f0d951
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The eternal world and the mortal world are not parallel, rather they are fused.
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mortality
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John O'Donohue |
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f31b8ac
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The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.
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John O'Donohue |
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07403ea
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When you look at some faces, you can see the turbulence of the infinite beginning to gather to the surface. This moment can open in a gaze from a stranger, or in a conversation with someone you know well. Suddenly, without their intending it or being conscious of it, their gaze lasts for only a second. In that slightest interim, something more than the person looks out.
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John O'Donohue |
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0a8094e
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This is the time to be slow, Lie low to the wall Until the bitter weather passes. Try, as best you can, not to let The wire brush of doubt Scrape from your heart All sense of yourself And your hesitant light. If you remain generous, Time will come good; And you will find your feet Again on fresh pastures of promise, Where the air will be kind And blushed with beginning.
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John O'Donohue |
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7dd0e82
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The secret and the sacred are sisters. When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes. Consequently, reflection should not shine too severe or aggressive a light on the world of the soul.
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secret
shine
sacred
reflection
soul
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John O'Donohue |
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27d1a98
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the search for meaning is really the search for the lost chord. When the lost chord is discovered by humankind, the discord in the world will be healed and the symphony of the universe will come into complete harmony with itself.
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peace
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John O'Donohue |
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7728a8e
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Perhaps your hunger to belong is always active and intense because you belonged so totally before you came here. This hunger to belong is the echo and reverberation of your invisible heritage. You are from somewhere else, where you were known, embraced and sheltered. This is also the secret root from which all longing grows. Something in you knows, perhaps remembers, that eternal belonging liberates longing into its surest and most potent c..
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longing
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John O'Donohue |
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4ec39fc
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Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. This metaphor of friendship can be grounded in the clay nature of the human body. When you find the person you love, an act of ancient recognition brings you together. It is as if millions of years before the silence of nature broke, your lover's clay and your clay lay side by side. Then in the turning of the s..
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John O'Donohue |
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719069d
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Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition. This metaphor of friendship can be grounded in the clay nature of the human body. When you find the person you love, an act of ancient recognition brings you together. It is as if millions of years before the silence of nature broke, your lover's clay and your clay lay side by side. Then in the turning of the s..
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John O'Donohue |
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dbbebde
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Transience is the force of time that makes a ghost of every experience. There was never a dawn, regardless how beautiful or promising, that did not grow into a noontime. There was never a noon that did not fall into afternoon. There was never an afternoon that did not fade toward evening. There never was a day yet that did not get buried in the graveyard of the night. In this way transience makes a ghost out of everything that happens to us..
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John O'Donohue |
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35941cb
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When our eyes are graced with wonder, the world reveals its wonders to us. There are people who see only dullness in the world and that is because their eyes have already been dulled. So much depends on how we look at things. The quality of our looking determines what we come to see.
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spirituality
religion
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John O'Donohue |
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6a32e5f
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Consumerism is the worship of the god of quantity; advertising is its liturgy. Advertising is schooling in false longing.
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John O'Donohue |
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0d853c2
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When you become vulnerable, any ideal or perfect image of yourself falls away. (...) Many people are addicted to perfection, and in their pursuit of the ideal, they have no patience with vulnerability. (...) Every poet would like to write the ideal poem. Though they never achieve this, sometimes it glimmers through their best work. Ironically, the very beyondness of the idea is often the touch of presence that renders the work luminous. Th..
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John O'Donohue |
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87d020d
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The Celtic mind was not burdened by dualism. It did not separate what belongs together
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John O'Donohue |
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589c273
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Grace is the permanent climate of divine kindness; the perennial infusion of springtime into the winter of bleakness.
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kindness
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John O'Donohue |
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67139ef
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TO COME HOME TO YOURSELF May all that is unforgiven in you Be released. May your fears yield Their deepest tranquillities. May all that is unlived in you Blossom into a future Graced with love.
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John O'Donohue |
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a799039
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A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you.
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John O'Donohue |
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ef1ca29
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We do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program for our lives.
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John O'Donohue |
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730fedf
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When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you. Your forgotten or neglected wealth begins to reveal itself. You come home to yourself and learn to rest within. Thoughts are our inner senses. Infused with silence and solitude, they bring out the mystery of inner landscape.
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solitude
thoughts
self-awareness
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John O'Donohue |
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ba8df8e
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the only difference between a young person at the height of their exuberance and a very old person who is frail and physically wasted is time.
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John O'Donohue |
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44bf38e
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On its outer surface time is vulnerable to transience. Regardless of its sadness or beauty, each day empties and vanishes. In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration. Time minds possibility and makes sure that nothing is lost or forgotten. That which seems to pass away on the surface of time is in fact transfigured and housed in the tabernacle of memory.
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John O'Donohue |
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5be73b1
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All through your life your soul takes care of you...your soul is alive and awakened, gathering, sheltering and guiding your ways and days in the world. In effect, your soul is your secret shelter.
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John O'Donohue |
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0cd703e
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we are custodians of deep and ancient thresholds. In the human face you see that potential and the miracle of undying possibility.
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John O'Donohue |
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96573e7
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Your soul knows the geography of your destiny.
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John O'Donohue |
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49c9928
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Keep Something Beautiful in your Heart to Survive Difficult Times and Enjoy Good Times.
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John O'Donohue |
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f4ddb76
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A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved and the beloved's love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate, to those who are starving, to those who are trapped in prison, in hospitals, and into all the brutal terrains o..
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John O'Donohue |
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2ed0466
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For Longing Blessed be the longing that brought you here And quickens your soul with wonder. May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire That disturbs you when you have settled for something safe. May you have the wisdom to enter generously into your own unease To discover the new direction your longing wants you to take. May the forms of your belonging--in love, creativity, and friendship-- Be equal to the grandeur and the ca..
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John O'Donohue |
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eb11d6a
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Functionalism is lethal when it is not balanced by a sense of reverence. Without reverence, there is no sense of presence or wonder.
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John O'Donohue |
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772cbaa
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FOR THE DYING May death come gently toward you, Leaving you time to make your way Through the cold embrace of fear To the place of inner tranquillity. May death arrive only after a long life To find you at home among your own With every comfort and care you require. May your leave-taking be gracious, Enabling you to hold dignity Through awkwardness and illness. May you see the reflection Of your life's kindness and beauty In all the tears t..
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John O'Donohue |
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3624974
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Once the soul awakens, the search begins and you can never go back. From then on, you are inflamed with a special longing that will never again let you linger in the lowlands of complacency and partial fulfillment. The eternal makes you urgent.
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John O'Donohue |
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ab30c8c
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Reflection comes between us and every other person and object in the world. An object or a person can be reflected in so many different ways. Yet the heart of an object or the essence of the heart can never be reflected. All faith and creativity is the hunger to cross over this frontier, it is the desire for pure and total encounter and belonging. Love is an affair between a reflection and its object.
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reflection
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John O'Donohue |
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663939d
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Anam is the Irish word for "soul" and Cara is the word for "friend." In the Anam-Cara friendship, you were joined in an ancient way with the friend of your soul. This was a bond that neither space nor time could damage. The friendship awakened an eternal echo in the hearts of the friends; they entered into a circle of intimate belonging with each other. The Anam-Cara friendship afforded a spiritual space to all the other longings of the hum..
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John O'Donohue |
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2690144
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If we become addicted to the external, our interiority will haunt us. We will become hungry with a hunger no image, person, or deed can still. To be wholesome, we must remain truthful to our vulnerable complexity. In order to keep our balance, we need to hold the interior and exterior, visible and invisible, known and unknown, temporal and eternal, ancient and new, together. No one else can undertake this task for you. You are the one and o..
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John O'Donohue |
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ffcd8c2
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The heart of the matter: You should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself. It is very important to find a balance in your belonging. You should never belong totally to any cause or system. People frequently need to belong to an external system because they are afraid to belong to their own lives. If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. Your longing is safe there.
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John O'Donohue |
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4fed000
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The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within: the clay from where the tree of the body grows.
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nature
one
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John O'Donohue |
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cbd3b76
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And when the work of grieving 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.
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John O'Donohue |
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5608450
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There is great beauty in the notion of desire. Each of us is a child of the desire of our parents for each other. We are creatures of desire because we are creations of desire. The human heart discovers its most touching music when desire and love inform each other. When we love, we leave our separate solitudes and come toward union, where we complement each other. It is this ancient desire in every heart to discover and come home to its lo..
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John O'Donohue |
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9853831
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We seldom notice how each day is a holy place Where the eucharist of the ordinary happens, Transforming our broken fragments Into an eternal continuity that keeps us.
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John O'Donohue |
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20092b2
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The earth is our origin and destination. The ancient rhythms of the earth have insinuated themselves into the rhythms of the human heart. The earth is not outside us; it is within: the clay from where the tree of the body grows. When we emerge from our offices, rooms and houses, we enter our natural element. We are children of the earth: people to whom the outdoors is home. Nothing can separate us from the vigour and vibrancy of this inheri..
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nature
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John O'Donohue |
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1d080f3
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I arise today through the strength of heaven, light of sun, Radiance of moon, Splendor of fire, Speed of lightning, Swiftness of wind, Depth of sea, Stability of earth, Firmness of rock.
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John O'Donohue |
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6558aa2
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The world rests in the night.
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John O'Donohue |
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8c5affd
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A Blessing of Solitude May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul. May you realize that you are never alone, that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe. May you have respect for your own individuality and difference. May you realize that the shape of your soul is unique, that you have a special destiny here, that behind the facade of your life there ..
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John O'Donohue |