The Art of Developing a Beautiful Mind

John had been scheduled to give a talk in Canada on March 30, 2008. We recently received from the organizer a copy of the short description John wrote about the topic he planned to address that night. She thought we might want to share it with all of you; and we do.

Here it is - just as he wrote it:


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THE ART OF DEVELOPING A BEAUTIFUL MIND.

The world is not simply there. Everything and everyone we see, we view through the lenses of our thoughts. Your mind is where your thoughts arise and form. It is not simply with your eyes but with your mind that you see the world. So much depends on your mind: How you see yourself, who you think you are, how you see others, what you think the meaning of life is, how you see death, belief, God, darkness and beauty is all determined by the style of mind you have.

Your mind is your greatest treasure. We become so taken up with the world, with having and doing more and more that we come to ignore who we are and forget what we see the world with. The most powerful way to change your life is to change your mind. In this evening’s talk, we will explore ways of awakening, enriching and refining your mind. We will use lecture, conversation, story, poetry and meditation.

When you beautify your mind, you beautify your world. You learn to see differently. In what seemed like dead situations, secret possibilities and invitations begin to open before you. In old suffering that held you long paralysed, you find new keys. When your mind awakens, your life comes alive and the creative adventure of your soul takes off. Passion and compassion become your new companions. As St. Iraneus said in the 2nd Century: The glory of God is the human person fully alive.

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April 17th - Concert in Memory of John O'Donohue

*Almost Sold Out* (If you are planning to attend - be sure to call for tickets right away.)

John was a great fan and supporter of The Lismorahaun Singers, Community Choir (originally from Fanore, County Clare) and Director, Archie Simpson says that he was sustained in his efforts by John's encouragement through the nine years prior to his death.

In 2005, John opened their previous major concert in Ennistymon featuring Mozart's Requiem. The recording of that performance was played at John's funeral just a few years later, and the Lismorahaun Singers gave voice again in Galway Cathedral for John's public memorial.

They are now preparing a concert peformance of Mozart's Great Mass in C minor - in memory of John - to take place on April 17th at 8:30 pm in St. Michael's Church, Ennistymon, County Clare, Ireland.

The Lismorahaun Singers will be joined by more than 75 members of the London Symphony Chorus and The City of Dublin Concert Orchestra under the baton of Joseph Cullen, Principal Conductor of the LSC.

Soloists will be Sopranos Naomi O'Connell (former choir member from age 12 to 18 and now a Full Scholarship Post Graduate Performance Student at Julliard College in NYC) and Anne O'Byrne (Dublin born resident of Philadelphia, PA); joined by Baritone Alistair Ollerenshaw (a rising young star from the U.K.) and Tenor Peter O'Donohue (award winning singer and beloved nephew of John's). Also performing that night will be Katie O'Donohue, (young emerging Soprano and John's beloved niece).



Admission is €40.
For Credit Card Booking call Burren College of Art at 00 353 65 707 72 00.

***If you are not able to attend the concert, the first CD of The Lismorahaun Singers is available for purchase from the Burrenbeo Shop.***

Lismorahaun: Spiorad Spirit

The Burren is a place of boundless energy. Here the light is ever-changing. The grey limestone can suddenly discard its mantle of mystery and reveal an incadescent treasure of pinks and blues. This rockscape is framed by a deafening silence broken only by birdsong and whispering winds. The music of the Lismorahaun Singers is born in the Burren and with unrestrained energy deeply moves its audience. We may not yet be a choir of angels but just sometimes we experience a glimpse of the "Divine", This is Spiorad.

The Lismorahaun Singers are a dymanic and constantly evolving choir composed of people from all walks of life and ranging from age 7 to 72. Archie Simpson is Choral Director.

Featured soloists: Naomi O'Connell, Michael McCormack
and Amy McDonnell-Dowling
Spoken word: John O'Donohue
Uilleann Pipes: Davy Spillane
Piano: Roy Holmes
Accordion: Jugen Simpson
Artists: The Lismorahaun Singers

St Patrick's Day

Last year, in celebration of St. Patrick's Day, we posted this essay by John. Here it is again - in case you missed it!

Prologue to The Confession of St. Patrick.*

History is an amazing presence--it is the place where vanished time gathers. While we are in the flow of time, it is difficult to glean its significance, and it is only in looking back that we can recognize the hidden dimensions at work within a particular era or epoch. St. Patrick has always been acknowledged as a pivotal figure in early Irish history and spirituality. Yet despite this importance, his significance has often become rather caricatured in legend and in the retrospective intentionality that nostalgia often confers. And yet we need not be limited by what legend has given us, since we are fortunate in having documents from Patrick's own hand.

The Confession of St. Patrick provides a window into a remarkable life. Patrick is a figure who inhabits a crucial threshold in the evolution and definition of Irish spirituality. To serve this threshold demanded a singular commitment that engaged every resource and depth of character he possessed. His story revolves around an initial irony which qualifies his centrality in the Irish tradition.

It was Irish pirates who kidnapped him from his British home and sold him into slavery here. They could never have suspected the spiritual tradition that would be born out of their brutal action.

Indeed, the structure of this initial moment sets the rhythm of Patrick's subsequent life, namely, the praxis of a spirituality of transfiguration. His physical slavery releases him into a life of inner liberation. His captors only controlled his tasks and location but they never got near the eternal spring that was awakening in his young mind.

Patrick understands his slavery as the door into divine recognition and friendship. In this awful experience of alienation and exile, he discovers God as his anam-cara. Anam is the Irish word for soul and cara is the word for friend. The Anam-cara is the Friend of the soul. This is one of the most beautiful concepts in the Celtic tradition. An ancient affinity and belonging awakened between two people in the Anam-cara relationship. This relationship cut across all other connections. In your Anam-cara you discovered the Other in whom your heart could be at home. The depth and shelter of this Anam-cara belonging enables Patrick to endure the most awful conditions. Prayer is conversation with his Anam-cara:

But after I had come to Ireland, it was then that I was made to shepherd the flocks day after day, so, as I did so, I would pray all the time, right through the day. More and more the love of God and fear of him grew strong within me. And as my faith grew, so the Spirit became more and more active, so that in a single day I would say as many as a hundred prayers, and at night only slightly less. Although I might be staying in a forest or out on a mountainside, it would be the same; even before dawn broke, I would be aroused to pray. In snow, in frost, in rain, I would hardly notice any discomfort, and I was never slack but always full of energy. It is clear to me now, that this was due to the fervor of the Spirit within me.

Pascal said that in difficult times you should always keep something beautiful in your heart. Patrick is able to survive these harsh and lonely territories of exile precisely because he keeps the beauty of God alive in his heart. The inner beauty of the divine intimacy transfigures outer bleakness.

This inner intimacy brings his soul alive. It opens the world of the divine imagination to this youth. Consequently, he becomes available for his destiny in a new way. His dreams invite him to ever richer thresholds of his future. He is shown in a dream a ship that will take him away from slavery. The lantern of his dream guides him through two hundred miles of hostile territory to a harbor where strange sailors unexpectedly relent and take him aboard ship. Fascinating relics of ancient traditions glisten through this phase of the narrative.

His parents and friends are delighted at his return. He studies and becomes a priest and bishop. Yet his destiny is not to remain among what is familiar or complacent. Again the dream calls him to journey toward the next threshold. It is the dream of a letter from Ireland full of the "Voice of the Irish" calling him to "come back and walk once more among us." Patrick allows himself to be guided by the "vision in his dreams." He is "pierced to the core" by this request.

It is fascinating that the crucial new direction in his life is not determined by the clear calculations of the daytime but rather originate in the voices of dream in the depth of the night. Often the most original disclosures assemble in the unconscious and are deciphered through imagination and dream. Patrick is so attuned to this deeper dimension of soul that his sense of who he is rendered ever more complex by such new inner disclosures.

His sense of soul complexity finds its most fascinating expression in the frame-breaking experience that happens at that tender threshold somewhere between dream, prayer, and vision:

And on another night, "I do not know, only God knows" whether in me or outside myself, I heard the most wise words which as yet I could not comprehend . . .

In the moment of deepest divine encounter, the frames of normal perception are radically extended and intensified. Yet in contrast to some Oriental mysticism, the sense of the intimacy and belonging of the Self does not fade into anonymity of Nothingness:

And once again, I saw him praying within my soul, it was as if I was still inside my body, and then I heard him above, me, that is over my inner man.

Patrick is amazed at this intrusion or more precisely extrusion from his own depths. This new presence is not himself but yet is radically at one with him:

And as all this was happening, I was stunned and kept marveling and wondering . . . who he might be, who was praying in this wise within me.

But as this prayer was ending, he declared that it was the Spirit.

Patrick discovers that the deepest experience of prayer is not the mere verbal intention of an isolated subject directed at a distant deity. The deepest prayer is beyond subjectivity and objectivity. It is the echo of the inner membrane where the human soul dovetails into the divine. This is reminiscent of what Eckhart terms the Birth of God in the soul. This event liberates Patrick from oppression of outer constraint by absolutely confirming the depth, authenticity, and expressiveness of the inner wellspring He tells us: in such ways I have learned, by my own experience.

For any great spirit who must negotiate the great thresholds and indeed become a threshold the nourishment and sustenance of such inner confirmation is vital. He can travel on any dangerous or hostile outer journey because he knows he is at Home within. This is what sustains him in the lonely times of betrayal, misunderstanding, and scandal. Patrick is a strikingly modern figure in being ambivalent externally, however internally he inhabits the unity of innocence and authenticity. His singular independence is grounded in the sense of his own autonomy. It is reminiscent of Kierkegaard's statement: "Purity of heart is to will one thing."

Patrick's intimacy with the divine makes him painfully aware of his faults and unworthiness. Yet this recognition never becomes self-obsessive. He acknowledges that the tender mercy of God is deeper and more ultimate than mere human failing. His faults, therefore, do not become a barrier to either his destiny or growth. His difficulties with eros make Patrick real and interesting. They signal the charisma and passion of his personality and presence.

Patrick's presence is full of uaisleacht. The Irish word for nobility is uaisleacht; it also carries echoes of honor, dignity, and poise. Patrick exercised uaisleacht in relation to the people he shepherded. He served, defended, and cared for them, yet he refused any gifts or attempts to
claim him. He also exercised uaisleacht in relation to his own destiny. He constructed no kingdom of the ego. He opened himself to the ultimate calling and challenge of Otherness in its social, territorial, and spiritual forms:

For I know full well that poverty and adversity suit me better than riches and delights.

The range and intensity of his inner and outer exposure is both admirable and fascinating. Only a great soul could engage such otherness and still remain gentle and free.

A threshold is a place where different territories meet. Patrick is a great threshold. In him the pre-Christian and Christian dimensions of the Irish sensibility find an acute and balanced tension. Frequently in the Confessions we sense this meeting. Near the end he aligns the pre-Christian Celtic sense of the divinity of the sun with Christ: "the true sun . . . who will never die." In the Lorica attributed to Patrick, even though it comes three centuries later, we find a lovely balance of the pre-Christian and the Christian.

The Lorica derives its particular nuance from the absolute recognition of the omnipresence of God. The new day is understood as a gift of the divine. The very energy of awakening and arising is made possible by the love and care of God. Whatever the day holds is welcome because the ultimate origin and destination of the day is divinity. It explicitly recognizes the day in the light of the Trinitarian embrace. A day is no mere segment of anonymous and contingent time. A day is full of latent divinity:

I arise today
in a mighty strength
calling upon the Trinity,
believing in the Three Persons
saying they are One
thanking my creator.

This lyrical and direct evocation of the Trinity is then followed by a recognition of the Christological depth of our experience. Next the forces of the invisible world that secretly contribute to our destiny and experience are named and invoked. Then he names the elements and acknowledges how their latent divinity calls the individual forth out of the night into the energy and celebration of life:

I arise today
through strength in the sky:
light of the sun
moon's reflection
dazzle of fire
speed of lightning
wild wind
deep sea
firm earth
hard rock

The secret faithfulness of landscape is recognized here. It provides the where without which no life or object could exist.

Patrick draws constant attention to his rustic and unlearned sensibility. The depth and probe of his writings belie this. Yet it is true that the exploration and refinement of theological connections and nuance is neither his objective nor gift. Yet in his writings the pre-Christian and the Christian are always adjacent. Close enough to allow us to explore their embrace and recognize here a latent/nascent theology of Creation. A Celtic theology of Creation understands such continuity and interflow as vital, rich, and liberating.

--John O'Donohue
Conamara, Ireland

* This work was originally published as the Prologue for: The Confession of St. Patrick by John Skinner.
Used by permission of the publisher.

Celebrating and Sending Love

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them. When you feel love for your beloved and his or her love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved. Send that love out into the world to people who are desperate; to those who are starving; to those who are trapped in prison; in hospitals and all the brutal terrains of bleak and tormented lives. When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people. This love is the deepest power of prayer.

John O'Donohue Anam Cara ("The Wounded Gift" in chapter 1)

The Blessings of John O'Donohue

Thoughts, written by Rev. John Dear, about John O'Donohue, his book "To Bless the Space Between Us" (Benedictus in the UK) and his work, can be found at today's National Catholic Reporter web site. *

"As high over the mountains the eagle spreads its wings, may your perspective be larger than the view from the foothills. When the way is flat and dull in times of gray endurance, may your imagination continue to evoke horizons."

As Barack Obama made his way to Washington D.C. for his inauguration last week, he stopped in Baltimore to greet a crowd of well-wishers. At the event, Maryland's Governor Martin O'Malley offered this blessing. It's from "For One Who Holds Power," (part of the collection To Bless the Space Between Us) by John O'Donohue, the Irish poet, philosopher and spiritual writer, who died a year ago.

As the dramatic events of last week unfolded, I found myself returning to John's writings to center myself, steep myself in his blessings and dig deeper contemplative roots. . . . for more

* We noticed a couple of errors in the article and offer these corrections:

• John was in the south of France with his partner Kristine, visiting her parents; John's mother was not with them.
• The doctor in France determined that John's death was caused by a heart attack.

Gov. O'Malley of Maryland greets Obama with a Blessing

Saturday (January 17, 2009), on his way to Washington D.C. for his inauguration, President-elect Barack Obama stopped in Baltimore, Maryland. He was greeted by Maryland's Governor Martin O'Malley and a crowd of well-wishers. As he welcomed the President-elect to Baltimore, Gov. O'Malley offered a blessing -- a reading of John O'Donohue's, For One Who Holds Power from To Bless the Space Between Us (entitled, Benedictus in the U.K.)

Death Transfigures Our Separation

In the earliest hour of the fourth day of January, 2008, John O'Donohue died peacefully in his sleep. He had, only a few days before, celebrated his fifty-second birthday. For those who were with him on his birthday and in the few days that followed, memories of the time are filled with exuberant laughter, abiding love, and deep joy. His sudden departure took everyone by surprise.

Over the past year, we have heard from people all over the world offering beautiful condolences to those who feel most keenly his absence. They also express abundant gratitude for John's life and gifts. We cherish these messages and thank you all for reaching out to us.

There are a few who have asked us to share our own experiences in relation to John's passing. We find that our own words fail us when we are asked about our journey over this threshold; John's words, however, remain faithful. We turn to his books and poetry, and find there: understanding, compassion, and a steadying hand as we navigate the revised universe in which we find ourselves.

When Death Visits . . .

Death is a lonely visitor. After it visits your home, nothing is ever the same again. There is an empty place at the table; there is an absence in the house. Having someone close to you die is an incredibly strange and desolate experience. Something breaks within you then that will never come together again. Gone is the person whom you loved, whose face and hands and body you knew so well. This body, for the first time, is completely empty. This is very frightening and strange. After the death many questions come into your mind concerning where the person has gone, what they see and feel now. The death of a loved one is bitterly lonely. When you really love someone, you would be willing to die in their place. Yet no one can take another's place when that time comes. Each one of us has to go alone. It is so strange that when someone dies, they literally disappear. Human experience includes all kinds of continuity and discontinuity, closeness and distance. In death, experience reaches the ultimate frontier. The deceased literally falls out of the visible world of form and presence. At birth you appear out of nowhere, at death you disappear to nowhere. . . . The terrible moment of loneliness in grief comes when you realize that you will never see the deceased again. The absence of their life, the absence of their voice, face, and presence become something that, as Sylvia Plat says, begins to grow beside you like a tree.

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Death Transfigures Our Separation . . .

It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, "Being here is so much." It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free. The more lonely side of being here is our separation in the world. When you live in a body you are separate from every other object and person. Many of our attempts to pray, to love, and to create are secret attempts at transfiguring that separation in order to build bridges outward so that others can reach us and we can reach them. At death, this physical separation is broken. The soul is released from its particular and exclusive location in this body. The soul then comes in to a free and fluent universe of spiritual belonging.

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Death As An Invitation To Freedom . . .

If you really live your life to the full, death will never have power over you. It will never seem like a destructive, negative event. It can become, for you, the moment of release into the deepest treasures of your own nature; it can be your full entry into the temple of your soul. If you are able let go of things, you learn to die spiritually in little ways during your life. When you learn to let go of things, a greater generosity, openness, and breath comes into your life. Imagine this letting go multiplied a thousand times at the moment of your death. That release can bring you a completely new divine belonging.

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from ANAM CARA: A Book of Celtic Wisdom John O'Donohue (c) 1997.

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Other bloggers' remembrances
Gareth Higgins
a year ago today . . .
Pip Wilson

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