Up: [[People]] Created: 2024-12-29 ![[OnBeing_JohnODonohue_Social_1200x628_FBTWWEB_EpArtwork-768x402.webp]] POET. PHILOSOPHER Irish — County Clare 1956-2008 (52 years) [John O’Donohue’s website](https://www.johnodonohue.com/) [Video Interview for ‘On Being](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqalrRkYP14), the last before his death ## How I First Learned of Him Through [[David Whyte]], another Irish poet and a friend of O’Donohue’s. David either read or referred to a poem that John O’Donohue had written called [A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted](https://www.dailygood.org/story/734/a-blessing-for-one-who-is-exhausted-john-o-donohue/). That poem spoke to me. It precisely articulated my experience of burnout and gave me, not just hope, but practical suggestions for recovery. ## Since Then… I’ve bought the book *To Bless the Space Between Us* that the poem came from, along with his books *Anam Cara* (Soul Friend) that catapulted him on to the international stage in 1997; *Beauty: The Invisible Embrace* (2004) and *The Four Elements* published posthumously in 2010. I’ve read all of them but need to reread and make notes. ## John O’Donohue through the Lens of Instructions for Life ##### PAY ATTENTION When I was looking for resources about savouring the world’s beauty, John O’Donohue was the only one talking about that. In the ‘On Being’ interview, and in his books, he asserts that beauty is a true human calling. He said that we’ve made the world so familiar that we don’t see it anymore. And he urged us to ask ourselves the question every night, **What did I really see this day?** ##### BE AMAZED John O’Donohue had a poet’s soul and an intellectual’s mind. He grew up speaking Gaelic, the oldest of four children working the family farm in Ireland. He was well steeped not just in place and the natural world, but in the Celtic love of the invisible world. At the same time, he had a PhD in Philosophical theology about the German philosopher Hegel, and he’d been working on a post-doctoral dissertation on another German philosopher, 14th century mystic, Meister Eckhart. ##### TELL ABOUT IT John O’Donohue had been ordained as a priest in 1982. He gave that up in 2000 and moved to a remote cottage in Connemara where he was devoting himself full-time to writing and speaking. He was a gifted speaker. While he wrote a number of books and his speeches are all over the internet, I think John’s most powerful way of sharing was by living what he wanted people to understand — that we “do not need to operate according to the idea of a predetermined program for our lives.” We can and must courageously live the lives we want and love.