ODonohue - Eternal Echoes Exploring Our Yearning to Belong

Matins

I.

Somewhere, out at the edges, the night

Is turning and the waves of darkness

Begin to brighten the shore of dawn.

The heavy dark falls back to earth

And the freed air goes wild with light,

The heart fills with fresh, bright breath

And thoughts stir to give birth to colour.

II.

I arise today

In the name of Silence

Womb of the Word,

In the name of Stillness

Home of Belonging,

In the name of the Solitude

Of the Soul and the Earth.

I arise today

Blessed by all things,

Wings of breath,

Delight of eyes,

Wonder of whisper,

Intimacy of touch,

Eternity of soul,

Urgency of thought,

Miracle of health,

Embrace of God.

May I live this day

Compassionate of heart,

Gentle in word,

Gracious in awareness,

Courageous in thought,

Generous in love.

I REMEMBER AS A CHILD discovering the echo of sound. It was the first time that my father took me up the mountain to herd the cattle. As we passed a limestone cliff, he called out to the cattle in the distance. His call had barely ended when it was copied exactly and sent forth again by the stone. It was a fascinating discovery. I tried out my own voice and the echo returned faithfully every time. It was as if the solid limestone mountains had secret hearing and voice. Their natural stillness and silence suddenly broke forth in an exact mimic of the human voice, indicating that there is a resonant heart in the depths of silence; the stone responds in a symmetry of sound. Hearing ones echo out among the lonely mountains seems to suggest that one is not alone. Landscape and nature know us and the returning echo seems to confirm that we belong here. We live in a world that responds to our longing; it is a place where the echoes always return, even if sometimes slowly. It is as if the dynamic symmetry of the echo comprised the radius of an invisible but powerful circle of belonging.

The hunger to belong is at the heart of our nature. Cut off from others, we atrophy and turn in on ourselves. The sense of belonging is the natural balance of our lives. Mostly, we do not need to make an issue of belonging. When we belong, we take it for granted. There is some innocent childlike side to the human heart that is always deeply hurt when we are excluded. Belonging suggests warmth, understanding, and embrace. No one was created for isolation. When we become isolated, we are prone to being damaged; our minds lose their flexibility and natural kindness; we become vulnerable to fear and negativity. The sense of belonging keeps you in balance amidst the inner and outer immensities. The ancient and eternal values of human lifetruth, unity, goodness, justice, beauty, and love are all statements of true belonging; they are the also the secret intention and dream of human longing.

Wherever there is distance, there is longing. Yet there is some strange wisdom in the fact of distance. It is interesting to remember that the light that sustains life here on earth comes from elsewhere. Light is the mother of life. Yet the sun and the moon are not on the earth; they bless us with light across the vast distances. We are protected and blessed in our distance. Were we nearer to the sun, the earth would be consumed in its fire; it is the distance that makes the fire kind. Nothing in creation is ever totally at home in itself. No thing is ultimately at one with itself. Everything that is alive holds distance within itself. This is especially true of the human self. It is the deepest intimacy which is nevertheless infused with infinite distance. There is some strange sense in which distance and closeness are sisters, the two sides of the one experience. Distance awakens longing; closeness is belonging. Yet they are always in a dynamic interflow with each other. When we fix or locate them definitively, we injure our growth. It is an interesting imaginative exercise to interchange them: to consider what is near as distant and to consider the distant as intimate.

Our hunger to belong is the longing to find a bridge across the distance from isolation to intimacy. Every one longs for intimacy and dreams of a nest of belonging in which one is embraced, seen, and loved. Something within each of us cries out for belonging. We can have all the world has to offer in terms of status, achievement, and possessions. Yet without a sense of belonging it all seems empty and pointless. Like the tree that puts roots deep into the clay, each of us needs the anchor of belonging in order to bend with the storms and reach towards the light. Like the ocean that returns each time to the same shore, a sense of belonging liberates us to trust fully the rhythm of loss and longing; it also shelters us from the loneliness of life. Though we may not reflect too frequently on the vast infinity that surrounds us, something within us is always aware of it. Such infinity can be anonymous and threatening; it makes us feel inconsequential and tiny. Unknown to us this intensifies our hunger to belong. The universe is too big for us; we long for a sure nest to shelter. The sense of belonging also shelters us from the inner infinity which each of us secretly carries. There is a huge abyss within every mind. When we belong, we have an outside mooring to prevent us from falling into ourselves.

Each one of us journeys alone to this world and it is our nature to seek out belonging. Each of us carries a unique world within our hearts. Each soul is a different shape. No one feels your life as you do; no one experiences things the way you do. Your life is a totally unique story and only you really know it from within. No one knows what your experience is like. The experience of each of us is opaque and inaccessible to outsiders. Yet no individual is sealed off or hermetically self-enclosed. Though each soul is individual and unique, by its very nature the soul cannot cut itself off from the world. The deepest nature of the soul is relationship. Consequently, it is your soul that longs to belong; it is also your soul that makes all belonging possible. No soul is private or merely mortal. As well as being the vital principle of your individual life, your soul is also ancient and eternal and weaves you into the great tapestry of spirit that connects everything everywhere. There is a lovely balance at the heart of our nature: each of us is utterly unique and yet we live in the most intimate kinship with everyone and everything else. Belonging is not merely shelter from being separate and different. Its more profound intention is the awakening of the Great Belonging which embraces everything. Our hunger to belong is the desire to awaken this hidden affinity. Then we know that we are not outsiders cut off from everything, but rather participants at the heart of creation. Each of us brings something alive in the world that no one else can. There is a profound necessity at the heart of individuality. When your life awakens and you begin to sense the destiny that brought you here, you endeavour to live a life that is generous and worthy of the blessing and invitation that is always calling you.