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.
John O’Donohue
For a New Beginning
Topic: Spiritual Growth & Practice
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 plentitude 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.
John O’Donohue (1956-2008)
Humanism, Arts and Sciences
For a New Beginning
O'Donohue, John. To Bless the Space Between Us - A Book of Blessings. Doubleday, 2008, [John O’Donahue, For a New Beginning].
John O’Donohue
Resources
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On Being with Krista Tippett, Interview with John O’Donohue
No conversation we’ve ever done has been more beloved than this one. The Irish poet, theologian, and philosopher insisted on beauty as a human calling. He had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with the inner landscape of our lives and with what he called “the invisible world” that is constantly intertwining what we can know and see. This was one of the last interviews he gave before his unexpected death in 2008. But John O’Donohue’s voice and writings continue to bring ancient mystical wisdom to modern confusions and longings.
–Krista Tippett [On Being Studios, John O’Donohue — The Inner Landscape of Beauty – On Being with Krista Tippett].
The Inner Landscape of Beauty [excerpt from interview transcript]
MR. O’DONOHUE: So what I think happens here a bit is that there’s a reduction of identity to biography. And they’re not the same thing. I think biography unfolds identity and makes it visible and puts the mirror of it out there, but I think identity is a more complex thing. And what I love in this regard is my old friend Meister Eckhart, the 14th-century mystic…
MS. TIPPETT: Right, German mystic.
MR. O’DONOHUE: German mystic. And one day I read in him, and he said, “There is a place in the soul that neither time nor space nor no created thing can touch.” And I really thought that was amazing. And if you cash it out, what it means is that your identity is not equivalent to your biography and that there is a place in you where you have never been wounded, where there is 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 prayer and spirituality and love is now and again to visit that inner kind of sanctuary.
–Krista Tippett [On Being Studios, John O’Donohue — The Inner Landscape of Beauty – On Being with Krista Tippett].
Additional John O’Donohue Quotes
“If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times. In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control. The more love you give away, the more love you will have.”
–John O’Donohue [Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom].
“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. You are loath to let compromise or the threat of danger hold you back from striving toward the summit of fulfillment.”
–John O’Donohue [Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom].