Eternal Echoes

From John o’Donohue:
A house can become a little self-enclosed world. Sheltered there, we learn to forget the wild, magnificent universe in which we live. When we domesticate our minds and hearts, we reduce our lives. We disinherit ourselves as children of the universe. Almost without knowing it, we slip inside ready-made roles and routines which then set the frames of our possibilities and permissions. Our longing becomes streamlined. We acquire sets of convictions in relation to politics, religion and work. We parrot these back and forth at each other as if they were absolute insights. Yet for the most part these frames of belief can be viewed as self-constructed barriers, fragile clichés built around our lives to keep out the mystery. The game of society helps us to forget the unknown and subversive presence of the human person. The control and ordering of society is amazing; we comply so totally with its unwritten rules. In a city in the morning, you see the lines of traffic and the rows of faces all on their way to work. We show up. We behave ourselves. We obey fashion and taste. Meanwhile, almost unknown to ourselves, we are standing on wild earth at a crossroads where anything can come towards us. Yet we behave as if we carried the world and were the executives of a great plan. Yet everywhere around us mystery never sleeps. The same deep nature is within us. Each person is an incredibly sophisticated, subtle and open-ended work of art. We live at the heart of our own intimacy, yet we are strangers to its endless nature.

I didn’t exactly choose the above piece, hadn’t opened the book since I don’t know when, but took it down from the shelf, let it fall open on a bookmarked page, let my eyes go to the above passage, which exactly expressed something I couldn’t find words for. May it ring true for someone.