Getting what you want? Book

Does anyone else read a book, then can't decide whether they loved it or hated it? Sometimes I bounce between a 2-star and a 4-star rating and I wonder what other people must be thinking that I keep changing it. But I imagine I'm not the only who has that issue when reading a certain book.

For me, this was one of those books that I can't quite make my mind up on. "Eternal Echoes" is a collection of poetical reflections on spirituality in the modern world and human desires for longing and belonging. It reads in a very stream-of-conscious style, which is part of its charm, but I also felt at times it may have been edited more thoroughly: O'Donohue might have reconsidered a turn of phrase or expressed something more succinctly. He rambles at length on a certain idea, then is brief with another. He employs certain words or phrases too frequently, and sometimes he introduces description of the Native landscape and mythos in Ireland in a way that is not totally seamless - repeating multiple times that this is in the West of Ireland, when it might have done enough if O'Donohue had only said once that this is where he hails from. But I was not at all put off by this. Rather, I felt I struggled with "Eternal Echoes," because I do not quite agree with all of the opinions expressed within it.

While much of the book reflects genuine personal insight and some beautiful notions upon prayer and desire, some of this book could best be described as a type of Catholic pop-psychology, which is fascinating because O'Donohue also rebukes both fundamentalism and popular psychology in this book. Perhaps O'Donohue just could not quite get out of their grasp, in spite of perceiving their limitations. He still finds himself expressing on multiple occasions the idea that people can acquire not only spiritual healing, but a physical and material healing, if only they were dutiful to God and learned to see their suffering as a Divine lesson - something that has its reflection in the field of psychology, where people are made to believe they can achieve good health and wealth through simply thinking more positively. He pens that nobody would be lonesome if only they could be more generous, which itself seems austere and belies that generosity must be a shared activity. A particularly troubling element for me is that he also employs language which segregates - we should pity the poor, he writes, and children who have been abused and have lost their way; and we should pray for prostitutes. He does not seem to consider that such persons could, in fact, be reading his book. He keeps "them" at an arms length -to be pitied, but not included. Almost ironically, it was yet his ideas of the loss of a shared identity and whole community in the modern world that touched me; and this created a real conflict for me in reading this. It also felt at times that O'Donohue moved away from the really meaningful and personally-felt insights that make this book so endearing and illuminating, and resorted yet to his role as lecturer: becoming suddenly a preacher, he proffers advice on illness with a type of authority, although it seems clear he has no such experience of living with a life-long illness or disability. He often writes imperatively, as if we are not here just to listen to his reflections, but, rather, *must* listen to him.

The above said, I will also say I really enjoyed the selection of quotations that O'Donohue included among the pages; and I also appreciated the Blessings he included at the end of each chapter. These added something special, I thought, to the work: a thoughtful touch that gave it finesse.

So this book was not a complete loss, but I would also suggest approaching it with a certain level of caution - that not everything O'Donohue says is necessarily all that could be hoped for; and, while sometimes very striking and beautiful when he locates an authentic notion, and, while O'Donohue may have tried to transcend common limitations in religion and psychology, it seems to suffer still from a limited and biased perspective that does not quite make it completely past the grasps of fundamentalist and popular ideas.

Notes:

pg. 113, on "The Prison of Shame" - provides example of where O'Donohue mistakenly segregates where he tries to create tolerance. He writes, "Imagine the years of silent torment so many gay people have endured, unable to tell their secret." He continues, "Think of the victims of racism: lovely people who are humiliated and tagged for hostility." At the bottom of the page, he also chooses to describe victims of sexual violence similarly, failing to write towards but of them: "When a person is sexually abused or raped, she often feel great shame at what happened to her."

pg. 161-162 on "When Sorrows Come, They Come Not Single Spies, but in Battalions" - This essay, and the one proceeding, show some of the insensitive language I refer to above. O'Donohue writes that, "Often the flame of pain can have a cleansing effect and burn away the dross that has accumulated around your life. It is difficult to accept that what you are losing is what is used, what you no longer need."

pg. 233-234 on "Brittle Language Numbs Longing" - This essay, and the one following, is one of the areas of this book where O'Donohue begins to successfully nibble around the edges of popular psychology, speaking about how the field's jargon is so ill-suited to describe humanity: "When your experience is rich and diverse, it has a beautifully intricate inner weaving. You know that no analysis can hold a candle to the natural majesty and depth of even the most ordinary moment in the universe." He describes the language of psychology as "brittle" and "disembodied." "One such powerful term is 'process,'" he writes about how we talk of "processing" emotions. "In many cases, 'processing' has become a disease; it is now the way in which many people behave towards themselves. This term has no depth or sacredness. 'Processing' is a mechanical term: there are processed peas and beans. The tyranny of processing reveals a gaping absence of soul." He continues: "Such terminology is blasphemous; it belongs to the mechanical word."

pg. 198 on "Wonder Invites Mystery to Come Closer" - is another area of the book where O'Donohue attacks the language of popular psychology. "This jargon has no colour and no resonance of any mystery, opaqueness, or possibility. Real wonder about your soul demands words which [...] would be imaginative and suggestive of the depths of the unknown within you. Unlike the fashionable graffiti of fast-food psychology, they hold the reverence to which mystery is entitled."