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A day is precious because each day is essentially the microcosm of your whole life.
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John O'Donohue |
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Each of us is a secret envoi of the earth. We
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John O'Donohue |
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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.
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John O'Donohue |
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The beauty of the imagination is that it can discover such magnificent vastness inside a tiny space. Our culture is dominated by quantity. Even those who have plenty hunger for more and more. Everywhere around us, the reign of quantity extends and multiplies. Sadly the voyage of greed has all the urgency but no sense of destination. Desire becomes inflated and loses all sense of vision and proportion. When beauty becomes an acquisition it b..
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John O'Donohue |
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114a6a3
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There is a poetic import to the phrase 'without a shadow of a doubt': in all probability, there is no doubt without a shadow. Doubt is the shadow cast when something gets in the way of the light. Ironically, doubt itself often brings greater light because of the shadow it casts.
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John O'Donohue |
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P. J. Curtis, the great Irish authority on rhythm and blues music, often says that 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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John O'Donohue |
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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..
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John O'Donohue |
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The Greeks believed that time had secret structure. There was the moment of Epiphany when time suddenly opened and something was revealed in luminous clarity. There was the moment of krisis when time got entangled and directions became confused and contradictory. There was also the moment of kairos; this was the propitious moment. Time opened up in kindness and promise. All the energies cohered to offer a fecund occasion of initiative, crea..
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John O'Donohue |
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A Blessing May the light of your soul guide you. May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart. May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul. May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work. May your work never weary you. May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and exci..
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John O'Donohue |
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Nothing in creation is ever totally at home in itself. ... It is the deepest intimacy which is nevertheless infused with infinite distance.
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love
spiritual-seeking
oneness
communion
longing
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John O'Donohue |
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We do not need to go out to find love; rather, we need to be still and let love discover us.
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John O'Donohue |
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We respond with joy to the call of beauty because in an instant it can awaken under the layers of the heart a forgotten brightness. Plato said: 'Beauty was ours in all its brightness...Whole were we who celebrated that festival' (Phaedrus).
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John O'Donohue |
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When you regain a sense of your life as a journey of discovery, you return to rhythm with yourself. When you take the time to travel with reverence, a richer life unfolds before you.
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John O'Donohue |
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Fashioned from the earth, we are souls in clay form. We need to remain in rhythm with our inner clay voice and longing.
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John O'Donohue |
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Respectability and security are subtle traps on life's journey. Those who are drawn to extremes are often nearer to renewal and self-discovery. Those trapped in the bland middle region of respectability are lost without ever realizing it. This can be a trap for those addicted to the business world. Many people in business operate only with one side of their mind: the strategic, tactical, mechanical side day in and day out. This becomes a me..
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John O'Donohue |
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The beauty of being human is the capacity and desire for intimacy. Yet we know that even those who are most intimate remain strange to us. Like children, we often "make strange" with each other."
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solitude
relationship
friendship
love
divine-love
belonging
communion
intimacy
longing
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John O'Donohue |
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e3bbf89
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There is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there's still a sureness in you, where there's a seamlessness in you, and where there is a confidence and tranquility in you. And I think the intention of
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John O’Donohue |
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The most subversive invitation you could ever accept is the invitation to awaken to who you are and where you have landed.
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John O'Donohue |
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Good conversation is the enemy of falsity, facade, and shallowness. It chases the truth of things, it demolishes the flimsy foundation of facade and it penetrates the depths so as to soar into unfolding possibility.
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friendship
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John O'Donohue |
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ON THE DEATH OF THE BELOVED Though we need to weep your loss, You dwell in that safe place in our hearts Where no storm or night or pain can reach you. Your love was like the dawn Brightening over our lives, Awakening beneath the dark A further adventure of color. The sound of your voice Found for us A new music That brightened everything. Whatever you enfolded in your gaze Quickened in the joy of its being; You placed smiles like flowers O..
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John O'Donohue |
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767bb26
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Because you were once at home somewhere, you are never an alien anywhere.
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nature
celtic-spirituality
home
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John O'Donohue |
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b251696
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The soul is always wiser than the mind, even though we are dependent on the mind to read the soul for us.
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wisdom
wise
soul
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John O'Donohue |
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This breakage within us is what makes us human and vulnerable. There is nothing more sinister than someone whose mind seems to be an absolute circle; there is a helpless coldness and a deadly certainty about such a presence.
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spirituality
love
celtic-spirituality
humanness
sensitivity
vulnerability
longing
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John O'Donohue |
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Indeed, a book is a path of words which takes the heart in new directions.
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John O'Donohue |
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I think that we are infinitely greater than our minds and we are infinitely more than our images of ourselves. One of the sad things today is that so many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them. This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies that are r..
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John O'Donohue |
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There is a desperate hunger for belonging. People feel isolated and cut off. Perhaps this is why a whole nation can assemble around the images of celebrities. They have no acquaintance with these celebrities personally. They look at them from a distance and project all their longings onto them. When something happens to a celebrity, they feel as if it is happening to themselves. There is an acute need for the reawakening of the sense of com..
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John O'Donohue |
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One of the greatest sins is the unlived life, not to allow yourself to become chief executive of the project you call your life, to have reverence always for the immensity that is inside you.
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life
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John O'Donohue |
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I feel that fear is negative wonder. It is the point at which wonder begins to consume itself and scrape off the essence of things.
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wonder
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John O'Donohue |
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I don't believe that death comes at the end of a life. I believe your death was there at your birth with you. It was the unknown presence. Every step of the road of your life that you take, your death is beside you.
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life
inspirational
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John O'Donohue |
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eea2633
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Where the imagination is alive, wonder is completely alive. Where the imagination is alive, possibility is awake because imagination is the great friend of possibility. Possibilities are always more interesting than their facts.
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wonder
inspirational
possibility
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John O'Donohue |
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0f3201a
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If you go out for several hours into a place that is wild, your mind begins to slow down, down, down. What is happening is that the clay of your body is retrieving its own sense of sisterhood with the great clay of the landscape.
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wonder
slowing-down
wild
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John O'Donohue |
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56047cc
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A lot of experiences that we have in the world are torn, broken, hard experiences, and in broken, difficult, lonesome experiences you earn a quality of light that is very precious. I often think of it as quarried light.
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pain
suffering
redemption
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John O'Donohue |
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7227807
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In the beginning was the dream... In the eternal night where no dawn broke, the dream deepened. Before anything ever was, it had to be dreamed... If we take Nature as the great artist, then all presences in the world have emerged from her mind and imagination. We are children of the earth's dreaming. It's almost as if Nature is in dream and we are her children who have broken through the dawn into time and place. Fashioned in the dreaming o..
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John O'Donohue |
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Sometimes when a friendship is in trouble, it is not to be healed by endless analysis or counseling. You need to change the rhythm of seeing each other and come in contact again with the ancient belonging that brought you together. If you invoke its power and presence around you, this ancient affinity will hold you together. Two people who are really awakened inhabit the one circle of belonging. They have awakened a more ancient force aroun..
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John O'Donohue |