Divine Beauty

This is the third in the series of books by John O'Donohue that began with 'Anam Cara'. He continues to write hauntingly and evocatively, weaving a tapestry of themes, quotations and reflections on Beauty. This covers the music and colour of beauty, imagination, attraction (the 'eros of beauty'), God as Beauty. The book is divided into subsections, which makes it suitable for contemplative reading. Here is a flavour from 'The White Shadow: Beauty and Death': 'At the time of death, the soul knows how to protect its precious cargo. While death will stop and empty the body, the soul will ferry your essence into eternal life.' Or again, 'memory is the place where our vanished days secretly gather. Already within the passage of time there is a harvesting of our experience.' And 'Though we live in time, beauty seems to visit us from outside time, from eternity.' John has an exquisite sensibility that is transposed into a crafted prose that speaks directly to the soul.