Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World

This marvelous posthumous collection from Irish poet-philosopher O’Donohue (Anam Cara) comes as an unexpected gift for his fans. These originally spoken essays, talks from Irish National Radio selected by radio broadcaster John Quinn, revive O’Donohue’s unique perspective. O’Donohue was a persuasive popularizer of contemporary Celtic spirituality with a gift for hybridizing his roots in the Irish landscape with more rarified elements of German idealism—from the mysticism of Meister Eckhart to the philosophy of Hegel. His topics, including landscape, aging, and memory, are hardly original, but O’Donohue brings lyrical novelty to his reflections (“Memory, as a kingdom, is full of the ruins of presence”). Some selections are deeper and better than others, underscoring the absence of an author who might better polish his words for print. Particularly haunting in their suggestiveness and brevity are O’Donohue’s short meditations on death, given his own premature death at age 52 in 2008. O’Donohue’s work remains a rich banquet for those interested in spirituality and his particular expression of contemporary Celtic mysticism. (Nov.)