The Inner Landscape - John O'Donohue

Irish Poet and Philosopher, late John O'Donahue in conversation hosted by Krista Tippet, from a podcast on 'On Being' 

I tried synopsis, but found I was losing flow. Tried excerpts, was way too long. Settled for a few lines that seemed interesting, and I guess resonated at some level.

John O’Donohue entered seminary at a young age and was a Catholic priest for 19 years. But in the 1980s, he went to Germany to study the philosophy of Hegel. He eventually left the priesthood and devoted himself full-time to meditating and writing on beauty, friendship, and how the visible and the invisible, the material and the spiritual, intertwine in human experience. He is well known for his book 'Anam Cara'

John O’Donohue considered 'beauty as a human calling'

He says:

"Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. So I think beauty, in that sense, is about an emerging fullness, a greater sense of grace and elegance, a deeper sense of depth, and also a kind of homecoming for the enriched memory of your unfolding life"

He had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with the inner human landscape and what he called “the invisible world,” constantly intertwining with the external ... and said that landscape wasn’t just matter, but that it was actually alive. and if you go towards it with an open heart and a real, watchful reverence, that you will be absolutely amazed at what it will reveal to you. 

"I think that connecting to the elemental can be a way of coming into rhythm with the universe"

“Possibility is the secret heart of time. On its outer surface, time is vulnerable to transience. In its deeper heart, time is transfiguration. I always think that that’s the secret of change — that there are huge gestations and fermentations going on in us that we are not even aware of. And then, sometimes, when we come to a threshold, crossing over, which we need to become different, that we’ll be able to be different, because secret work has been done in us, of which we’ve had no inkling

And, when we cross a new threshold, that if we cross worthily, what we do is we heal the patterns of repetition that were in us that had us caught somewhere. And in our crossing, then, we cross onto new ground, where we just don’t repeat what we’ve been through in the last place we were. And I think there are huge thresholds in every life."

"And I think it’s a critical question, always, for somebody who wants to have a mature, adult, open-ended, good-hearted, critical faith, to conduct the most vigorous and relentless conversation that you can with your own tradition and your own memory"

Ms. Tippett: It was actually in your book that I first realized, and I had never thought about this, that the root — the Greek root for the word “beauty” is related to the word for “calling,” to “kalon” and “kalein.”, how do we pursue that calling, given the limitations, given that a lot of what is around us is not visibly, objectively beautiful and may not be?

Donohue: Now how do we do it? One way, and I think this is a really lovely way, and I think it’s an interesting question to ask oneself too, and the question is, when is the last time that you had a great conversation, a conversation which wasn’t just two intersecting monologues, which is what passes for conversation a lot in this culture?

But when had you last a great conversation in which you overheard yourself saying things that you never knew you knew, that you heard yourself receiving from somebody words that absolutely found places within you that you thought you had lost and a sense of an event of a conversation that brought the two of you onto a different plane, and then, fourthly, a conversation that continued to sing in your mind for weeks afterwards?

And I’ve had some of them recently, and it’s just absolutely amazing. They’re like, as we would say at home, they are food and drink for the soul.

Second thing, I think, a question to always ask oneself — who are you reading? Who are you reading? And where are you stretching your own boundaries? Are you repetitive in that?

And you could be surprised what an exciting adventure and homecoming it could become.

For those who might want to listen: https://onbeing.org/programs/john-odonohue-the-inner-landscape-of-beauty-aug2017/