To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings [Hardcover]

John O'Donohue (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 4, 2008

From the author of the bestselling Anam Cara comes a beautiful collection of blessings to help readers through both the everyday and the extraordinary events of their lives.

John O’Donohue, Irish teacher and poet, has been widely praised for his gift of drawing on Celtic spiritual traditions to create words of inspiration and wisdom for today. In To Bless the Space Between Us, his compelling blend of elegant, poetic language and spiritual insight offers readers comfort and encouragement on their journeys through life. O’Donohue looks at life’s thresholds—getting married, having children, starting a new job—and offers invaluable guidelines for making the transition from a known, familiar world into a new, unmapped territory. Most profoundly, however, O’Donohue explains “blessing” as a way of life, as a lens through which the whole world is transformed.

O’Donohue awakens readers to timeless truths and shows the power they have to answer contemporary dilemmas and ease us through periods of change.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

What does it mean to bless others and ourselves? In this collection of O'Donohue's poetic prayers, the author of Beauty and Anam Cara focuses on bringing God's blessings into the liminal spaces in our lives: times of transition, grieving, change or preparation for the unknown. Some of the blessings are for specific situations that are bread-and-butter staples of other prayer books, such as benedictions over births, weddings, new jobs or new homes. Others are unexpected and bravely dark, including a prayer for the loved ones left behind after a suicide, or for a parent after the death of a child. O'Donohue is not afraid to tackle the fear and guilt that many harbor secretly, bringing shame and addiction out into the open even while celebrating new life and new love. His writing is sensitive and deep: As light departs to let the earth be one with night, Silence deepens in the mind, and thoughts grow slow; The basket of twilight brims over with colors, he says of evening Vespers. The book closes with the Irish priest's personal—and often profound—musings on the act of blessing, drawing on Celtic spirituality and the wisdom of poets and philosophers. (Feb. 19)
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Review

Praise for John O’Donohue

“John O’Donohue is a man of the soul. His scholarly meditation on the continuing relevance of Ireland’s spiritual heritage has become a publishing phenomenon.…”
—London Times

Anam Cara

“A lively spiritual companion to all Celts—or to those who are Celtic in their hearts.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Anam Cara is a radiant source of wisdom, a link between the human and the divine. This work is a blessed, rare gem.”
—Larry Dossey, M.D., author of Be Careful What You Pray For and Healing Words

“This beautifully written book proves that tireless wisdom can bring an amazing understanding about ourselves and the world around us even today.”
—Dannion Brinkley author of Saved by the Light and At Peace in the Light
Eternal Echoes

“O’Donohue has produced a treasury for readers of all faiths. A demanding, high-wire existentialist adventure that will inspire readers to re-evaluate their goals and ways of being in the world. O’Donohue ends each chapter with a lyrical blessing or prayer, and his book itself is a profound, healing prayer.”
—Publishers Weekly

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Doubleday; 1St Edition edition (March 4, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0385522274
• ISBN-13: 978-0385522274
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.9 x 7.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (118 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,681 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #3 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Worship & Devotion > Prayerbooks

More About the Author

JOHN O'DONOHUE authored several books, including, most recently, Beauty, and the international bestsellers Anam Cara and Eternal Echoes, as well as two collections of poetry, Echoes of Memory and Conamara Blues. He lived in Ireland and frequently traveled to the United States to give lectures and conduct workshops before he passed away on January 4, 2008.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

339 of 340 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A blessing is a reminder of who we are March 4, 2008

By Kerry Walters VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

John O'Donohue died peacefully in his sleep on January 8 of this year. He was working on a book on the late medieval mystic Meister Eckhart. Hopefully, enough of it was completed to warrant a posthumous publication. In the meantime, his To Bless the Space Between Us is O'Donohue's parting gift.

The book is a collection of blessings. That doesn't necessarily sound too exciting until one recognizes the deep-down meaning of a blessing, and O'Donohue's introduction provides some guidance. In our overly busy culture, he writes, we frequently race over the "crucial thresholds in our life" without pausing to take note of their significance. We no longer have "rituals to protect, encourage, and guide us as we cross over into the unknown" (p. xiv). A blessing is precisely one of those protecting, encouraging, and guiding rituals. It memorializes our transitions, connects us with a wider community (since none of us really ever travels alone), and strives to "present a minimal psychic portrait of the geography of change it names" (ibid).

Blessings, then, are all-important. They serve to orient us in our life's journey, establish fellowship with fellow travelers, and remind us of what we too often forget: that we are pilgrims, not haphazard wanderers.

Because there are all kinds of thresholds that lead to new stages of the journey, O'Donohue has written all kinds of blessings: for obvious thresholds such as birthdays, parenthood, adulthood, old age, and death; for interior thresholds such as courage, grief, addiction, suffering, loneliness; for the thresholds of callings to the priesthood, marriage, farming; and for the thresholds that our yearnings for love, peace, and friendship can nudge us towards.... Some of the blessings O'Donohue gives us are breath-takingly beautiful; others, not so much. As he himself confesses, blessings are difficult things to write. They're not poems, because they're not oblique, but rather are direct addresses "driven by immediacy and care." Yet they're not utterly unpoetic, either, because in their immediacy they must also be evocative.

Given O'Donohue's passing, it's not amiss to quote a bit of one of his most beautiful and haunting blessings (p. 72): "For Death."

From the moment you were born,
Your death has walked beside you.
Though it seldom shows its face,
You still feel its empty touch
When fear invades your life,
Or what you love is lost
Or inner damage is incurred...

That the silent presence of your death
Would call your life to attention,
Wake you up to how scarce your time is
And to the urgency to become free
And equal to the call of your destiny.

That you would gather yourself
And decide carefully
How you now can live
The life you would love
To look back on
From your deathbed. Read more ›

325 of 331 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars When you find yourself in times of trouble..... March 4, 2008

By Jesse Kornbluth TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

"Endings seem to lie in wait," John O'Donohue wrote. His certainly did. He died in his sleep, January 3, 2008, on vacation near Avignon. He was just 53.

I met John O'Donohue only once. I had read Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, the 1997 book that made him deservedly famous. "Read" is wrong. At 100 words a minute, I had, over weeks, absorbed enough of this deceptively simple exploration of "soul friendship" to grasp that here was an original thinker, a gifted poet and, most astonishing of all, a philosopher who had forged a way of looking at the world that was painfully aware of human frailty but insistent on the triumphal power of divine love. And he wrote beautifully.

A book this exciting, you have to talk about it. I mentioned O'Donohue to Sarah Ban Breathnach, the author of the Oprah-annointed Simple Abundance and Moving On. As luck would have it, she and O'Donohue were friends. And when he came through New York, Sarah generously arranged a dinner.

That was the night I learned to drink single malt. And was there ever a better teacher in the art of sipping than an Irish philosopher and mystic who had worn the collar for 19 years? I don't recall what we talked about, and neither can my wife, who does not drink; all I remember is the cascades of laughter, the unbuckled happiness of people who are thrilled to be alive, and together, and sharing good fellowship with sympathetic souls in a nice restaurant on a rainy New York night.

An evening like that is so rare I think of it as a religious experience. John O'Donohue, a holy man if ever there was one, had a lot of nights like that.... A recent interviewer wrote, in memoriam, about a morning when O'Donohue came to breakfast with a hangover, having polished off an entire bottle of single malt with friends the night before. "The bottle didn't die," he announced, "without spiritual necessity."

That offhand remark was quintessential O'Donohue. He never failed to connect the worldly with the sacred --- and see it all as holy. As a writer and a man, he reminded me of the priest who was a friend of Proust's. Yes, he believed there was a Hell. But he didn't believe anyone went there.

Where do our deepest beliefs come from? Generally from childhood, and then not from what our parents and teachers say, but from what they do and who they are. In John O'Donohue's case, his mother was the family's loving center. His father was a stonemason and farmer --- and, O'Donohue thought, the "holiest man I ever met, priests included." Sometimes the boy would bring tea to his father as he worked the fields. Often, young John heard him --- praying --- before he saw him.

O'Donohue had a superlative education, earned a Ph.D. in philosophical theology from the University of Tubingen, became known as an expert on Hegel and, later, Meister Eckhart. As a priest, he loved the Church's sacramental structure and its mystical and intellectual traditions. He also loved writing. Eventually, an officious bishop made him choose. "The best decision I ever made was to become a priest," O'Donohue would say, years later, "and I think the second best decision was to resign from public priestly ministry."

In fact, he had his issues with Catholicism, especially its views on sex and women. The Church, he said, "is not trustable in the area of Eros at all." And it "has a pathological fear of the feminine --- it would sooner allow priests to marry than it would allow women to become priests."

He was just as hard on other denominations. Religious fundamentalists, he said, "only want to lead you back, driven by nostalgia for a past that never existed, to manipulate and control you.... [Their] God tends to be a monolith and an emperor of the blandest singularity." New Age spirituality, he felt, was a smorgasbord, and undisciplined. Not that he found any comfort in secular life. He scorned the mall, feared for the spiritual health of the young, and had a special dislike for media folk, "non-elected custodians of sensationalism."

His bedrocks were his faith and "the Celtic imagination," which, he said, "represents a vision of the divine where no one or nothing is excluded." The blend he created was pure joy: "I think the divine is like a huge smile that breaks somewhere in the sea within you, and gradually comes up again."

O'Donohue was no Pollyanna. He was deeply troubled by bad things happening to good people. But he also saw that "a lot of suffering is just getting rid of dross in yourself, and lingering and hanging in the darkness is often --- I say this against myself --- a failure of imagination, to imagine the door into the light."

So it makes sense that O'Donohue's last book would be nothing but invocations and blessings --- a simple, how-to guide that, in effect, takes him back to his father praying in the fields. By the fact that we live, we are blessed; by the light that shines in our hearts, we have the power to bless others and be blessed by them. Is there a purer, more elementary form of the divine in action?

He asks: What is a blessing? His first answer is formal, and expected: "A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal and strengthen." But then the poetry enters: "It is a gracious invocation where the human heart pleads with the divine heart." And then there's the magical factor: "When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time."

We need to impact one another's lives in this spiritual way, he writes, because the process of living in a post-industrial, media-drenched world moves us further and further from our innate wholeness. Only direct action can breach the distance. Happily, it takes no special training to bless one another. It's just a matter of gathering yourself --- and finding the words.

In "To Bless the Space Between Us," the poet in O'Donohue seeks to break the shackles of dead language. He offers fresh blessings, and on topics the Church might overlook --- not just for a new home, marriage and child, but for the parents of a criminal, for parents who have lost a child, for those experiencing exile, solitude and failure.

These blessings look hardship in the face, but only as a challenge. In our souls, and, especially, in our hearts, O'Donohue believed, we are all home. We never left, we never will. How hard it is to hold that thought. And yet, when we take the care of others into our hearts, something happens.....

You may not have a problem with the plainspoken language of O'Donohue's blessings. I do. Maybe it's just a writer's discomfort with another writer's words. But the invocations that dot the book --- my God, could this man write! Just one example:

"Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless. Regardless of how we configure the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness, that place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of life's journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now."

Death was nothing to John O'Donohue --- a silent friend who walks beside us all our days. And on the other side? "I believe that our friends among the dead really mind us and look out for us," he wrote. "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."

Let it be. Read more ›

84 of 87 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars To Bless the Space Between Us March 2, 2008

By Gail Larsen

Format:Audio CD

The Mystery works in powerful ways through John O'Donohue but never more so eloquently than in this exquisite collection of blessings, even for aspects of life for which we typically don't seek support or can't find words. As he speaks of these transitions, I find it remarkable that this was his last work, published after his sudden death. Those of us who love John will find solace in his acceptance of the sacredness of every aspect of life. He has left a work that will continue to bless and reach us in both celebration and the darkest of hours. To hear his voice adds to the poignancy of these blessings.

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars John O'Donohue at his best April 12, 2008

By Backgroundnoise

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I have this item in book and CD formats. What a gift to our spirits! His brilliance and depth of understanding of the heart and spirit are incomparable! For those who are ministers, there's a lot of inspiration for sermons/homilies in this book. There are blessings that can be incorporated into various rites of passage, as well. He brings to light how little we bless each other and the positive difference it would make if we would. He is the soul friend of everyone who's read his works. I highly recommend this book. I'll be buying several more copies of this book as well as Anam Cara (also by John O'Donohue).

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Hope and Blessings April 3, 2008

By Christine Welter

Format:Audio CD

This book of blessings is a great gift to us all. I bought the book and the audio CDs and I have used both almost daily since I received them. It is a CD/book you will use, because the occasions for the different blessings will arise in your life. The author's lovely Irish brogue as he reads the blessings and the music of Irish harpist Aine Minogue allow for a deeper understanding of the written word.
The Irish poet and philosopher John O'Donohue did not shy away from topics that will make us cringe. He wrote a blessing "For love in the time of conflict", a "Blessing for the Parents of one who has committed crime", and - possibly one of the hardest tragedies of all - a "Blessing for the family and friends of a suicide".

John O'Donohue was a priest for 19 years (before he committed all his time to writing and speaking) and he knows about death from his work with the sick and the dying. But at the same time he is intimately familiar with the opposite of impermanence, he knows about the living presence of the light in our lives.
He talks about the luminous light in the mystical landscape of the Burren in the West of Ireland (his home), that reaches us when we become still to listen and witness. If we are mindful, nature and landscape can alert us to the eternal and we might be allowed to see a light that will speak to our human fears.
The blessings in this collection address crucial thresholds: A New Year blessing, a Morning Offering, the birth of a child, starting a new job, the breakup of a relationship, the experience of failure and the joy of friendship to name just a few. The invocations provide the structure of rituals that will protect, encourage and guide us on our life journey.... Rituals have been neglected and become lost in post-modern secular society, but parallel to their disappearance awoke an incredible hunger for some kind of spiritual observance of the milestones in our lives.
John O' Donohue reaches way back into the Celtic tradition of blessing your loved ones, and he makes this tradition accessible to us in a simple, refreshing and non-dogmatic way.
It seems auspicious that John O'Donohue was able to finish this book and the recording of the CD before he was called home unexpectedly - in his sleep- at the age of 53 in January 2008.
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