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;
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.
