RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful...

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RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful... - 5/13/2008 7:44:20 AM

Alchemist

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Joined: 7/26/2007
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Juliana

Thank you for sharing so generously. "Anam Cara" was John O'Donohue's first book. He essentially left the priesthood, which he had served for nearly 20 years, in order to write this book. I felt he was 'making up for lost time' and that is why the book is so dense with ideas.

He had much he felt needed to be said - no doubt prompted by Spirit. And like all great teachers, he showed others how they might find the same inner springs that he had found. Your selection is a great example.

Alchemist

_____________________________

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that Self may prove to be.
~ May Sarton

Post #: 161

RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful... - 5/22/2008 4:16:06 PM

J1937

Posts: 729
Joined: 6/25/2007
From: Austria/Europe
Status: online

Alchemist,
Thank you for responding.

I am grateful for Anam Cara, as John O´Donohue brings to life ancient Celtic wisdom, which is of special relevance to us today. Again, I am amazed at how dense with thought the book is. All I can do here is to whet the appetite for reading it of those who do not yet know it.

In the chapter "The Human Body is Your Only Home" O´Donohue reminds us that our bodies are taken from the earth:

"It is mysterious that the human body is clay... Just as it is an immense privilege for your clay to have come up into the light, it is also a great responsibility. In your clay body things are coming to expression and to light, that were never known before, presences that never came to light or shape in any other individual".

In this book we can meet with ideas which have possibly never crossed our minds before. Thus we could see sorrow, moving through us like a dark cloud, like a dark mist over a landscape. It is a mistake to interfere with this movement of feeling, as this emotion belongs more to the clay we are than to our mind. It is wise to let this weather of feeling pass; it is on its way elsewhere.

"Essentially, we belong beautifully to nature. The body knows this belonging and desires it... The human body is at home on the earth."

Connectedness - "all is one" - is beautifully expressed in what is traditionally believed to be the first poem ever composed in Ireland:

I am the wind which breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave of the ocean,
I am the murmur of the billows -
I am the ox of the seven combats,
I am the vulture upon the rocks,
I am a beam of the sun,
I am the fairest of plants,
I am the wild boar in valor,
I am the salmon in the water,
I am a lake in the plain,
I am a world of knowledge,
I am the point of the lance of battle,
I am the God who created the fire in the head.

Amairgen

To be continued with: "The Body is in the Soul".

Juliana
___________________________________
I am in everything and everything is in me.

Post #: 162

RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful... - 6/17/2008 6:09:20 AM

J1937

Posts: 729
Joined: 6/25/2007
From: Austria/Europe
Status: online

Reading is to the mind like running is to the body. If a person wants to exercise their mind, read a good book.’ ~Lamar Cole

Much research has been done on reading and its many benefits. Those who read books seem to have a better chance for a successful fulfilling adult life. They tend to have many interests, develop an ability to understand how other people think and feel and tend to be more flexible in their own thinking. One woman who celebrated her 100th birthday put it well: “When I go somewhere I have to go in a wheelchair. But when I read, I can go anywhere, anytime I want. And no one has to help me!” We are about to move into the summer holidays and it’s a time of year when we plan to unwind and relax. A book can be a very important part of that plan.
- James MsSweeney

Juliana
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Speak Peace in a World of Conflict

Post #: 163

RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful... - 6/17/2008 8:40:32 AM

Hope coach

Posts: 389
Joined: 9/20/2007
Status: offline

Juliana
How true that books can transport, entertain, share lives, reach our levels of conciousness and enlighten us....I am finally do some reading as I watch my grandchildren frolic at the pool they are 10 and 12......and there are lifeguards isnt it amazing how when we write there is clarity reading while at the pool with grandchildren.......good books can defocus us from real time or help us escape a situation too.....anyway I finally picked up Eat Pray Love and it is very good....someone also gave me the book The New Earth have not got past chapter 1 yet much differant reading....the important thing is I have not read for pleasure in years and this is a good start thanks for your posts on reading they inspire me...
Namaste
Hope coach
Barbara T

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In the Spirit of Recovery

Post #: 164

RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful... - 6/17/2008 5:09:16 PM

buttington

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Joined: 6/9/2007
From: UK
Status: offline

I have gone back to my first love in books, autobiography, after years of a more philosophical kind, and am enjoying them immensely. I've also learnt quite a lot. My two most recent ones have included episodes during the last war. One was called "Beyond Nab End" by William Woodruff. (after first reading "The Road to Nab End") He spent quite a lot of his youth in Germany just prior to the war starting, and it was a very interesting perspective on the lives of ordinary people at that time.
The second book was called "A Bag of Marbles" (I've lent it to someone & can't remember the author's name) about 2 Jewish children living in France during the last war, and their extraordinary exploits in keeping alive. Another very interesting and informative book from which I learnt a lot. It's definitely a favourite now.

Jude

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Love is the only way

Post #: 165

RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful... - 7/20/2008 12:09:59 PM

Imenuff

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Joined: 3/23/2007
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After seeing T.O's recent pictures,I again picked up John O'Donohue's "Beauty, the Invisible Embrace." Below is a short excerpt from the book which so clearly gives credence to the beauty in live. If anyone else has or is reading this book, please add your thoughts.

"The experience of the beautiful is an experience of a potentially whole and holy order of things wherever it may be (Hans-Geoarg Gadamer).

In Greek, the word for Beautiful is to kalon related to kalein which includes the notion of ‘call’. When we experience beauty, we feel called, called to awaken under the layers of the heart, a forgotten brightness. This is not a call to decadence or self indulgence restricted only to the non suffering. Often it is in the bleakest most difficult turns on the road that we need it most and it is those little glimpses of beauty, whether through nature or through some small human act of kindness and caring, which enable people to endure the most desparate frontiers."

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Shalom(May you be at peace in Body, Mind,& Spirit)

I'menuff

Post #: 166

RE: BOOKS for which I am grateful... - 8/19/2008 10:36:54 AM

J1937

Posts: 729
Joined: 6/25/2007
From: Austria/Europe
Status: online

I have repeatedly thought of my promise to continue sharing insights which can be found in John O´Donohue´s "Anam Cara", in particular his statement that "The body is in the soul". I was surprised to hear this very sentence again in a conference given by Henri Boulad, and I have since pondered on it every now and then.

John O´Donohue says, "Western thought has taught us that the soul is in the body. The soul was thought to be confined to some special, small and refined region within the body... When a person died, the soul departed and the empty body collapsed. This version of the soul seems false."

He then takes us back to the more ancient way of looking at it:

"The body is in the soul. Your soul reaches out further than your body and it simultaneously suffuses your body and your mind. Your soul has more refined antennae than your mind or ego."

This has consequences: "In fact, there is very little needed in order to develop a real sense of your own spiritual individuality. One of the things that is absolutely essential is silence, the other is solitude."

We know about this, of course. But O´Donohue´s point of view can open a new outlook:

"In each person there is a point of absolute non-connection with everything else and with everyone.... It means that we cannot continue to seek outside ourselves for the things we need from within. The blessings for which we hunger are not to be found in other places or people. These gifts can only be given to you by yourself."

Juliana
____________________________________________
"In everyone´s inner solitude there is a warm hearth"

Post #: 167