The Celtic mind adored the light.  We are always on a journey from darkness into light.  At first, we are children of the darkness.  Your body and face were formed first in the kind darkness of your mother’s womb.  Your birth was a first journey from darkness into light.  All your life, your mind lives within the darkness of your body.  Every thought you have is a flint moment, a spark of light from your inner darkness.  You only discover balance in your life when you learn to trust the flow of this ancient rhythm.

The Celtic people had a deep sense of the circular nature of our journey.  We come out of the darkness of winter into the possibility and effervescence of springtime.

Ultimately, light is the mother of life.  Where there is no light, there can be no life.  Light is a nurturing presence, which calls forth warmth and color in nature.

When the human mind began to consider the next greatest mystery of life, the mystery of love, light was also always used as a metaphor for its power and presence.  When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn breaking within you.  It is like a rebirth, a new beginning.

Light is generous - page 1

The darkest time of night is immediately before dawn.  Light is incredibly generous, but also gentle.  When you attend to the way the dawn comes, you learn how light can coax the dark.

The dawn is a refreshing time, a time of possibility and promise.  It brings awakening and renewal.

The Celtic circle of belonging - Page 3

Phrases like "an ancient circle closes" or "an ancient belonging awakens and discovers itself" help to bring out the deeper meaning and mystery of encounter.  This is the more sacred language of the soul for togetherness and intimacy.  When two people love each other, there is a third force between them.  Two people who are really awakened inhabit the one circle of belonging.  They have awakened a more ancient force around them that will hold them together and mind them.

Friendship needs a lot of nurturing.  Often people devote their primary attention to their work, or their status; most of their energy goes into doing.  In fact, they should be more concerned about "how to be."  The love side of your life is the place of greatest tenderness within you.
 
Love is the nature of the soul - pages 9, 10

The soul needs love as urgently as the body needs air.  In the warmth of love, the soul can be itself.  When love comes in to your life, unrecognized dimensions of your destiny awaken and blossom and grow.

Love is the nature of the soul.  When we love and allow ourselves to be loved, we begin more and more to inhabit the kingdom of the eternal.  Fear changes into courage, emptiness becomes plenitude, and distance becomes intimacy.

The Anam Cara Experience - pages 10, 13, 16

The anam-cara experience opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance.  Such friendship can remain alive even when the friends live far away from each other.  Because they have broken through the barriers of persona and egoism to the soul level, the unity of their souls is not easily severed.

In Gaelic, anam is the word for soul and cara is the word for friend.  So anam cara in the Celtic world was the "soul friend."  In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam cara.  It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life.  With the anam cara you could share your innermost self, your mind and your heart.  This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging.

In everyone’s life, there is a great need for an anam cara.  In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension.  The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are.

Many people have an anam cara of whom they are not truly aware.  Their lack of awareness cloaks the friend’s presence and causes feelings of distance and absence.  Sadly, it is often loss that awakens presence, by then it is too late.  It is wise to pray for the grace of recognition.  Inspired by awareness, you may then discover beside you the anam cara of whom your longing has always dreamed.

Intimacy as sacred -- page 17

In our culture, there is an excessive concentration on the notion of relationship.  People talk incessantly about relationships.  In a world where the computer replaces human encounter and psychology replaces religion, it is no wonder that there is an obsession with relationship.  Much of the public language of intimacy is hollow, and its incessant repetition only betrays the complete absence of intimacy.  Real intimacy is a sacred experience.  Real intimacy is of the soul, and the soul is reserved.

In the Celtic tradition, and especially in the Gaelic language, there is a refined sense of the sacredness that the approach to another person should embody.  The word "hello" does not exist in Gaelic. The way that you encounter someone is through blessing.  You say, Dia Dhuit, God be with you.  They respond Dia is Muire dhuit, God and Mary be with you.  When you are leaving a person, you say, Go gcumhdaí Dia Thú, May God come to your assistance or Go gcoinne Dia Thu, May God keep you.

The legend of Diarmuid and Gráinne -- page 20

Traveling throughout Ireland, you will see beautiful stone shapes called dolmens.  A dolmen is two massive, long tables of limestone, laid down parallel to each other.  Over them as a kind of shelter is placed another giant capstone.  Over them as a kind of shelter is placed another giant capstone.  In the Celtic tradition, these were known as Leaba Dhiarmade agus Gráinne; that is, the bed of Diarmuid and Gráinne.  The legend tells that Gráinne was to marry Fionn, chief of the Fianna, the old Celtic warriors.  She fell in love with Diarmuid and threatened him with magical destruction if he refused to elope with her.  The two of them eloped, and the Fianna chased them all over Ireland.  They were cared for by the animals and received advise from wise people on how to evade their pursuers.  It was said that when they rested at night, Diarmuid put up the dolmen as a shelter for his lover.  (The actual archaeological evidence shows that these were burial places.)

When you fall in love, common sense, rationality, and your normal serious, reserved, and respectable persona dissolve.  Suddenly you are like an adolescent again; there is new fire in your life.  You become revitalized.  Where there is no passion, your soul is either asleep or absent.  When your passion awakens, your soul becomes young and free and dances again.

When you give in to creative passion, it will bring you to the ultimate thresholds of transfiguration and renewal.  This growth causes pain, but it is a sacred pain.  It would be much more tragic to have cautiously avoided these depths and remained marooned on the shiny surfaces of the banal.

Love as ancient recognition -- page 22
 

Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention.  Friendship is always an act of recognition.  When you find the person you love, an act of ancient recognition brings you together.

When two people fall in love, each comes in out of the loneliness of exile, home to the one house of belonging.  At weddings, it is appropriate to acknowledge the gracious destiny that enabled this couple to recognize each other when they met.  Each recognized the other as the one in whom their heart could be at home.  Love should never be a burden, for there is more between you than your mutual presence.

The soul as divine echo -- page 26

We are capable of such love and belonging because the soul holds the echo of a primal intimacy.  The soul did not invent itself.  It is a presence from the divine world, where intimacy has no limit or barrier.

You can never love another person unless you are equally involved in the beautiful but difficult spiritual work of learning to love yourself.  This is not selfishness, and it is not narcissism; they are negative obsessions with the need to be loved.  Rather this is the wellspring of love within the heart.

You can work on yourself in order to unsilt the inner wellspring.  Then the miracle of love happens within you.  Where before there was hard, bleak, unyielding, dead ground, now there is growth, color, enrichment, and life flowing from the lovely wellspring of love.

Love should make you free.  You become free of the hungry, blistering need with which you continually reach out to scrape affirmation, respect, and significance for yourself from things and people outside yourself.  To be holy is to be home, to be able to rest in the house of belonging that we call the soul.

The wellspring of love within - page 28

You can search far and in hungry places for love.  It is a great consolation to know that there is a wellspring of love within yourself.  If you trust that this wellspring is there, you will then be able to invite it to awaken.  The following exercise could help develop awareness of this capacity:

When you have moments on your own or spaces in your time, just focus on the well at the root of your soul.  Imagine that nourishing stream of belonging, ease, peach, and delight.  Feel, with your visual imagination, the refreshing waters of that well gradually flowing up through the arid earth of the neglected side of your heart.  It is helpful to imagine this particularly before you sleep.  Then during the night you will be in a constant flow of enrichment and belonging.  You will find that when you awake at dawn, there will be a lovely, quiet happiness in your spirit.

One of the most precious things you should always preserve in a friendship and in love if your own differences.  It can happen within the circle of love that one person will tend to imitate the other or reimagine himself in the image of the other.  While this may indicate a desire for total commitment, it is also destructive and dangerous.  The irony is that it is usually the difference between people that makes one person attractive to another.  Consequently, this difference needs to be preserved and nurtured.

Love is also a force of light and nurture that liberates you to inhabit to the full your own difference.  There should be no imitation of each other, no need to be defensive or protective in each other’s presence.  Love should encourage and free you fully into your full potential.

In order to preserve your own difference in love, you need plenty of room for your soul.  Kahlil Gibran says "Let there be spaces in your togetherness.  Let the winds of the heavens dance between you."  Space allows your otherness to find its own rhythm and contour.

One of the lovely areas of love where space can be rendered beautiful is when two people make love.  The one you love is the one to whom you can bring he full array and possibility and delight of your senses in the knowledge and possibility and delight of your senses in the knowledge that they will be received in welcome and tenderness.  Since the body is in the soul, the body is illuminated all around with soul-light.  It is suffused with a gentle, sacred light.  Making love with someone should not be merely a physical or mechanical release.  It should engage the spiritual depth that awakens when you enter the soul of another person.

Wounded gift - page 33

One of the great powers of love is balance; it helps us move toward transfiguration.  When two people come together, an ancient circle closes between them.  They also come to each other not with empty hands, but with hands full of gifts for each other.  Often these are wounded gifts; this awakens the dimension of healing within love.  When you really love someone, you shine the light of your soul on the beloved.

When you love someone who is very hurt, one of the worst things you can do is to directly address the hurt and make an issue out of it.  If you make something into an issue, it becomes a habit and keeps recurring in a patters.  It is better simply to acknowledge that there is a wound there, but then stay away from it.  Every chance you get, shine the gentle light of the soul in on the wound. You can invoke the healing of the third force of light between you; this can bring forgiveness, consolation, and healing in stony times.

There is much to recommend not interfering with your love.  Two people who love each other should never feel called to explain to an outside party why they love each other, or why it is that they belong together.  The place that they belong is a secret place.  Their souls know why they are together; and they should trust that togetherness.  If you keep interfering with your connection with your Other, your lover, your anam cara, you gradually begin to force a distance between you.

A person should always offer a prayer of graciousness for the love that has awakened in them.  When you feel love for your beloved and the beloved’s love for you, now and again you should offer the warmth of your love as a blessing for those who are damaged and unloved.  When you send that love out from the bountifulness of your own love, it reaches other people.  This love is the deepest power of prayer.

In the Kingdom of Love There is No Competition - Page 35

Prayer is the act and presence of sending this light from the bountifulness of your love to other people to heal, free, and bless them.  When there is love in your life, you should share it spiritually with those who are pushed to the very edge of life.  If you send out goodness from yourself, or if you share that which is happy or good within you, it will all come back to you multiplied ten thousand times.  In the kingdom of love there is no competition; there is no possessiveness or control.  The more love you give away, the more love you will have.

A Friendship Blessing - Page 36

May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or old in you.
May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.  May you be good to them and may you be there for them;
may they bring you all the blessings, challenges, truth, and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam cara.

The body is the angel of the soul - page 44-46

The human body is beautiful.; your body is the home of your soul on earth.  The body is the angel who expresses and minds the soul; we should always pay loving attention to our bodies.  The body is the angel of the life.

The body of an actor becomes the character’s presence.  The most exuberant expression of the body is in dance.  The dance becomes fluent sculpture.  The body shapes the emptiness poignantly and majestically.

The body is much sinned against, even in a religion based on the Incarnation.  Religion has often presented the body as the source of evil, ambiguity, lust, and seduction.  This is utterly false and irreverent.  The body is sacred.

In Christian tradition, and especially among the Church Fathers, there was a deep suspicion of the body and a negative obsession with sexuality.  Sex and sexuality were portrayed as a potential danger to one’s eternal salvation.  The Christian tradition has often undervalued and mistreated the sacred presence of the body.  Artists, however, have been wonderfully inspired by the Christian tradition.  A beautiful example is Bernini’s  "Teresa in Ecstasy."  Teresa’s body is caught in the throes of an ecstasy where the sensuous and the mystical are no longer separable.

Body as mirror of the soul - pages 47-49

The body is a sacrament.  A sacrament is a visible sign of invisible grace.  The body is the mirror where the secret world of the soul comes to expression.  The body is a sacred threshold; and it deserves to be respected, minded, and understood in its spiritual nature.

The body is also very truthful.  You know from your own life that your body rarely lies.  Your mind can deceive you and put all kinds of barriers between you and your nature; but your body does not lie.

Your body is your only home in the universe.  It is unfortunate that often only when we are ill do we realize how tender, fragile, and precious is the house of belonging called the body.

We should avoid the false dualism that separates the soul from the body.  The soul is not simply within the body, hidden somewhere within its recesses.  The truth is rather the converse.  Your body is in the soul, and the soul suffuses you completely.  Therefore, all around you there is a secret and beautiful soul-light.

This recognition suggests a new art of prayer:  Close your eyes and relax into your body.  Imagine a light all around you, the light of your soul.  Then with your breath, draw that light into your body and bring it with your breath through every area of your body.  On your outward breath imagine you are exhaling the darkness or an inner charcoal residue.

People who are ill can be encouraged to pray physically in this way.  When you bring cleansing, healing soul-light into your body, you heal the neglected, tormented places.

Styles of vision - page 62

To the fearful eye, all is threatening.  All you see and concentrate on are things that can damage and threaten you.  The fearful eye is always besieged by threat.

To the greedy eye, everything can be possessed.  Greed is one of the powerful forces in the modern Western world.  It is sad that a greedy person can never enjoy what they have, because they are always haunted by that which they do not yet possess.

To the judgmental eye, everything is closed in definitive frames.  When the judgmental eye looks out, it sees things in terms of lines and squares.  It is always excluding and separating, and therefore it never sees in a compassionate or celebratory way.  To see is to judge.  The judgmental eye is always equally harsh with itself.

To the resentful eye, everything is begrudged.  People who have allowed the canker of resentment into their vision can never enjoy who they are or what they have.  They are always looking out toward others with resentment.  Perhaps they are resentful because they see others as more beautiful, more gifted, or richer than themselves.  The resentful eye lives out of its poverty and forgets its own inner harvest.

To the indifferent eye, nothing calls or awakens.  Indifference is one of the hallmarks of our times.  It is said that indifference is necessary for power; to hold control one has to be successfully indifferent to the needs and vulnerabilities of those under control.  To ignore things demands incredible mental energy.  When you become indifferent, you give all of your power away.

To the inferior eye, everyone else is greater.  Others are more beautiful, brilliant, and gifted than you.  The inferior eye is always looking away from its own treasures.  It can never celebrate its own presence and potential.

To the loving eye, everything is real.  This art of love is neither sentimental nor naive.  Such love is the greatest criterion of truth, celebration, and reality.  Love is the light in which we see light.

The loving eye can even coax pain, hurt, and violence toward transfiguration and renewal. l The loving is bright because it is autonomous and free.  It can look lovingly upon anything.  The loving eye sees through and beyond image and effects the deepest change.

Vision is central to your presence and creativity.  To recognize how you see things can bring you self-knowledge and enable you to glimpse the wonderful treasures your life secretly holds.

The language of touch - page 73-76

Our sense of touch connects us to the world in an intimate way.  Touch and the world of touch bring us out of the anonymity of distance into the intimacy of belonging.  Humans use their hands to touch -- to explore, to trace, and to feel the world outside of them.  With your hands, you reach out to touch the world.

It is recognized now that every child needs to be touched.  Touch communicates belonging, tenderness, and warmth; which fosters self-confidence, self-worth, and poise in the child.

The world of touch includes the whole world of sexuality; this is probably the most tender aspect of human presence.  When you are sexual with someone, you have let them right into your world.  The world of sexuality is a sacred world of presence.

A Blessing for the Senses - Page 77

May your body be blessed.
May you realize that your body is a faithful and beautiful friend of your soul.
And may you be peaceful and joyful and recognize that your senses are sacred thresholds.
May you realize that holiness is mindful, gazing, feeling, hearing, and touching.
May your senses gather you and bring you home.
May your senses always enable you to celebrate the universe and the mystery
and possibilities in your presence here.
May the Eros of the Earth bless you.
 

Discovering your own beauty - Page 103

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.  There is a deep beauty within each person.  Modern culture is obsessed with cosmetic perfection.  Beauty is standardized; it has become another product for sale.  In its real sense, beauty if the illumination of your soul.

Thoughts are our inner senses - page 105

If you expect to find nothing within yourself but the repressed, abandoned, and shameful elements of your past or a haunted hunger, all you will find is emptiness and desperation.  The way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.  Perception is reality.

If your thoughts are impaired or if they are negative or diminished, then you will never discover anything rich or beautiful within your soul.  We have to imagine more courageously if we are to greet creation more fully.

Silence is the sister of the divine - page 111

There is nothing in the world that resembles God so much as silence.  Silence is a great friend to the soul; it unveils the riches of solitude.  It’s difficult to reach that quality of inner silence; you must make space for it so it may begin to work for you.
 
One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences.  Often secrets are not revealed in words, often they are concealed in the silences between words.  The depth of a friendship mirrors itself in the quality and shelter of silence between two people.

One of the greatest sins is the unlived life - page 123

In the Western tradition, we were taught many things about the nature of negativity and the nature of sin, but we were never told that one of the greatest sins is the unlived life.  It is a lonely experience to be at the deathbed of someone who is full of regret; to hear him say how he would love another year to do the things his heart had always dreamed of but believed he could never do until he retired.  He had always postponed the dream of his heart.

We are so privileged to still have time.  We have but one life, and it is a shame to limit it by fear and false barriers.  The divine has such passionate creativity and instinct for the fully inhabited life.  If you allow yourself to be the person that you are, then everything will come into rhythm.

The shape of each soul is different.  There is a secret destiny for each person.  When you endeavor to repeat what others have done or force yourself into a preset mold, you betray your individuality.  We need to return to the solitude within, to find again the dream that lies at the hearth of the soul.  We need to feel the dream with the wonder of a child approaching a threshold of discovery.  When we rediscover our childlike nature, we enter into a world of gentle possibility.  The false burdens fall away.  We come into rhythm with ourselves.

A Blessing of Solitude -- page 125

May you recognize in your life the presence, power, and light of your soul.
May you realize 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 realize 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 yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation
with which God sees you in every moment.

A BLESSING - Page 160

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the secret love and warmth of your heart.
May you see in what you do the beauty of your own soul.
May the sacredness of your work bring healing, light, and renewal to those who work with you and to those who see and receive your work.
May your work never weary you.
May it release within you wellsprings of refreshment, inspiration, and excitement.
May you be present in what you do.
May you never become lost in the bland absences.
May the day never burden.
May dawn find you awake and alert, approaching your new day with dreams, possibilities, and promises.
May evening find you gracious and fulfilled.
May you go into the night blessed, sheltered, and protected.
May your soul calm, console, and renew you.

Negativity - pages 184-185

How you view your future actually shapes it; expectation helps create the future.  Many of our troubles do not belong to us.  They are troubles we draw upon ourselves through our gloomy attitude.

The way you are toward your life is the way that your life will be toward you.  To have an attitude that is compassionate and hopeful brings home to you the things you really need.

One of the most destructive negative attitudes toward one’s past or toward one’s memory is the attitude of regret.  Often regret is very false and displaced, and imagines the past to be totally other than it was.  You should not look back on your life feeling that you missed something or that you regret something that you did not do.

The passionate heart never ages  -- page 187

Age is not dependent on chronological time, it is more related to a person’s temperament.  Some young people can be so serious and gloomy that they sound very old.  You are as young as you feel.  If you begin to feel the warmth of your soul, there will be a youthfulness in you that no one will ever be able to take away from you.

Old age and freedom - page 196

Old age can be a time of clearance; all perception requires clearance.  If things are too close to you, you cannot see them; that is why we frequently value so little the people who are really close to us.

As you age and your life calms, you will be able to make many clearances in order to see who you are, what life has done to you, and what you have made of your life.  Old age can be a time of releasing the many false burdens that you have dragged behind you through the years.

Sometimes the greatest burdens humans carry are the burdens they make for themselves.  People put years into constructing a heavy burden for themselves and then say "this is my cross in life."  This is nonsense.  It has more to do with their own negative use of the freedom and possibility that God gives them.  False burdens can fall away in old age.  To begin to let them go can lighten the pressure and weight on your life.  You can undo the damage that you did to yourself early on in your life.
 
A Blessing for Old Age

May the light of your soul mind you,
May all of your worry and anxiousness about becoming old be transfigured,
May you be given a wisdom with the eye of your soul,
to see this beautiful time of harvesting.
May you have the commitment to harvest your life,
to heal what has hurt you, to allow it to come closer
to you and become one with you.
May you have great dignity, may you have a sense of how free you are,
and above all may you be given the wonderful gift of meeting the eternal light
and beauty that is within you.
May you be blessed, and may you find a wonderful love in
yourself for yourself.
 

Death - page 207

There is a presence who walks the road of life with you; it accompanies your every moment.  On your own, or with others, it is always there with you.  When you were born, it came out of the womb with you.

One of the faces of death is negativity; another is fear.  There are different levels of fear.  Many people are afraid of letting go and use control to structure their lives.  They like to be in control of what is happening around them and to them.  Too much control is destructive.  It can put outside many of the blessings destined for you.  When you begin to let go, it is amazing how enriched your life becomes.

Some people are afraid of being themselves.  Many people allow their lives to be limited by that fear.  They show a persona that they think the world will accept or admire.

All fear is rooted in the fear of death.  There is a time or phase in every life when you are really terrified of dying.  One thing certain -- a time will come when you will be called to make the journey out of this world, when you have to die.  You do not know how or when you will die, who will be there, or how you will feel.

Death is a lonely visitor; you will never truly appreciate this until it visits.  In Connemara people say "Ni thuigfidh tú an bás go dtiocfaidh sé ag do dhorás féin" - "You will never understand death until it comes to your own door.

After it visits your home, nothing is the same again.  There is an empty place at the table, an absence in the house.  Gone is the person whom you loved.  This is very frightening and strange.  The death of a loved one is bitterly lonely - when you really love someone, you would be willing to take their place.  Yet no one can take another’s place when that time comes.

When all the neighbors gather around the family to support and help them , it is a lovely gift.  You need them to help bring you through that broken time.  The wake helps people to let the emotion of loneliness and grief flow in a natural way.

A glimpse at the face of your death can bring immense freedom to your life.  It can make you aware of the urgency of your time on earth.  You only have one chance - one journey through life.  Make the most of it.
 
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 life 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 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 cara.

To write to Jean

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