Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom

The False Image Can Paralyze

The King and the Beggar’s Gift

Heartful Work Brings Beauty

5 Aging: The Beauty of the Inner Harvest

Time as a Circle

The Seasons in the Heart

Autumn and the Inner Harvest

Transience Makes a Ghost of Experience

Memory: Where Our Vanished Days Secretly Gather

Tír na n-Óg: The Land of Youth

Eternal Time

The Soul as Temple of Memory

Self-Compassion and the Art of Inner Harvesting

To Keep Something Beautiful in Your Heart

The Bright Field

The Passionate Heart Never Ages

The Fire of Longing

Aging: An Invitation to New Solitude

Loneliness: The Key to Courage

Wisdom as Poise and Grace

Old Age and the Twilight Treasures

Old Age and Freedom

6 Death: The Horizon Is in the Well

The Unknown Companion

The Faces of Death in Everyday Life

Death as the Root of Fear

Death in the Celtic Tradition

When Death Visits…

The Caoineadh: The Irish Mourning Tradition

The Soul That Kissed the Body

The Bean Sí

A Beautiful Death

The Dead Are Our Nearest Neighbors

The Ego and the Soul

Death as an Invitation to Freedom

Nothingness: A Face of Death

Waiting and Absence

Birth as Death

Death Transfigures Our Separation

Are Space and Time Different in the Eternal World?

The Dead Bless Us

Further Recommended Reading

About the Author

Other Books by John O’Donohue

Copyright

About the Publisher

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I wish to thank Diane Reverand, my editor at HarperCollins, for her encouragement and help; Kim Witherspoon and her agency for her belief in my work and its effective mediation; Tami Simon and Michael Taft at Sounds True for their care and support, and Anne Minogue for introducing me; John Devitt, who read the manuscript and offered a thorough, creative, and literary critique; Marian O’Beirn, who read each draft of the manuscript, for her encouragement, invaluable editorial advice, and attention; David Whyte for his brotherly care and generosity; Ellen Wingard for her support and confidence in the work; and my family for all the ordinary magic and laughter! To the landscape and the ancestors; o mo áirde a ug fosca agus solas.

PROLOGUE

IT IS STRANGE TO BE HERE. THE MYSTERY NEVER LEAVES YOU alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world. Through the opening of the mouth, we bring out sounds from the mountain beneath the soul. These sounds are words. The world is full of words. There are so many talking all the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on television, on radio, in the paper, in books. The noise of words keeps what we call the world there for us. We take each other’s sounds and make patterns, predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies. Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call the world together. Yet the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates. Everyone is an artist. Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.

Humans are new here. Above us, the galaxies dance out toward infinity. Under our feet is ancient earth. We are beautifully molded from this clay. Yet the smallest stone is millions of years older than us. In your thoughts, the silent universe seeks echo.

An unknown world aspires toward reflection. Words are the oblique mirrors that hold your thoughts. You gaze into these word-mirrors and catch glimpses of meaning, belonging, and shelter. Behind their bright surfaces is the dark and the silence. Words are like the god Janus, they face outward and inward at once.