Saturday, January 05, 2008 - NOTE the date !!
I was in Bloomingdales in Chicago USA yesterday morning and I picked up an email on my iPhone as MrsBeautiful shopped.
The mail was from a stranger wanting to contact my friend Martin quickly about John O Donohue.
I forwarded the email to him and thought no more.
I have just flown home from Chicago and received the message that our great friend John O'Donohue has died.
John was on holiday in France with the family of Kristine,
a wonderful woman he met at Greenbelt just last August.
I was there when Kristine and John met.
I snapped a series of pictures and delighted in that first contact for them
as they hugged each other expressing the most powerful facial expressions..
I am shocked.
I am still in recovery from missing a nights sleep on the flight and this massive sad news.
Poet, priest and philosopher, John was a one-off, the warmest, funniest, wisest person you could hope to meet.
His most recent book, 'Benedictus', was published just before Christmas.
It is a book of blessings and this is an extract from one.
'May there be some beautiful surprise
Waiting for you inside death
Something you never knew or felt,
Which with one simple touch
Absolves you of all loneliness and loss,
As you quicken within the embrace
For which your soul was eternally made.
'May your heart be speechless
At the sight of the truth
Of all your belief had hoped,
Your heart breathless
In the light and lightness
Where each and every thing
Is at last its true self
Within that serene belonging
That dwells beside us
On the other side
Of what we see.'
I feel a cheat saying he was a friend.
I guess everyone who met him now calls him 'friend'.
We met a few times
smoked a cigar together
sipped a pint
talked until late.
I drove him around a bit at Greenbelt,
I had his umbrella in my car for two years.
We laughed and shared
although I didn't go and sit with him late one night at Greenbelt.
I was to be the last time we met - but rightly I
I felt I needed to be with the people I was with and thinking I would see John later.
If anyone can be my representative in the eternal place
I would count on him.
My heart is with Kristine who he loved
two way love
working well
cut so so short.
We will remember him
and I will on this day forever.
Quote ::
"May you recognise in your life
the presence, power and light of your soul.
May you realise that you are never alone,
that your soul in its brightness and belonging connects you intimately with the rhythm of the universe.
May you have respect for your own individuality and difference.
May you realise that the shape of your soul is unique,
that you have a special destiny here that behind the facade of your life there is something beautiful, good and eternal happening.
May you learn to see your self with the same delight,
pride and expectation with which God sees you in every moment."
John O´Donohue,
writer, philosopher
in his book 'Anam Cara'
