Dying to Live

Yesterday I sat with a woman who is in her early 90s. When she was a young woman she fell in love with a man from a Catholic family. She converted to appease the mother-in-law, raised her family Catholic, but never really felt fed by that faith. When her husband passed, she stopped attending mass. However, that did not give her a sense of freedom, but rather a gnawing sense of guilt and even fear. This is the gift of the third part of our lives that too often gets overlooked and disregarded. 

 Our soul is timeless and far more adventurous than we realize. We need to practice surrender, letting go, and dying. Otherwise, we never really live fully and freely. What was so interesting about this conversation was that one of things she hated about Catholicism was the confessional. However, yesterday she was confessing. Not to me, but to herself. And hopefully, to God.

John O'Donohue

THE CALL TO LIVE EVERYTHING

One of the sad things today is that so many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them. This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies that are rising inside in their souls. Many of us get very afraid and we eventually compromise. We settle for something that is safe, rather than engaging the danger and the wildness that is in our own hearts. We should never forget that death is waiting for us. A man in Connemara said one time to a friend of mine, ‘Beidh muid sínte siar,’ a duirt sé, ‘cúig mhilliúin blain déag faoin chré’ – We’ll be lying down in the earth for about fifteen million years, and we have a short exposure. I feel that when you recognize that death is on its way, it is a great liberation, because it means that you can in some way feel the call to live everything that is within you. One of the greatest sins is the unlived life, not to allow yourself to become chief executive of the project you call your life, to have a reverence always for the immensity that is inside of you.

John O'Donohue

Excerpt from WALKING ON THE PASTURES OF WONDER
John O'Donohue in conversation with John Quinn

Kirkstone Pass
Photo: © Ann Cahill