Anam Cara: 25th Anniversary Edition

When you sow things in the spring, you commit them to the darkness of the soil. The soil does its own work. It is destructive to interfere with the rhythm and wisdom of its darkness.

Where there is no passion, your soul is either asleep or absent.

There are different levels of fear. Many people are terrified of letting go and use control as a mechanism to order and structure their lives. They like to be in control of what is happening around them and to them. But too much control is destructive. You become trapped in the protective programme that you weave around your life. This can put you

At every moment and in every situation God is the intimate, attentive and encouraging friend.

Regularly throughout conversation in Gaelic, there is explicit recognition that the divine is present in others.

One way to invigorate and renew your language is to expose your self to poetry. In poetry your language will find cleansing illumination and sensuous renewal.

BEAUTY LIKES NEGLECTED PLACES ONLY IN SOLITUDE CAN YOU DISCOVER A sense of your own beauty. The Divine Artist sent no-one here without the depth and light of divine beauty. This beauty is frequently concealed behind the dull façade of routine. Only in your solitude will you come upon your own beauty.

The Celtic imagination testifies to a different concept and experience of time. The recognition of presence and the celebration of nature was only possible because time was a window on the eternal. Time was never reduced to achievement. Time was time for wonder. This is still one of the charming things about Ireland. People here still have time.

If you can awaken this sense of destiny, you come into rhythm with your life. You fall out of rhythm when you renege on your potential and talent, when you settle for the mediocre as a refuge from the call.

Often a person’s identity, that wild inner complexity of soul and colour of spirit, becomes shrunken into their work identity. They become prisoners of their role. They limit and reduce their lives. They become seduced by the practice of self-absence. They move further and further away from their own lives. They are forced backwards into hidden are