By John O’Donohue. Published by Veritas. Reviewed by Julie Randall

So — there were two Irishmen chatting in a pub (no wait — it’s not what you think) or a studio, or up a “holy mountain” in Connemara, Ireland.

John O’Donohue, author, poet and philosopher (and former priest) has written several bestselling books. John Quinn, a former radio broadcaster for RTE Ireland’s national radio, is the compiler of this work and a close friend of O’Donohue’s.

The chapters of this book is were originally recordings of John O’Donohue made for various radio programmes over a period of years prior to his death, and which John Quinn has collated for print. The result of Quinn’s skilled editing of these recordings is a natural flow of ideas, a conversational sharing, a distillation of personal experience, wisdom, wonder and imagination.

The chapter on “Absence” caught my eye with the opening phrase: “While we are here in the world, where is it that we are absent from?” Absence, the sister of presence (not the opposite) — defined as “to be elsewhere”, “an echo of some fractured intimacy”, “infused with longing”. O’Donohue proceeds to describe various states of absence — some perhaps that we seldom think about. Under the heading of Media: “media are always involved in selectivity — who appears on the news and how the news is structured. And who are the people in our society we never see ... the absent ones we never hear from?” Naturally the discourse proceeds to the subject of death, “the ultimate absence”. O’Donohue mourns the loss of our ability to be aware of and to converse with the dead as “part of the sadness of contemporary society that has lost its mystical and mythological webbing”. The chapter ends with a poem that expresses the desire to know a loved one in their changed state after death — “with your new eyes can you see from within?”

O’Donohue’s final complete work, Benedictus: A Book of Blessings was published in 2007. Quinn has selected a particular blessing from this work to place at the end of each chapter (which reminds me of Tui Motu: “And as is our custom our last word is of blessing”.) Other snippets of O’Donohue’s poetry are also interspersed throughout offering further imaginative reflection.

Walking on the Pastures of Wonder holds a wealth of wisdom and would make a wonderful personal resource for dipping into.

In 2008 John O’Donohue died suddenly in his 53rd year. It is worth checking out John’s other works of prose and poetry and his website www.johnodonohue.com

Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 228, July 2018: 28.