"I would love to live
Like a river flows,
Carried by the surprise
Of its own unfolding"
         John O’Donohue

I learned yesterday of the death of John O’Donohue, poet, Celtic Christian, writer, dreamer, scholar,mystic. For more than ten years I have read and re-read his work. His understanding of Celtic Christianity, the unique beauty of the Celtic view of the world and the Divine, has informed my life, my theology and my writing. His death was a shock. His voice was gentle and lilting, full of Irish wit and charisma. To know that it has been silenced fills me with great loss.

I remember sitting at a conference at the College of St. Catherine several years ago. We were all held spellbound by his rich storytelling….making us laugh one minute and cry the next, always nudging us to look for the divine twinkle in the eye of Holy One.  His book Anam Cara taught me about the special relationship one can have with a ‘soul friend’, someone who listens with you for how the Sacred moves in your life. His writing called me to a deeper place of knowing…..myself, the world, the other, God. His wisdom invited me to hold the sacred both gently and lightly, a lesson it seems I need to learn over and over.

I did not know John O’Donohue personally but I have felt his imprint on some of the most important parts of who I am. So today I will celebrate his life, by offering a blessing he has written in his book Eternal Echoes:Exploring Our Yearning to Belong. If you have never read his work, I commend it to you. In that way his wisdom will continue to flow like a river into the world, unfolding over and over.

May you listen to your longing to be free.
May the frames of your belonging be large enough
  for the dreams of your soul.
May you arise each day with a voice of blessing
  whispering in your heart that something good is going
  to happen to you.
May you find a harmony between your soul and your life.
May the mansion of your soul never become a haunted place.
May you know the eternal longing which lives at the heart
  of time.
May there be kindness in your gaze when you look within.
May you never place walls between the light and yourself.
May your angel free you from the prisons of guilt,
  fear, disappointment, and despair.
May you allow the wild beauty of the invisible world to
  gather you, mind you, and embrace you in belonging.
                                         John O’Donohue  1954-2008

Amen, So be it.