Eternal Echoes: Exploring Our Hunger to Belong

by John O'Donohue

There is a divine restlessness in the human heart today, an eternal echo of longing that lives deep within us and never lets us settle for what we have or where we are. Now, in this exquisitely crafted, inspirational book, John O'Donohue explores that most basic of human desires - the desire to belong. It is a desire that constantly draws us towards new possibilities of self-discovery, friendship and creativity.

In Eternal Echoes John O'Donohue embarks upon a journey of discovery into the heart of our post-modern world - a hungry, homeless world that suffers from a deep sense of isolation and fragmentation. With the thousand-year-old shelter of divine belonging now shattered, we seem to have lost our way in this magical, wondrous universe.

Here, as we explore perennial themes and gain insight from a range of ancient beliefs, we draw inspiration from Ireland's rich spiritual heritage of Celtic thought and imagination. It is a heritage of profound, mystical wisdom that will open pathways to peace and contentment, and lead us to live with creativity, honour and compassion the one life that has been given to us.
Destined to become a timeless classic of vision and hope, this is an imaginative tour de force by one of today's most inspirational writers.

Genres: Spirituality, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Poetry, Psychology, Religion, Ireland

391 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

John O'Donohue, Ph.D., was born in County Clare in 1956. He spoke Irish as his native language and lived in a remote cottage in the west of Ireland until his untimely death in January 2008. A highly respected poet and philosopher, he lectured throughout Europe and America and wrote a number of popular books, including Anam Cara and To Bless the Space Between Us.

Reviews

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books simply find you. They enter your life at the right time, when you are most in need of and receptive to hearing their message. This book. My soul. The Universe recognized what I needed and offered up these words in response.

I've been aware of John O'Donohue's work for some time: I have a collection of his poetry, gifted by a dear friend, that I dip into and feel embraced by; I've been to a writing residency at Anam Cara in southwest Ireland, named for one of his works of essays and reflections. But it wasn't until I read a quote in the amazing weekly newsletter of curated wisdom, Maria Popova's Brain Pickings (you must subscribe, you simply must) that I learned of Eternal Echoes and knew it was the book for me, at this time, in this place.

There is a divine restlessness in the human heart. Though our bodies maintain an outer stability and consistency, the heart is an eternal nomad. No circle of belonging can ever contain all the longings of the human heart. As Shakespeare said, we have “immortal longings.” All human creativity issues from the urgency of longing.

That quote has become the centerpiece of the talk I give at author readings, for it speaks not only to the central themes of my novel, but to the themes playing out in my life.

Eternal Echoes is about coming to terms with the emptiness inherent to one's soul, an emptiness we seek to fill with religion or drugs, love or work, instead of accepting that it is the very space inside we need, in order to grow into our compassion, our true selves.

There is something within you that no one or nothing else in the world is able to meet or satisfy. When you recognize that such unease is natural, it will free you from getting on the treadmill of chasing ever more temporary and partial satisfactions. This eternal longing will always insist on some door remaining open somewhere in all the shelters where you belong. When you befriend this longing, it will keep you awake and alert to why you are here on earth.

For this reader, acknowledging and living with this longing has been a particularly painful and recent exploration. I am a problem-solver by nature and when something is off, when my soul is akilter, my instinct is to root out the source of the maladjustment and fix it. It's hard to accept that I need to sit with my discomfort and listen to what it is trying tell me.

Most of the activity in society is subconsciously designed to quell the voice crying in the wilderness within you. The mystic Thomas à Kempis said that when you go out into the world, you return having lost some of yourself. Until you learn to inhabit your aloneness, the lonely distraction and noise of society will seduce you into false belonging, with which you will only become empty and weary.

By necessity, I have been spending a lot of time "in society" lately, losing bits of myself along the way. And the more time I spend engaged in society, the more Fernando Pessoa's lament from The Book of Disquiet (yet another collection of wisdoms that has found its way to me at the right time): my “passions and emotions (are) lost among more visible kinds of achievement.”

Eternal Echoes is informed by Celtic mysticism and a fluid Christian theology. O'Donohue's approach to faith is philosophical rather than theological. It is something akin to gnosticism, that compels the individual to be an active participant in her own journey to wholeness, not a blind believer in an all-powerful god. He writes of allowing in vulnerability, for vulnerability leads to wonder, and wonder leads to seeking, and seeking leads to growth, and growth makes room for everyone else.

Dog-eared and underlined and highlighted and journaled, Eternal Echoes enters my library of go-to soulcatchers, along with the writings of Richard Hugo, Rilke and Pessoa, Woolf, Didion and Solnit: writers who understand what it means to allow in the darkness and sit tight while it slowly becomes light.

[Avani ✨ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eternal Echoes by John O'donohue, a book which you seems cannot just swipe through and read like other books. If I were to ever annotate any book, this one would be in that list with most annotations I presume.

The book talks about our sense and hunger of belonging in different situations, different times as well as at every action we see and do around. It explores different aspects of humans and sense of belonging.

Irish spirituality is something I never thought of, but this book explores ancient beliefs and cultures of Celtic thought and imagination. Although the book is highly fuild in terms of Christian theory, I would rather say this book is more philosophical in nature than anything else.

I'm not a Christian theory follower and i usually avoid spiritual books which are filled with faith based theories or are baised in any means, but this book does not hold any such dilemmas for me. I'm still going through this beautiful book in bits and pieces here and there, but I am glad I came across this book and will cherish it forever.

[Avonlea Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Does anyone else read a book, then can't decide whether they loved it or hated it? Sometimes I bounce between a 2-star and a 4-star rating and I wonder what other people must be thinking that I keep changing it. But I imagine I'm not the only who has that issue when reading a certain book.

For me, this was one of those books that I can't quite make my mind up on. "Eternal Echoes" is a collection of poetical reflections on spirituality in the modern world and human desires for longing and belonging. It reads in a very stream-of-conscious style, which is part of its charm, but I also felt at times it may have been edited more thoroughly: O'Donohue might have reconsidered a turn of phrase or expressed something more succinctly. He rambles at length on a certain idea, then is brief with another. He employs certain words or phrases too frequently, and sometimes he introduces description of the Native landscape and mythos in Ireland in a way that is not totally seamless - repeating multiple times that this is in the West of Ireland, when it might have done enough if O'Donohue had only said once that this is where he hails from. But I was not at all put off by this. Rather, I felt I struggled with "Eternal Echoes," because I do not quite agree with all of the opinions expressed within it.

While much of the book reflects genuine personal insight and some beautiful notions upon prayer and desire, some of this book could best be described as a type of Catholic pop-psychology, which is fascinating because O'Donohue also rebukes both fundamentalism and popular psychology in this book. Perhaps O'Donohue just could not quite get out of their grasp, in spite of perceiving their limitations. He still finds himself expressing on multiple occasions the idea that people can acquire not only spiritual healing, but a physical and material healing, if only they were dutiful to God and learned to see their suffering as a Divine lesson - something that has its reflection in the field of psychology, where people are made to believe they can achieve good health and wealth through simply thinking more positively. He pens that nobody would be lonesome if only they could be more generous, which itself seems austere and belies that generosity must be a shared activity. A particularly troubling element for me is that he also employs language which segregates - we should pity the poor, he writes, and children who have been abused and have lost their way; and we should pray for prostitutes. He does not seem to consider that such persons could, in fact, be reading his book. He keeps "them" at an arms length -to be pitied, but not included. Almost ironically, it was yet his ideas of the loss of a shared identity and whole community in the modern world that touched me; and this created a real conflict for me in reading this. It also felt at times that O'Donohue moved away from the really meaningful and personally-felt insights that make this book so endearing and illuminating, and resorted yet to his role as lecturer: becoming suddenly a preacher, he proffers advice on illness with a type of authority, although it seems clear he has no such experience of living with a life-long illness or disability. He often writes imperatively, as if we are not here just to listen to his reflections, but, rather, *must* listen to him.

The above said, I will also say I really enjoyed the selection of quotations that O'Donohue included among the pages; and I also appreciated the Blessings he included at the end of each chapter. These added something special, I thought, to the work: a thoughtful touch that gave it finesse.

So this book was not a complete loss, but I would also suggest approaching it with a certain level of caution - that not everything O'Donohue says is necessarily all that could be hoped for; and, while sometimes very striking and beautiful when he locates an authentic notion, and, while O'Donohue may have tried to transcend common limitations in religion and psychology, it seems to suffer still from a limited and biased perspective that does not quite make it completely past the grasps of fundamentalist and popular ideas.

Notes:

pg. 113, on "The Prison of Shame" - provides example of where O'Donohue mistakenly segregates where he tries to create tolerance. He writes, "Imagine the years of silent torment so many gay people have endured, unable to tell their secret." He continues, "Think of the victims of racism: lovely people who are humiliated and tagged for hostility." At the bottom of the page, he also chooses to describe victims of sexual violence similarly, failing to write towards but of them: "When a person is sexually abused or raped, she often feel great shame at what happened to her."

pg. 161-162 on "When Sorrows Come, They Come Not Single Spies, but in Battalions" - This essay, and the one proceeding, show some of the insensitive language I refer to above. O'Donohue writes that, "Often the flame of pain can have a cleansing effect and burn away the dross that has accumulated around your life. It is difficult to accept that what you are losing is what is used, what you no longer need."

pg. 233-234 on "Brittle Language Numbs Longing" - This essay, and the one following, is one of the areas of this book where O'Donohue begins to successfully nibble around the edges of popular psychology, speaking about how the field's jargon is so ill-suited to describe humanity: "When your experience is rich and diverse, it has a beautifully intricate inner weaving. You know that no analysis can hold a candle to the natural majesty and depth of even the most ordinary moment in the universe." He describes the language of psychology as "brittle" and "disembodied." "One such powerful term is 'process,'" he writes about how we talk of "processing" emotions. "In many cases, 'processing' has become a disease; it is now the way in which many people behave towards themselves. This term has no depth or sacredness. 'Processing' is a mechanical term: there are processed peas and beans. The tyranny of processing reveals a gaping absence of soul." He continues: "Such terminology is blasphemous; it belongs to the mechanical word."

pg. 198 on "Wonder Invites Mystery to Come Closer" - is another area of the book where O'Donohue attacks the language of popular psychology. "This jargon has no colour and no resonance of any mystery, opaqueness, or possibility. Real wonder about your soul demands words which [...] would be imaginative and suggestive of the depths of the unknown within you. Unlike the fashionable graffiti of fast-food psychology, they hold the reverence to which mystery is entitled."

[Betsy Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book after I read a quote from it that filled me with peace. I wish I could remember what it was, but it’s evaporated.

In the beginning of the book, I was in awe. I’d read a small titled section and sink into contemplation and maybe contemplate a single idea all day. I did this over the course of weeks.

Then I came to a section about childhood that was so alien to my own that I experienced visceral disappointment. O’Donohue writes in sweeping generalities, even attaching them to traumatic childhoods, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I closed the book and put it away for the rest of the day.

Then I came back to it and began to read what helped me and jump over what didn’t.

There were concepts—sections examining different kinds of presence—that were sometimes helpful, sometimes felt more like writing prompts O’Donohue had given himself on the topic.

I read, I skipped sections, read, was inspired, and it was in the middle of a topic called “The Architecture of Belonging” when, discussing the inborn human characteristic of experiencing everything within frames (something cognitive scientist George Lakoff has written about extensively) when O’Donohue definitively stated: “You cannot belong in a vast, nameless space. There is no belonging in the air except for the birds who ride its currents. Belonging is equally difficult in the ocean; the vast expanse of water is anonymous. . . . Where there is anonymity, there can be no real belonging. (71)”—it was this moment when I understood my difficulty and O’Donohue’s frame:

O’Donohue’s whole point of view is informed by Christianity, a belief in duality—we are one thing, God another. His insistence on framing things that I, as a person raised without religion, an agnostic who is quite content to not know whether there is or isn’t an actual being called God (which itself feels like a constriction of something I can’t understand, but would bet money is not a being in human terms) brought some clarity about my reaction to this book. My most essential longing (which is the subject of this book about “belonging”) is for what I can’t frame—for instance, infinity. My heart swells in the moments I merge with whatever the great infinity of life is. My most essential wish is to be nothing in being part of it. And this does not preclude belonging through relationships and being who I am. In fact, for me, deep belonging comes when this indefinable, unframed ocean of nothing becomes our common ground. So O’Donohue’s constriction of my deepest love of that which cannot be framed put me off.

I think this is a great book for bibliomancy—opening it blindly, pointing, and reading whatever passage your finger lands on. So I think I will review this book before finishing it, and use it this way myself whenever I feel so moved.

* * *
Addendum
I have so many progressive, contemplative Christian friends on Facebook that I asked for their thoughts on this review. One, a Christian chaplain, Alice Hildebrand, gave me an education. I'm copying it here (with her permission) as she wrote it in a message:

ALICE HILDEBRAND
In response to your review of John O'Donohue. (you can share whatever, if anything, of this, i just didnt want to clog up your page.) I dont like his writing as he is too much of a certain kind of Christian for me. i admit that i havent done more than dip into him, but was not drawn by his thought. since i have been in the religion business for a long time, and read a lot, i could give you lengthy critiques of the nuances of many modern Xian thinkers, but the shorthand version is that they usually have an underlying assumption about "God" that is very traditional, especially if the writer is Catholic, and therefore, i lose interest. But, to offer something for your thinking -- duality is not a Christian construct, it comes right of paganism via Plato. Much of what is problematic abt Xian theologies comes out of the Greek philosophical tradition, and much of what is helpful comes out of Judaism and the Mystery Religions of the middle east at the time that the first Xian writers were constructing the new religion. And, all the religious and philosophical traditions that i know of deal with problems of location -- where do i, do we, fit into this infinite space we find ourselves in, both space-wise and time-wise? many, many people want to believe there is order, there is meaning, and want it to be nailed down in creeds etc and many, many people look at the Somethingness with awe and wonder and are OK with the looseness -- mysticism is able to embrace the unanswerable via relationship to/with it, which is where it sounds like you are -- but many, many folks want something a little more homey-feeling. Hence, religion. Hence, as an example, Christianity, with its sense of "God" as ultimate, transcendent holiness (from Judaism) and its sense of down to earth, just-like-me immanence in the Christ figure which got identified with a Jewish teacher named Jesus. In the 200 or so years before Jesus' life (if he was a real person and not a composite, but in any case that's how we do our dating), Jewish thought began to posit intermediary figures between the transcendent god and humans and that helped pave the way for the theologies around Jesus. So, i think in your review and description of your own philosophy/spirituality, you express this so beautifully -- "My heart swells in the moments I merge with whatever the great infinity of life is. My most essential wish is to be nothing in being part of it. And this does not preclude belonging through relationships and being who I am. In fact, for me, deep belonging comes when this indefinable, unframed ocean of nothing becomes our common ground. " and that is congruent with many Christian thinkers, even in ancient sources. Awe, gratitude, amazement, relationship. i also think that so many of us had such terribly fucked up childhoods, with parents who couldnt parent well, that in our political and religious lives we still want a Super Parent who will make sure we are rewarded and "those people" are punished. Religious leaders and politicians of all kinds... this is not a new problem of course. 😬

[Philip Yancey]

O'Donohue died too young, but everything he's left behind causes me to think, feel, and reflect. Always worth the effort.

[Writerful Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not a book you simply read from cover to cover. There is so much timeless wisdom contained in this book that you will often find yourself pausing to reflect on what has been said time and time again. Totally appealed to my Celtic soul. I can't praise this book enough.

[Victoria Evangelina Allen · Rating 4 out of 5]

~GREEN PASTURES OF BELONGING~

I wrote down about 40 pages of quotes from this book during the month of reading it. If I read it with a yellow highlighter instead, there would be no page left unmarked. For all the brilliance of meaning and artful writing of separate sentences and passages, the whole landscape of the book stayed covered in thick fog for me. "Perhaps, I do not embrace my longing and deny my need of belonging, and thus cannot see clearly," I would joke, routinely, over the weeks of marinating in the atmosphere of soulful writing and deeper than my conscious comprehension messages of the philosopher.

I was advised to switch off my logic and read with the heart, knowing that whatever my soul craves from this book, it will open up to. It helped; though I connected (read: understood) chapters on suffering and grief the most.

The foundation of O'Donohue's book lays in ancient Celtic teachings and mysteries with added flavors of theosophy, spirituality and Hegel's influence. Thus the study of longing and belonging becomes larger than life and connects itself in a never-ending circle of the snake, biting its tail, to conclude that we are shuffling God out of our lives and until we bring Him back in, we'll never belong fully and never satisfy our immense longings in all the areas of life and beyond.

The book dives into the meanings of presence (the flame of longing), suffering (the dark valley of broken belonging), prayer (a bridge between longing and belonging), and absence (where longing still lingers).

This deep and beautiful book is full of many-layered wonders and gems. It lullabies the reader into its embrace. It does not give simple answers on what "belonging" is, but gives you enough material to create your own house of understanding.

Especially, if you are willing to take time with the book and your own inner dialogue.

Which I should do once again, on a re-read, in hope of connecting the dots and stepping out of the fog onto the green pastures of belonging to Self and the Universe of Spirit.

Victoria Evangelina

[Gearóid · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jam packed with wisdom!
Lots of deep thinking involved in reading this book but very rewarding.

[Hope · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really loved Anam Cara and so had high hopes for this book. The first part of the book was very interesting and enlightening, but then the second part of the book took on an abrupt Christian tone, and I lost interest. The appeal of Anam Cara was that it was non-denominational and could apply to multiple beliefs. The feeling with this book was very biased towards Christianity and felt unbalanced.

[Karunagrace · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love John O'Donohue's writing. His gently probing reflections, woven with rich Celtic and Catholic learning and a love of language, combine to form a deepening meditation that spirals inward and outward at the same time. You feel like you are participating in or witnessing his creative thought process, and that he enjoys the process, and the process itself brings new insights to light.

Eternal Echoes is about the soul's deep thirst for belonging, or "Being and Longing, the longing of our Being and the being of our Longing." He reflects on the shapes this longing takes and the ways in which it can--and cannot--be satisfied in earthly life. "The heart is an eternal nomad," he says. When I read this book I wanted to quote big chunks of it on a myspace page I didn't have. If nothing else, read the beautiful introduction; the whole book is encapsulated there anyway.

[Cliff · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. O'Donohue, in his masterful book - Eternal Echoes, takes you on an exquisitely organized, vastly scenic, interpretive journey through the corridors of the human soul. His profound knowledge and sensitivities in the realm of the human condition are astounding; And the language with which he chooses to impart these insights to the reader, is equally fantastic. With lyric like imagery, he weaves words that touch the senses like beautiful music - pure literary excellence!

"It takes a lifetime of slow work to find a rhythm of thinking which reflects and articulates the uniqueness of your soul" - John O'Donohue

Eternal Echoes will forever rattle around in the brain, helping you gain a better understanding of others and, more importantly, a better understanding of yourself! READ this book! It will move you, amaze you, and give you a new appreciation of what it means to be human!

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Anam Cara the words in this book just washed over me soothingly, making me receptive to the ideas contained within. It gave me some insight into where that 'search to belong' comes from and what to expect from the world in terms of an answer.

[Judith Lauder Byrnes · Rating 2 out of 5]

So hard to get through for me. I normally like his writing but in this, he seemed to over complicate concepts and drop the thread. It was a trudge to finish each section and find (rare) nuggets for my book group discussions. Very disappointing.

[Emily Magnus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finding another John O book is like finding buried treasure. Hats off to the poet who was the first to give me lil heart flames for poetry. Eternal Echoes was all about longing and belonging, thresholds, presence, absence and suffering. There were certain moments where I felt he could cut to the chase, but I really I love all the tid bits. Also fun that it was more literary and less poetry, but in classic fashion my QOTB will be a poem:

“Blessed be the longing that brought you here and that quickens your soul with wonder.
May you have the courage to befriend your eternal longing.
May you enjoy the critical and creative companionship of the question ‘Who am I?’ And may it brighten your longing.
May your mind inhabit your life with the same sureness with which your body belongs to the world.
May the sense of something absent enlarge your life.
May your soul be as free as the ever-new waves of the sea.
May you succumb to the danger of growth.
May you live in the neighborhood of wonder.
May you belong with the wildness of Dance.
May you know that you are ever embraced in the kind circle of God.”

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book felt nothing short of sacred. O'Donohue takes spritual concepts and applies them directly to our world today in a way that is uplifting but doesn't tiptoe around real issues.
My only complaint is that I can't have excerpts read to me every morning before I start my day.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between 4-5 stars.

[Aidan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Relaxing and rejuvenating. At times the advice and catholic background reminded me of my grandma which was quite soothing. Also, for a catholic scholar in the year 2000, there are surprisingly modern and progressive messages here about immigrants, other cultures, and LGBTIQQ+.

[Andrew Oda · Rating 5 out of 5]

exquisitely beautiful. so many good passages

[Amy]

This was a somewhat disappointing read but not without it's strong points. The main theme was the cohabitation of longing and belonging in the human experience. It explored the role of both feelings and the importance of a balance between them. I would not recommend this book for its theology as it seems to advance a nominally Christian, watery sort of spiritualism. However, some meditations and thoughts were insightful and worthwhile never the less. The strongest sections were the sections on longing and belonging and the first part of the section on absence. However, the book's greatest shortcoming is that it is much longer than it needs to be. In my opinion the best sections could be made into a book half it's size and even those sections have a tendency to ramble on long after they have exhausted their message.

I did pick up a new favorite quote: "To be here is so much."

[Victoria · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some books are to be returned to again & again, and this is one of them. I picked this up in a charity shop and I had no idea what to expect from it. I quickly fell in love with John's reflections and deep insights, drawn from the Celtic way of life; his simple, honest and engaging writing style; and his ability to conjure up vivid imagery and analogies to transmit his wisdom in a way that is accessible to anyone. His humility, understanding and love of life come through on every page, as well as the solace and inspiration he found in the Irish landscape. There is so much in this, it is hard to capture it in a few words, but it is simply a source of impeccable wisdom from a beautiful soul.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some very interesting ideas and perspectives with regard to self exploration and understanding but almost no reasoned thought or conclusions to them. There was very little to do with Celtic history, religion, and culture as well as a large number of contradictions and paradoxical statements within the text making it read more like a monotheistic fairy tail then something philosophical or scholarly. As such I have a hard time recommending this book, unless the above described is what your after.

[Emily Briano · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my fourth John O'Donohue book, and I'm continually amazed at the depth and breadth of wisdom his books encompass. Reading them is like reading a long, beautiful prayer. It is so sad to think he died so young. Highly recommended for anyone wanting to understand their place in the world.

[Lcord · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of those books I've read and reread. John O'donohue had such a beautiful soul. So sad that he died so young. He had much to teach and share

[Laura Uplinger · Rating 5 out of 5]

A soulful symphony of thought. An essential read for those who love flights of freedom in the realm of longing and belonging.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

a wonderful meditation read

[Leon Quinn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some deep fables and insights but overly religious and a little blinkered..

[Andrew · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book read of the eight books published by a great author whose life was all too short. I'm now half way through that number, and so far they have all been wonderful.

This one is set with generous margins and narrow text blocks, then divided up in short thematic sections each commencing with an ornate Celtic capital. This setting beguiles the reader into believing the book will be a fairly quick and easy reading.

But I should have known better. O'Donohue writes prose like a poet - the sentences packed with meaning. You have to slow down and take time.

I always have this drive to get through books, the stacks that surround me, the ones on wishlists, the ones not yet discovered, old and new. At one level simply ticking off the task, closing the loop, moving on to the next thing, progressing. At another level, the hunger to know and explore, delve into the great mystery. At some other level a gentle addiction born of the need for meaning and/or escape / solace, safe spaces.

"The act of reading," says John O'Donohue, "becomes a wild symbiosis of the reader's longing and the wise configuration of words." (p301)

A change occurred when I started using this book devotionally, reading about three sections at a time not long after waking, and particularly when at last (having passed through parts named 'Awakening in the World: The Threshold of Belonging', 'Presence: The Flame of Longing', 'Prisons We Choose to Live In' and 'Suffering as the Dark Valley of Broken Belonging'), in Part 5 we arrived at 'Prayer: A Bridge Between Longing and Belonging'. Beautiful. Profound. Apt. Generative and moving.

Strangely, though, this is not where the book ends (resisting the urge of most Christian books to end with a warm spiritual glow), instead circling back in a sixth part on Absence, which eventually lands on the necessity (though not as a panacea or without ambiguity) of (non-fundamentalist, non-cultic) community ("a prophetic community... nourished by prayer and animated by divine longing" p372), and an apophatic possibility of presence discovered through/in absence, with longing being the force that draws us up/in/on/outward.

Actually, this circling back to absence paints an accurate existential picture. The discovery of prayer is a wonderful thing that makes a world of difference, but it won't take away your longing, or magic away the realities of life. It's a bit like Kierkegaard's dancer's leap (of faith) - an upward movement and a return to the ground, all hopefully done with grace.

O'Donohue's is a unique blend of philosophically and psychologically informed Christian-inflected (postmodern) Celtic spirituality that sometimes explores the borderlands of what might be considered orthodox. Some might read that description as pejorative - I don't mean it to be. The spaces he explores are up to the reader to consider and navigate. Perhaps I'm not 'selling' it very well. I have found vast amounts that are profoundly life-giving in his books. I have discovered an incisiveness regarding the deeper human condition, intimations of the more than human, a connection, and a way with words that I can't stop quoting in my own work.

O'Donohue writes with an extravagance and generosity of meaning, poetically woven and enchanted, continually plumbing the depths of things, while expanding the width of vision, calling us inward and outward, to bring the human condition into a burgeoning encounter with the divine.

[Brian Wilcox · Rating 3 out of 5]

The late O'Donohue was a superb writer in that his prose is captivatingly poetic. And for persons with a romantic orientation, as in, romanticism as emerged late 1700s ff, with accent on, among other things, subjectivity and nature, this would likely prove an inspiring read. Yet, romanticism being part of the truth, over-emphasizes part of the truth. The same applies to the fade of focus on Celtic spirituality, which represents our human tendency to glorify a past in avoidance of the challenge of the collective present.

To me, Eternal Echoes, as romanticism itself, tends to a sentimental (as in, subjective, emotive) glorification of nature. Here we see what we would like nature, and ourselves as part of nature, to be. A rock may be a part of oneness, even embodying intelligence to the extent a rock can do that, but a rock is a rock, not a He or a She.

O'Donohue represents a popular regressive movement, which is understandable, seeing we of modernistic cultures seem lost and increasingly suffering isolation amid the morass of impersonal technology. Yet, retro-ing to an earlier relationship with the natural world is not the answer, any more than an adult returning to the egoic innocence of the cooing infant kicking its hands and legs in gleeful ignorance.

Also, in personifying nature, with all its beauty, in such romantic spirit, is exemplified the romantic accent on the beauties of nature and fails rightly to be honest about nature as a theater of perpetual violence. Simply put, nature is brutal, and we are part of that brutality: we eat, we are being eaten. My body, part of nature, as your body, is being eaten by nature, now. Nature is deadly, not simply lovely.

So, concluding, I rated the book 3, for the book reflects a truth about what nature partly is, and O'Donohue is right-on in our needing to recover a healthy relationship with the natural world and the benefits of that reunion. Technology offers an immediate, easy substitute to communion with the vitality of living, life-affirming, breathing forms, and does tend toward leaving persons physically and emotionally unhealthy, as well as feeling isolated, even while connecting through machines with persons all over our world. There is a difference between walking along a wooded path with a friend and chatting on-line with someone one has never met and, truly, very-little knows. Nature, indeed, does present eternal echoes and of so much more than nature. And, possibly, we must sate our adoration of technology to realize it cannot fulfill the intuitions of those timeless, true echoes calling us to integrate a forgotten past with the living, onward-moving moment. O'Donohue's voice, with its regression, like regressive voices, arises to remind us of forgotten wisdom.

[FrisianTea · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's really hard to pin down a rating for this book. It has passages that are pure brilliance... deep images and explorations that I hope to remember and reflect on. But these are intermixed with so much that is jarring and all over the place. One example: towards the end, there are deeply insightful thoughts on death and absence. But then the book immediately switches over to some odd subject I already can't recall, even though I just finished Eternal Echoes.

Frustrating. I am going to go with the word frustrating... I wanted to give this book four stars, but can't. The writing is a tad too disconnected, as if dashing all over the place somehow makes the text more "poetic." It also gets far more explicitly Christian than Anam Cara did, which really isn't my cup of tea. But the Christian influence surfaces in ways that are scattered and disordered. Mr. O'Donohue was definitely not a fundamentalist, at least, and there's an almost precognitive chapter on that very subject towards the end.

One thing that jumps out is how little of his own experience the author really brings into this book, though it is allegedly about the intimacy of participating in life and its mysteries, rather than merely observing life. The tone is often "from on high." I found this style of writing very tiresome after a while.

Which is sad, because there are insights in here that are beautiful and would really benefit our world. There are thoughts here that are even more poignant and relevant at the start 0f 2026 than when they were penned back in the 20th century. The deeper parts of this book are sort of prophetic.

I don't regret reading it and yet I struggled to finish it. Yeah... frustrating.

[Bridie Tulloch · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the second of books written by John O’Donohue that I have read. The first being ‘Anam Cara’. Eternal Echoes represents the echoes of the human heart on its quest and longing to belong.
When the human heart comes to the realisation that it can no longer live as a separate, isolated suffering heart, it longs to be freed from the false protection it has created for itself.

‘To Roll the Stone of the Heart’

The Christian story is about the subversive transformation of all barriers which confine or imprison. Jesus never advocated a life which confined itself within safe, complacent walls. He always called people to the beyond: ‘I have come that you may have a life and have it more abundantly.’ The resurrection is frightening because it is a call to live a life without the walls of crippling definition of false protection.’

Eternal Echoes, (1998, p. 189)

Table of Contents
1. Awakening in the World: The Threshold of Belonging
2. Presence: The Flame of Longing
3. Prisons We Choose to Live In
4. Suffering as the Dark Valley of Broken Belonging
5. Prayer: A Bridge between Longing and Belonging
6. Absence: Where Longing Still Lingers

If you are longing to belong and are in the process of awakening spiritually to the true nature of your heart, this book will guide you gently to the realisation of who you are.