I haven’t been to precisely the place you’re from, but I think the west coast of Scotland, the west coast of Ireland, it is this completely unusual, this wild, raw, bleak beauty. Tippett: I know that “landscape” is a really pivotal word for you that you use, not just in describing the natural world, but an important word in talking about how human beings know themselves and move through the world. And then it’s right on the edge of the ocean, as well, so the conversation - an ancient conversation between the ocean and the stone going on. So soon, being a child and coming out into that, it was waiting, like a huge, wild invitation to extend your imagination. And I often think that the forms of the limestone are so abstract and aesthetic, and it is as if they were all laid down by some wild, surrealistic kind of deity. And it’s the Burren region, which is limestone. John O’Donohue: Well, I suppose I was blessed by being born into an amazing landscape in the west of Ireland. What began to form you to come to this spiritual perspective and philosophical and poetic perspective that you have now? Tell me a little bit more about where you come from and what formed you. 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. But in the 1980s, he went to Germany to study the philosophy of Hegel. John O’Donohue entered seminary at a young age and was a Catholic priest for 19 years. The divine is understood as manifest everywhere, in everything. Historically, this part of the world was a crucible of Celtic Christianity, merging a strong sense of mystery with a passionate embrace of nature, the body, and the senses. He was born in 1956 in County Clare in western Ireland. John O’Donohue’s final work was To Bless the Space Between Us, published posthumously. I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.Īnam Ċara was published in 1997, and it became an international bestseller. This was one of the last interviews he gave before his unexpected death in 2008, but John O’Donohue’s voice and writings continue to bring ancient mystical wisdom to modern confusions and longings. He had a very Celtic, lifelong fascination with the inner human landscape and what he called “the invisible world” constantly intertwining with what we can know and see. He insisted on beauty as a human calling. Krista Tippett, host: No conversation I’ve ever had has been more beloved than this one with the Irish poet and philosopher John O’Donohue. 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. Beauty is about more rounded, substantial becoming. John O’Donohue: Beauty isn’t all about just nice loveliness, like.
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