I received an email this morning from a dear friend who said he had been listening to today’s episode of “On Being,” with Krista Tippett.  In The Inner Landscape of Beauty, Tippett speaks with John O’Donohue, an Irish priest, poet, and philosopher whom she interviewed shortly before his unexpected and all-too-early death in 2008 at the young age of 52.  So moved was I by what I heard (moved even to tears, I’m not ashamed to say), that I immediately bought O’Donohue’s first book, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.

I look forward to spending mornings of the coming weeks the thoughts and beautiful words from this, the first of O’Donohue’s books.  Only a few pages in, I know this is the kind of book in which my underlining could get carried away, but here’s just a taste of what he says:

Love begins with paying attention to others, with an act of gracious self-forgetting.  This is the condition in which we grow.