Wonder is a powerful antidote to fear

Thanks, John O'Donohue, for writing Walking in Wonder

The words arrived by text to comfort me on a day when my world was shattered.

A relationship of 32 years ended just as this new year began. Gone. Finished. Changed forever. It wasn’t a death, but it felt like one.

More on that in the future, after I’ve prayed and processed it and shed a few more private tears.

These words from John O’Donohue poem, For A New Beginning, arrived on a blue day to give me hope:

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

I discovered O’Donohue decades ago in a bookstore in Ireland. It might have been in Sligo. I was wandering around the back of the store when his books called to me from a high shelf in shouted whispers to my soul. I bought three of them. Instead of weighing down my suitcase, they gave it wings.

Instead of using index cards to save quotes from Walking in Wonder, I filled a huge page in an artist sketchbook. How fitting, because O’Donohue painted with words.

“Each one of us is privileged to be the custodian of this inner world,” he wrote.

Custodian. Not a word you often hear connected with spiritual growth. Yet my recovery friends constantly remind me their new life of sobriety depends on the “maintenance of their spiritual condition.”

What does a custodian actually do in that inner world?

Sweep away fears. Mop up tears. Collect dust bunnies from the past and release them to the nearest meadow. Change the light bulbs that have grown dim. Windex the windows to let in the Light.

“I feel that fear is negative wonder. It can take away all the loveliness from your experience and from your friendships and even from your action and your work…fear is the sister of death,” he wrote.

Whoa. That stopped me in my tracks. I don’t want “negative” wonder. I want the real deal, the pure, unadulterated wonder that makes your body tingle as if you’ve just become a human sparkler of joy.

And yet who isn’t afraid?

All through the Bible, “Fear not!” is a common greeting, often used by angels. At the birth of Jesus to the shepherds, when they were “sore afraid.” I read once that the words “Do not be afraid” or some version of that appears 366 times in the Bible. One for each day of the year.

O’Donohue wrote that we each have our own refuge from fear.

“There is a special shelter around every person. That shelter is the shelter of your soul, it is the shelter of your God and it is the shelter of your angel.”

My angels have been busy lately. Comforting me. Singing to me. Holding onto me when I can no longer hold onto them. Thankfully, their wings are strong.

O’Donohue left the priesthood in 2000 and wrote poetry in a cottage in Connemara, a lovely slice of Ireland, near Galway. He died two days after turning 52.

“If my own death were to occur tomorrow, what would be the peak of my existence? The faces of my beloved, and others I love and those who love me.”

“One of the greatest sins is the unlived life,” he wrote.

The unlived life.

Maybe there were parts of my life that were unlived. Maybe I have been set free. Maybe this isn’t an ending after all but a beginning my soul has beckoned me to take.

A new world awaits us all.

It’s time to tune into your soul.

Stay tuned.