WHERE LOVE HAS LIVED
A home is not simply a building; it is the shelter around the intimacy of a life. Coming in from the outside world and its rasp of force and usage, you relax and allow yourself to be who you are. The inner walls of a home are threaded with the textures of one's soul, a subtle weave of presences. If you could see your home through the lens of the soul, you would be surprised at the beauty concealed in the memory your home holds. When you enter some homes, you sense how the memories have seeped to the surface, infusing the aura of the place and deepening the tone of its presence. Where love has lived, a house still holds the warmth. Even the poorest home feels like a nest if love and tenderness dwell there.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from his books, Beauty: The Invisible Embrace (US) / Divine Beauty (Europe)
Ordering Info: www.johnodonohue.com/store
Co. Clare / Ireland
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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.
Somewhere in us a dignity presides
That is more gracious than the smallness
That fuels us with fear and force,
A dignity that trusts the form a day takes.
So at the end of this day, we give thanks
For being betrothed to the unknown
And for the secret work
Through which the mind of the day
And wisdom of the soul become one.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from the blessing, 'The Inner History of a Day,' found in the books: Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)
Ordering Info: www.johnodonohue.com/store
Co Kerry, Ireland - 2020
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ON WAKING
I give thanks for arriving
Safely in a new dawn,
For the gift of eyes
To see the world,
The gift of mind
To feel at home
In my life.
The waves of possibility
Breaking on the shore of dawn,
The harvest of the past
That awaits my hunger,
And all the furtherings
This new day will bring.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
From his books, Benedictus (Europe) / To Bless the Space Between Us (US)
Ordering Info: johnodonohue.com/store
Ballyvaughan, Co. Clare / Ireland
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As we journey onwards in life, more and more spaces within us fill with absence. We begin to have more and more friends among the dead. Every person suffers the absence of their past. It is utterly astonishing how the force and fiber of each day unravel into the vacant air of yesterday. You look behind you and you see nothing of your days here. Our vanished days increase our experience of absence. Yet our past does not deconstruct as if it never was. Memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather. Memory rescues experience from total disappearance. The kingdom of memory is full of the ruins of presence. It is astonishing how faithful experience actually is; how it never vanishes completely. Experience leaves deep traces in us. It is surprising that years after something has happened to you the needle of thought can hit some groove in the mind and the music of a long vanished event can rise in your soul as fresh and vital as the evening it happened.
JOHN O'DONOHUE
Excerpt from his book, Eternal Echoes
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Hiking in Connemara / Co. Galway, Ireland
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