Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Your way of life has so little to do with what you feel and love in the world.

“If you were a stone, you could remain still, gathered in silent witness in the same landscape. The horizons and the infinity would never trouble you. Nothing could draw you out. As a human, your daily experience is riven with fracture and fragmentation.

Like a nomad you wander from event to event, from person to person, unable to settle anywhere for too long. The day is a chase after ghost duties; at evening you are exhausted. A day is over and so much of it was wasted on things that meant to little to you, duties and meetings from which your heart was absent. Months and years pass and you fumble on, still incapable of finding a foothold on the path of time you walk.

A large proportion of your activity distracts you from remembering that you are a guest of the universe, to whom one life has been given. You mistake the insisten pressure of daily demands for reality and your more delicate and intuitive nature wilts. When you wake from your obsessions, you feel cheated.

Your longing is being numbed and your longing becomes merely external. Your way of life has so little to do with what you feel and love in the world. But, because of the many demands on you and responsibilities that you have, you feel helpless to gather your self; you are dragged in so many directions away from true belonging.”

From ‘Eternal Echoes’ by John O Donohue

2 comments:

The Gladdings in Lexington said...

Thanks for this post - I'm glad I decided to take a break from what feels pressing to read it. It's not the knowing of a thing is it? I gave his 'Anam Cara' to a friend 10 years ago, and it literally changed her life. She spent a weekend with him in Ireland a few months before he died. She has taken his wisdom to heart in ways I have yet to...

billy said...

Gives new meaning to the thought that the "stones will cry out" and the idea of nature "testifying" to God's glory....it is remarkable to consider what it means to simply be present in life and give thanks for being....