Customer Reviews
What a book - By: book worm, 28 May 2008 
This is a book that leaves you feeling so uplifted. It makes you want to do something morein life.It is so beautifully written, & O'Donohue has some of his own poemsin there. One is called the Blessing of Presence it's just lovely to read. One passage will stay with me, it goes as follows."If you have everything the world has to offer you, but you do not have love, then you are the poorest of the poorest of the poor.How true. This is a remarkable book. It was so sad to learn of O'Donohue's sudden deathin jan of this year aged 52, he diedin his sleep.
Words to shelter in! - By: David J. Smith, 25 Apr 2003 This is no dry humourless study of Celtic Wisdom but a poignant crucifixion of Western epistemology. Although the anthropological question of authentic "Celticity" will probably always hang over it for those who want to problematise the existence of a truly "Celtic" culture, this book is nonetheless a book of Wisdom.
The author mingles his own "lyrics" with those of philosophers & poets from around the world, so that the text takes on a timeless authorityin places, but we are reminded again & again of our own separate embodiments, the phenomena of individualised flesh or "clay", our isolation, & of the nonbeing that surrounds & penetrates us.
The text avoids the usual wash of soothing spiritual platitudes that lace other "works of wisdom". But, I must emphasise, neither is the text a clinically transparent lightin which existential dread clearly stands outin its fullest threat. Instead the mystery of being is housed within a half-light which accepts its mystery as a sacrament.
O'Donohue, whoin his own words is attempting a "phenomenology of friendship", compels us to feel again the mystery & wonder involvedin approaching an other, & brings to this mystery another mystery - that despite our dsiconnection, recognition & affinity between people is possible.
But throughout the book there is another message being spelled out, very painstakingly,in the background. There is a sense that the author is calling for people to remember the space of presence, possibility & soulin a increasingly structure-bound world. We are called to find itin our hearts to welcomein the strange sensations of alterity & the sublime ambiguities of nature's wildness. We are being invited to bring home to ourselves the problem of modernity, the depair of meaninglessness, by cultivating humility & a sense of place; & by feeling gratitude.
As such, this book presents a limited poetic shelter for our wilder sensualityin times when we may feel bleached & de-natured by living within categories of identity. Personally, it makes me want to leap into a mythic world of heroic tales by smouldering peat fires where the night sky is crystal-clear & where the lamenting of the bean si can still be heard upon the wind.
I am no longer out of step - By: , 27 Jun 2001 Having spent most of my life feeling 'out of step' with everyone else - this book put into words so much that I instinctively thought/knew & brought me 'home'.
A beautifully crafted work with great gentle depth - By: neville.coultas@btinternet.com, 18 Aug 2000 Each section, each sentence has been lovingly constructed with tremendous love & is remarkably powerful & yet so gentle. Also, John O'Donohue provides a fascinating link into the incredible works of Meister Eckhart. An absolute must!
Woven more than written...you really find yourself - By: , 05 Mar 2000 Well this is a book that you really connect with. John O' Donohue puts youin the realms of the Celtic world. After a few pages you dont want to stop, we all are searching for something. Well here i've found it. If we only all felt our true heritage.
