Alexandersmap

    Tag: John O'Donohue

    • Gathering Towards

      “Your soul is the priestess of memory, selecting, sifting, and ultimately gathering your vanishing days toward presence.”
      — John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

      If all that we’ve experienced has brought us to here and now, and we are the sum of each of these days, it follows that whatever days we have left ahead of us are destined to be gathered as well. So why not raise the bar with heightened experience, greater expectations of ourselves, and a healthier approach to living? Awareness is seeing all that is, but also all that could be.

      Thinking in possibilities is optimistic. It’s the dreamer within, imagining best possible outcomes. We all need to follow a dream, but we also need to root ourselves in reality. The better approach may be to also think in probabilities. Probabilities are calculated. They’re pragmatic. They’re based on facts. Now I know facts are funny things nowadays, but it turns out they still work in the real world of moving ourselves from here to there.

      To design a life, we ought to begin with the end in mind. Not the very end, but the desired outcome of this particular phase of our lives. We may think of our lives as a series of projects that we bring to conclusion. These projects define us and build our CV (Curriculum Vitae), qualifying us for even more ambitious projects. A career, a soul, our physical fitness, education and relationships with others and ourselves are built from all that we gather in each phase of our life. Drift too much in any one area and we see that area suffer.

      This is where awareness comes in handy. We learn to see the gaps forming in our lives, and to formulate plans to fill them. If one plan doesn’t work, try another, and another still. What is the probable outcome of establishing a better fitness and nutrition routine today and every day? What is the probable outcome of reading at least ten pages of a great book every day? What is the probable outcome of putting the damned phone down and being fully present with that person we’re talking to?

      We are each either climbing towards personal excellence (arete) or sliding away from it. Yes, we are the sum of our days, but that one step forward or those two steps back don’t define us, it’s simply where we are starting from as we begin our next day’s climb. Every act gathers us towards some outcome. What shall it be?

    • Flowing Towards the Next

      I would love to live
      like a river flows,
      carried by the surprise
      of its own unfolding.
      — John O’Donohue, Fluent

      This river is unfolding rapidly lately. We think of rivers as quietly predictable. We forget about the rapids and the plunges off of cliffs. Waterfalls are simply rivers with an abrupt change of state. And so it is that life can be exhilarating some days, and utterly exhausting other days. That’s life though, isn’t it? It will level out again one day. We learn to take it as it comes.

      To paraphrase my favorite Navy pilot, I have seen the future, and I don’t have to like it. But we can work to influence that which we can control. It’s our life, such that it is, and we are the only ones who will ever have the front row seat on this journey.

      A confession: I’ve quoted O’Donohue’s poem incorrectly. The original had capitalized the first letter of each line. My inclination to correct that is a weakness in my own way of thinking. He wrote what he wrote, and I ought to leave it well enough alone. So here you go:

      I would love to live
      Like a river flows,
      Carried by the surprise
      Of its own unfolding.

      It doesn’t matter how the poem was written. What mattered was the wisdom captured in a few words placed just so. We get so caught up in the trivial details that we drown ourselves instead of accepting everything as our unique, enthralling story. Here we are, moving through time from here to somewhere. We ought to look around and acknowledge what is.

      Still, those waterfalls. It’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing. We want to make a splash in our brief time before infinity, but it isn’t always what we expected it to be. It helps in such moments to remember the Serenity Prayer:

      God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

      We learn that wisdom is only useful when it is acquired. We go through life stumbling across bits of wisdom along the way. It’s up to us whether we pick it up or leave it forgotten on the banks of missed opportunity. We are the sum of our parts, and in the end everything we accumulate will carry us somewhere, soon enough.

      Here’s the thing about that poem we might have missed as we (I) focused on the way it was written: O’Donohue wasn’t telling us to live as he lives, he was telling us he’d love to live thusly. We are all figuring it out, forever surprised by life in all its stillness and turbulent moments. Be here, now. That is flow, and it will carry us from this moment onwards towards the next.

    • To Do at Last

      I bless the night that nourished my heart
      To set the ghosts of longing free
      Into the flow and figure of dream
      That went to harvest from the dark
      Bread for the hunger no one sees.

      All that is eternal in me
      Welcome the wonder of this day,
      The field of brightness it creates
      Offering time for each thing
      To arise and illuminate.

      I place on the altar of dawn:
      The quiet loyalty of breath,
      The tent of thought where I shelter,
      Wave of desire I am shore to
      And all beauty drawn to the eye.

      May my mind come alive today
      To the invisible geography
      That invites me to new frontiers,
      To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
      To risk being disturbed and changed.

      May I have the courage today
      To live the life that I would love,
      To postpone my dream no longer
      But do at last what I came here for
      And waste my heart on fear no more.
      — John O’Donohue, A Morning Offering

      For Saint Patrick’s Day, a morning offering from a revered Irish writer. And what a poem it is! Go on and read it once again, I don’t mind at all. I’ve read it a few times more myself, considered what to go with and in the end quoted the poem in its entirety.

      Patrick chased the snakes out of Ireland. George Washington and Henry Knox chased the British out of Boston Harbor. We note the history of this day but ought to remember to make a little history ourselves. Forget drowning in pint or dram—find your stride today instead. A wee bit of poetry, a soundtrack of favorite Irish music, a brisk walk, and some writing of our own. Perhaps a splash of green to mark the occasion. The 17th of March is a day for action, not simply commemoration.

      The truth is, we get worn down by life and need to be provoked back on track. To break the dead shell of yesterdays and regain that courage to do at last what we came here for. There’s nothing to be done about all that’s happened before today, save to learn from it. Use this time to chase away our own snakes and move onward towards a brighter future. To welcome the wonder of this day by doing it justice.

    • The Way of Rain

      You have been forced to enter empty time.
      The desire that drove you has relinquished.
      There is nothing else to do now but rest
      And patiently learn to receive the self
      You have forsaken for the race of days.

      At first your thinking will darken
      And sadness take over like listless weather.
      The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

      You have traveled too fast over false ground;
      Now your soul has come to take you back.

      Take refuge in your senses, open up
      To all the small miracles you rushed through.

      Become inclined to watch the way of rain
      When it falls slow and free.
      — John O’Donohue, For One Who is Exhausted, A Blessing

      I might go weeks without reading poetry. I may feel victorious in my efficiency and productive use of time. I can sometimes grind through my days in hopeful work, forgetting to walk outside to greet the day. These are days of emptying the bucket while filling the ledger with checked tasks. Empty buckets make a hollow sound. They demand to be filled.

      It’s not lost on me that I’m posting about taking time to rest at the beginning of another work week. When we go, go go! for weeks at a time, sometimes things like weekends disappear in a flash. We forget to see the small miracles we rush through in our mad pursuit of getting things done.

      Slow down. Step away. Find that which is calling you from outside yourself. The work will always be there, awaiting your return. Or maybe it was never your work at all. How can you know if you never take the time to listen?

      The days and the seasons roll on by, like waves to the beach. We only have so many days. Only so many seasons. We must learn to slow down and celebrate the one we’re in.

    • The Eternal Makes You Urgent

      “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.” – John O’Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

      O’Donohue picked the name of his book with purpose. “Anam cara”, or “soul mate”, suggests that the timeless wisdom buried within might offer the kind of guidance you would get from a cherished friend or spouse. Google it and you’ll find coffee mugs and spiritual retreats and other such things. It would also be a great boat name. And it stirs something in you whether you have one or long for one.

      This idea of the soul awakening isn’t new to us. If this awakening happens at all, it might not be thought of as soul, but as passion or purpose or calling. Some of us steer clear of words like soul. It almost feels intrusive for me to be writing about such things. Not skating my lane, you might say. But I understand eternity, and urgency, and this idea that the things that matter most to us require immediate attention. For our time in eternity isn’t the moments on this side of the turf.

      My own urgency started burning inside of me when I started writing again. It served as a catalyst for exploration and deeper thinking. And when you have it yourself you quickly see the urgency in others. Hikers hiking every available moment, landlocked sailors scrambling to be ready for the warmer days ahead, small business owners pouring every bit of available energy into standing up something special, artists creating brilliant mirrors that reflect back on the rest of us. Urgency senses its kind out in the wild.

      The trick is finding and awakening that soul. And you only find it by trying and doing, tossing aside and finding something else to do. If you’re lucky you find it quickly and embrace it. Or you see it and follow a different path, only to have it pull at you until you finally listen or die embittered at the path you took instead. That’s no way to begin eternity. Is it?