BOOK REVIEW - To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings
By John O'Donohue
Doubleday, 2008, $22.95
A blessing, says poet and philosopher John O'Donohue, is "a direct address, driven by immediacy and care." It recognizes no limitations of language, ethnicity, or nation. It transcends "emotional geometry" to heal and strengthen, to protect and guide. It is like a circle of light drawn around the human and the divine. It is possibility. It is attention to beginnings.
O'Donohue is the author of the international bestseller Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, and he lectures and leads seminars throughout the United States and Europe. Modern Western culture, he says, has lost the moment of reflection, gratitude, and hope that precedes great change, a beginning, or even a new day. In times when meaning is most necessary, the space between us appears empty.
So, O'Donohue suggests, we should praise space and fire and earth and water. Let us speak to new homes, new jobs, love in times of conflict, birth and old age, sleep and meals, failure and dying. We are born into an order, and when we die, the order continues. A blessing recognizes this order, and its ritual creates a sense of belonging, permanence, and trust. "If we approach our decisive thresholds with reverence and attention," writes O'Donohue, "the crossing will bring us more than we could ever have hoped for."
Dividing the book into what he calls the seven rhythms of the human journey, O'Donohue introduces each section with a short essay. The poetry of his invocations is luminous, moving, and colorful. The thoughts take their time. Often, the images surprise: Fire, for example, is "red weather of being." O'Donohue's blessings are nondenominational, as "life itself is the primal sacrament, namely, the visible sign of grace."
Ultimately, this book is a call to citizenship, neighborliness, and caring. "There is incredible power in the mind when it directs its light toward an object." To Bless the Space Between Us brings belonging into every home and hand.
Doubleday, 2008, $22.95
A blessing, says poet and philosopher John O'Donohue, is "a direct address, driven by immediacy and care." It recognizes no limitations of language, ethnicity, or nation. It transcends "emotional geometry" to heal and strengthen, to protect and guide. It is like a circle of light drawn around the human and the divine. It is possibility. It is attention to beginnings.
O'Donohue is the author of the international bestseller Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, and he lectures and leads seminars throughout the United States and Europe. Modern Western culture, he says, has lost the moment of reflection, gratitude, and hope that precedes great change, a beginning, or even a new day. In times when meaning is most necessary, the space between us appears empty.
So, O'Donohue suggests, we should praise space and fire and earth and water. Let us speak to new homes, new jobs, love in times of conflict, birth and old age, sleep and meals, failure and dying. We are born into an order, and when we die, the order continues. A blessing recognizes this order, and its ritual creates a sense of belonging, permanence, and trust. "If we approach our decisive thresholds with reverence and attention," writes O'Donohue, "the crossing will bring us more than we could ever have hoped for."
Dividing the book into what he calls the seven rhythms of the human journey, O'Donohue introduces each section with a short essay. The poetry of his invocations is luminous, moving, and colorful. The thoughts take their time. Often, the images surprise: Fire, for example, is "red weather of being." O'Donohue's blessings are nondenominational, as "life itself is the primal sacrament, namely, the visible sign of grace."
Ultimately, this book is a call to citizenship, neighborliness, and caring. "There is incredible power in the mind when it directs its light toward an object." To Bless the Space Between Us brings belonging into every home and hand.
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