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Prayer as the Door into Your Own Eternity

On That Day You Will Know as You Are Known

The Soul Is the Home of Memory

To Breathe in Your Soul Light

Praise Is Like Morning Sun on a Flower

Prayer Changes Space

Graced Vision Sees Between Things

“Behold, I Am the Ground of Thy Beseeching.”

Prayer Is Critical Vigilance

A Generous Heart Is Never Lonesome

The Beauty of the Prayer-Gift

To Frame Each Frontier of the Day with Prayer

To Be Great, Be Entire

To Create Your Own Prayer That Speaks Your Soul

My Own Prayer

6. Absence: Where Longing Still Lingers

The Subtle Trail of Absence

Absence and Presence Are Sisters

And the Earth Knew Absence

The Legend of Midhir and Etain

The Longing for Real Presence

The Homeless Mind

Psychology and Self-absence: Talking Ourselves Out

Brittle Language Numbs Longing

Beyond Being an Observer—Becoming a Participant

Memory Is Full of the Ruins of Presence

Ruins: Temples of Absence

The Absence of the Future

Towards a Philosophy of Loss

Grief: Longing for the Lost One

Grief Is a Journey That Knows Its Way

We Grieve for Ourselves

The Imagination and the Altars of Absence

The Artist as Permanent Pilgrim

The Ones We Never Hear From

Addiction: Obsessed Longing

The Emigrants

Language and Belonging

A Philosophy of Dúcas

Fundamentalism: False Longing and Forced Belonging

Cults and Sects

Our Longing for Community

The Shelter of Community

Towards a New Community

Divine Longing Transfigures Absence

A Blessing

Vespers

Suggested Further 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; Kim Witherspoon and her agency, for her confidence in the work and for its effective mediation; John Devitt, who read the manuscript and offered a creative and literary critique; Dr. Lelia Doolan, who gave a wonderfully encouraging and rigorous critical response to the text; David Whyte, for his brotherly care and our conversations about the world of the imagination; Barbara Conner, for all her work and support; and especially Marian O’Beirn, who suggested this book on longing and “our hunger to belong” and who read and reread successive drafts, keeping a critical eye on structure and content and whose friendship and inspiration are generosity itself; the memory of my former teachers Professor Gerard Watson and Professor Tom Marsh and Miceal O’Regan, O. P., for his wisdom of spirit; to my family, for the shelter, support, and understanding; to Conamara and Clare, for their mystical spirit which awakens such longing and offers such a tenderness of belonging. Agus do mo cáirde a thug foscadh, solas agus solás.

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