John O'Donohue Quotes

FOR A NEW BEGINNING In out-of-the-way places of the heart, Where your thoughts never think to wander, This beginning has been quietly forming, Waiting until you were ready to emerge. For a long time it has watched your desire, Feeling the emptiness growing inside you, Noticing how you willed yourself on, Still unable to leave what you had outgrown. It watched you play with the seduction of safety And the gray promises that sameness whispered, Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent, Wondered would you always live like this. Then the delight, when your courage kindled, And out you stepped onto new ground, Your eyes young again with energy and dream, A path of plenitude opening before you. Though your destination is not yet clear You can trust the promise of this opening; Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning That is at one with your life’s desire. Awaken your spirit to adventure; Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk; Soon you will be home in a new rhythm, For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

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.

How can we ever know the difference we make to the soul of the earth? Where the infinite stillness of the earth meets the passion of the human eye, invisible depths strain towards the mirror of the name. In the word, the earth breaks silence.

You know that if you are graced with creative and compassionate and warm awareness, you are going to have and incredible life. You are going to have sufferings as well, but you will always return to that place of warmth and fire within yourself.

The mind of blessing is wise, and it knows that whatever torments or diminishes a person cannot be healed simply from within that diminishment; consequently it addresses the wholeness and draws that light and healing into the diminished area.

To young mind, work seemed to be the price that was gladly paid for the privilege of living so closely with the earth. Work was a real conversation with the landscape. It was not an abuse or raiding of the landscape. It was amazing to learn how to work in this context.

One of the greatest tragedies of our time is that everyone is ripping off second hand thinking. We can liberate ourselves by trusting our own instinct and finding the thought-lenses which show us our world in the way we need to see it, that can calm and bring us home, and also challenge us.

When we love and allow ourselves to be loved, we begin more and more to inhabit the kingdom of the eternal. Fear changes into courage, emptiness becomes plentitude, and distance becomes intimacy.

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.

The Celtic mind was not burdened by dualism. It did not separate what belongs together. The Celtic imagination articulates the inner friendship that embraces Nature, divinity, underworld, and human world as one.

At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter?

Each of us is a secret envoi of the earth.

In the light and reverence of blessing, a person or situation becomes illuminated in a completely new way. In a dead wall a new window opens, in dense darkness a path starts to glimmer, and into a broken heart healing falls like morning dew.

From time immemorial it has been one of the deepest longings of the human heart to strain against the erosion of one’s life, to find a way of living and being that manages to find some stable ground within time, a place from where something eternal can be harvested from our disappearance. This is what all art strives for: the creation of a living permanence.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.