Death is not the end; it is a rebirth. Our presence in the world is so poignant. The little band of brightness that we call our life is poised between the darkness of two unknowns. There is the darkness of the unknown at our origin. We suddenly emerged from this unknown, and the band of brightness called life began. Then there is the darkness at the end when we disappear again back into the unknown. Samuel Beckett is a wonderful writer who has meditated deeply on the mystery of death. His little play Breath is only a few minutes long. First, there is the birth cry, then a little breathing, and finally, the sigh of death. This drama synopsizes what happens in our lives. All of Beckett’s works, especially Waiting for Godot, are about death. In other words, because death exists, time is radically relativized. All we do here is invent games to pass the time.
WAITING AND ABSENCE
A friend of mine was telling me a story about a neighbor. The children from the local school were going into town to see Waiting for Godot. This man took a ride on their bus. He intended to meet some of his drinking colleagues in town. He traveled in with the schoolchildren to the theater and went immediately to the two or three pubs where he thought his friends would be; but they were not there. Since he had no money, he ended up having to watch Waiting for Godot. He was describing the experience to my friend: “It was the strangest play I ever saw in my life; seemingly the fellow who was to play the main part never turned up, and the actors were forced to improvise all night.”
I thought that was a good analysis of Waiting for Godot. I think it was the kind of review with which Samuel Beckett himself would have been very pleased. In a certain sense, we are always waiting for the great moment of gathering or belonging, and it always evades us. We are haunted with a deep sense of absence. There is something missing from our lives. We always expect it to be filled by a definite person, object, or project. We are desperate to fill this emptiness, but the soul tells us, if we listen to it, that this absence can never be filled.
Death is the great wound in the universe and the great wound in each life. Yet, ironically, this is the very wound that can lead to new spiritual growth. Thinking of your death can help you to radically alter your fixed and habitual perception. Instead of living according to the merely visible material realm of life, you begin to refine your sensibility and become aware of the treasures that are hidden in the invisible side of your life. A person who is really spiritual has developed a sense of the depth of his or her own invisible nature. Your invisible nature holds qualities and treasures that time can never damage. They belong absolutely to you. You do not need to grasp them, earn them, or protect them. These treasures are yours; no one else can ever take them from you.
BIRTH AS DEATH
Imagine if you could talk to a baby in the womb and explain its unity with the mother. How this cord of belonging gives it life. If you could then tell the baby that this was about to end. It was going to be expelled from the womb, pushed through a very narrow passage finally to be dropped out into vacant, open light. The cord that held it to this mother-womb was going to be cut, and it was going to be on its own forever more. If the baby could talk back, it would fear that it was going to die. For the baby within the womb, being born would seem like death. Our difficulty with these great questions is that we are only able to see them from one side. In other words, we can only see death from one side. Many have had the experience, but nobody has come back to tell us about it. Those who have died stay away; they do not return. Therefore, we cannot actually see the other half of the circle that death opens. Wittgenstein summed it up very nicely when he said, “Death is not an experience in one’s life.” It cannot be an experience because it is the end of the life in which and through which all experience came to you.
I like to imagine that death is about rebirth. The soul is now free in a new world where there is no more separation or shadow or tears. A friend of mine lost a son who was twenty-six years of age. I was at the funeral. Her other children were all there as the coffin was lowered into the grave. A terrible wail of sadness rose up from the brothers and sisters. She put her arms around them and said, “Nà bigí ag caoineadh, níl tada dhó thios ansin ach amháin an clúdach a bhí air”—that is, “Let ye not be crying because there is nothing of him down there, only the covering that was on him in this life.” It is a lovely thought, a recognition that the body was merely covering and the soul is now freed for the eternal.
DEATH TRANSFIGURES OUR SEPARATION
In Connemara the graveyards are near the ocean, where there is a lot of sandy soil. To open the grave, the sod is cut on three sides. It is rolled back very carefully from the surface of the field, but it is not broken off. Then the coffin is put down. The prayers are said and the grave is blessed and filled. Then the sod is rolled out over the grave so that it fits exactly over the opening. A friend of mine calls it a “cesarean section in reverse.” It is as if the womb of the earth, without being broken, is receiving back the individual who once left as a clay shape to live in separation above in the world. It is an image of homecoming, of being taken back completely again.
It is a strange and magical fact to be here, walking around in a body, to have a whole world within you and a world at your fingertips outside you. It is an immense privilege, and it is incredible that humans manage to forget the miracle of being here. Rilke said, “Being here is so much.” It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here. We are wildly and dangerously free. The more lonely side of being here is our separation in the world. When you live in a body you are separate from every other object and person. Many of our attempts to pray, to love, and to create are secret attempts at transfiguring that separation in order to build bridges outward so that others can reach us and we can reach them. At death, this physical separation is broken. The soul is released from its particular and exclusive location in this body. The soul then comes in to a free and fluent universe of spiritual belonging.
ARE SPACE AND TIME DIFFERENT IN THE ETERNAL WORLD?
Space and time are the foundation of human identity and perception. We never have a perception that does not have each of these elements in it. The element of space means that we are always in a state of separation. I am here. You are there. Even the person that you are closest to, the one you love, is still a separate world from you. That is the poignancy of love. Two people become so close that they really want to become one; but their separate spaces keep the distance between them. In space, we are always separated. The other component of perception and identity is time. Time always separates us, too. Time is primarily linear, disjointed, and fragmented. All of your past days have disappeared; they have vanished. The future has not come to you yet. All you have is the little stepping-stone of the present moment.
When the soul leaves the body, it is no longer under the burden and control of space and time. The soul is free; distance and separation hinder it no more. The dead are our nearest neighbors; they are all around us. Meister Eckhart was once asked, Where does the soul of a person go when the person dies? He said, no place. Where else would the soul be going? Where else is the eternal world? It can be nowhere other than here. We have falsely spatialized the eternal world. We have driven the eternal out into some kind of distant galaxy. Yet the eternal world does not seem to be a place but rather a different state of being. The soul of the person goes no place because there is no place else to go. This suggests that the dead are here with us, in the air that we are moving through all the time. The only difference between us and the dead is that they are now in an invisible form. You cannot see them with the human eye. But you can sense the presence of those you love who have died. With the refinement of your soul, you can sense them. You feel that they are near.
My father used to tell us a story about a neighbor who was very friendly with the local priest. There is a whole mythology in Ireland about druids and priests having special power. But this man and the priest used to go for long
walks. One day the man said to the priest, Where are the dead? The priest told him not to ask him questions like that. But the man persisted, and finally, the priest said, I will show you; but you are never to tell anyone. Needless to say, the man did not keep his word. The priest raised his right hand; the man looked out under the raised right hand and saw the souls of the departed everywhere all around as thick as the dew on blades of grass. Often our loneliness and isolation are the result of a failure of spiritual imagination. We forget that there is no such thing as empty space. All space is full of presence, particularly the presence of those who are now in eternal, invisible form.
For those who have died, the world of time is also different. Here we are caught in linear time. We have forgotten the past; it is lost to us. We cannot know the future. Time must be totally different for the dead because they live now within a circle of eternity. Earlier we talked about landscape and how the Irish landscape resisted linearity. How the Celtic mind never liked the line but always loved the shape of the circle. Within the circle, beginning and ending are sisters, and they belong within the shelter which the eternal offers of the unity of the year and the earth. I imagine that in the eternal world time has become the circle of eternity. Maybe when a person goes into that world, he or she can look back at what we call past time here. That person may also see all of future time. For the dead, present time is total presence. This suggests that our friends among the dead know us better than they can ever have known us in life. They know everything about us, even things that may disappoint them. But since they are now transfigured, their understanding and compassion are proportionate to everything they have come to know about us.
THE DEAD BLESS US
I believe that our friends among the dead really mind us and look out for us. Often there might be a big boulder of misery over your path about to fall on you, but your friends among the dead hold it back until you have passed by. One of the exciting developments that may happen in evolution and in human consciousness in the next several hundred years is a whole new relationship with the invisible, eternal world. We might begin to link up in a very creative way with our friends in the invisible world. We do not need to grieve for the dead. Why should we grieve for them? They are now in a place where there is no more shadow, darkness, loneliness, isolation, or pain. They are home. They are with God from whom they came. They have returned to the nest of their identity within the great circle of God. God is the greatest circle of all, the largest embrace in the universe, which holds visible and invisible, temporal and eternal, as one.
There are lovely stories in the Irish tradition of people dying and then meeting all their old friends. This is expressed powerfully in a wonderful novel by Mairtin Ó Cadhain called Cré na Cille. This is about life in a graveyard and all that is happening among the people buried there. In the eternal world, all is one. In spiritual space there is no distance. In eternal time there is no segmentation into today, yesterday, or tomorrow. In eternal time all is now; time is presence. I believe that this is what eternal life means: It is a life where all that we seek—goodness, unity, beauty, truth, and love—are no longer distant from us but are now completely present with us. There is a lovely poem by R. S. Thomas on the notion of eternity. It is deliberately minimal in form but very powerful:
I think that maybe
I will be a little surer
of being a little nearer.
That’s all. Eternity
is in the understanding
that that little is more than enough.
Kahlil Gibran articulates how the unity in friendship that we call anam ara overcomes even death:
You were born together, and together you shall be for evermore. You shall be together when the white wings of death scatter your days. Aye, you shall be together even in the silent memory of God.
I would like to end this chapter with a lovely prayer-poem from thirteenth-century Persia.
Some nights stay up ’til dawn as the moon sometimes does for the sun.
Be a full bucket, pulled up the dark way of a well then lifted out into light.
Something opens our wings, something makes boredom and hurt disappear.
Someone fills the cup in front of us, we taste only sacredness.
A Blessing for Death
I pray that you will have the blessing of being consoled and sure about your own death.
May you know in your soul that there is no need to be afraid.
When your time comes, may you be given every blessing and shelter that you need.
May there be a beautiful welcome for you in the home that you are going to.
You are not going somewhere strange. You are going back to the home that you never left.
May you have a wonderful urgency to live your life to the full.
May you live compassionately and creatively and transfigure everything that is negative within you and about you.
When you come to die may it be after a long life.
May you be peaceful and happy and in the presence of those who really care for you.
May your going be sheltered and your welcome assured.
May your soul smile in the embrace of your anam ara.
FURTHER RECOMMENDED READING
Adorno, Theodor W. Minima Moralia. Frankfurt, 1989.
Aristotle. De Anima. London, 1986.
———. Ethics. London, 1986.
Augustine. The Confessions. London, 1945.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston, 1969.
Baudrillard, Jean. Fatal Strategies. New York, 1990.
Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London, 1981.
Bradley, Ian. The Celtic Way. London, 1993.
Cardenal, Marie. The Words to Say It. London, 1983.
Carmichael, Alexander. carmina Gadelica. Edinburgh, 1994.
Curtis, P. J. Notes from the Heart: A Celebration of Traditional Irish Music. Dublin, 1994.
Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. New York, 1989.
Kennelly, Brendan, ed. The Penguin Book of Irish Verse. London, 1970.
Kinsella, Thomas, trans. The Taín. Oxford, 1986.
Levertov, Denise. The Poet in the World. New York, 1973.
Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity. Pittsburgh.
Low, Mary. Celtic Christianity and Nature. Edinburgh, 1996.
Matthews, Caitlín. Celtic Blessings. Shaftesbury, 1994.
Merleau Ponty, M. Phenomenology of Perception. London, 1981.
Moriarty, John. Dreamtime. Dublin, 1994.
Murdoch, Iris. Metaphysics as a Guide to Morals. London, 1992.
Murphy, Gerard. Early Irish Lyrics. Oxford, 1956.
Murray, P., ed. The Deer’s Cry: A Treasury of Irish Religious Verse. Dublin, 1986.
O’Céirín, Kit and Cyril. Women of Ireland. Tir Eolas, 1996.
O’Donoghue, Noel Dermot. The Mountain behind the Mountain: Aspects of the Celtic Tradition. Edinburgh, 1993.
O’Donohue, John. Person als Vermittlung: Die Dialektik von Individualität und Allgemeinheit in Hegels Phänomenologie des Geistes. Eine philosophisch-Theologische Interpretation. Mainz, 1993.
O h-Ogain, Daithi. Myth, Legend and Romance: An Encyclopaedia of the Irish Folk Tradition. New York, 1991.
Plotinus. The Ennead, trans. Stephen MacKenna. London, 1996.
Rahner, Karl. Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity. London, 1978.
Sells, Michael A. Mystical Languages of Unsaying. Chicago, 1994.
Sheldrake, Rupert. The Rebirth of Nature. London, 1990.
Smith, Cyprian. The Way of Paradox: Spiritual Life as Taught by Meister Eckhart. London, 1987.
Steiner, George. Real Presences. London, 1989.
Waddel, Helen. The Desert Fathers. London, 1962.
Whyte, David. The Heart Aroused. New York, 1995.
About the Author
JOHN O’DONOHUE lives in Ireland. He is a Catholic scholar who lectures and conducts workshops in the United States and Europe. He w
as awarded a Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the University of Tübingen in 1990, and his book on the philosophy of Hegel, Person als Vermittlung, was published in Germany in 1993. His collection of poetry Echoes of Memory was published in 1994. John O’Donohue is the author of the award winning Anam CARA, which has been a number one bestseller in Ireland for more than a year.
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Also by John O’Donohue
Person als Vermittlung
Echoes of Memory (poetry)
Stone as Tabernacle of Memory
Air: Breath of God
Fire: At Home at the Hearth of Spirit
Water: The Tears of the Earth
Copyright
ANAM CARA. Copyright © 1997 by John O’Donohue. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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