Maria de Fátima Santos' 3 favorite reads in 2024

David Whyte’s poetry is like a beckoning hand inviting us to move nearer and follow his intimate voice along the fifty-three poems that are awaiting for us in this book. As a reader and lover of Celtic culture, I could sense and understand how present is David Whyte’s Celtic Irish background in his poetry and how he shares his insights of a parallel world that lives within. As I was progressing in the reading and (re)reading of each of the poems that make the nine chapters of this book, the idea of invitation was gaining strength within me. This invitation introduces me to blessings and prayers. There are blessings for the light, for the sound and even a ”Prayer for an Invitation” that goes like this: “I pray for the world to find me in its own wise way.” I also found poems dedicated to John O’Donohue on a “Blessing for the Morning Light” and to Mary Oliver on a “Homage’ “so simple, so clear, so here.” This periple goes beyond the inner landscape. In his travels, David Whyte takes the reader also to Australia, Japan and Ireland. I was, personally, drawn to follow his footsteps on the trail of Nakasendo. Reading his short poems on this chapter, appearing to be inspired by Haiku’s style, I thought for an instance that I was also in the presence of Basho.

This book is a generous gift from the author to the reader. I was naturally drawn to the front cover with the four characters of this adventurous journey showing so much affection between them and the title written in ink. It also showed me that the saying of “do not judge a book by its cover” it’s not always true. In fact, I loved the front cover and after opened it, I loved it even more the sweet and imaginative drawings of the endpapers. It’s a heartwarming and singular story in its profundity and simplicity. At a first glance, it may seem simple, easy and plain to write a story like this one with the combination of drawings too, but it’s not. From my point of view, this book is the final result of thoughtful reflections made by a genuine artist about life and how to live fully alive since childhood to adulthood. It’s a story full of metaphors, written in a poetic voice, aiming to serve as a bridge with the real life, like is encapsulating the “art of living “ in short sentences. The animals and their speeches in this story reminds me the “Aesop’s Fables”,where a moral lesson was always shared. It’s an ode to courage and kindness towards us and others. “Don’t measure how valuable you are by the way you are treated.” said the horse in the final advice given to the little boy. I conclude that the “cherry on the cake” in this story is more than one. There are the beautiful and lyrical drawings some of them like sketches, others illustrated in colours. Being my favourite the last one: under that midnight sky, the white horse lies on the white snow covered ground with the brown fox, the little boy and the mole sitting together on his horseback gazing at the blue midnight sky.

This book was a gift given to me. When I received it from the author’s hands in a gesture out of generosity, I was, immediately, drawn to the cover with its inspiring title and the photo in the background that takes us to the heart of a forest. In this book, John Philip Newell brings to life again the lives and teachings of the Celtic teachers, some of them recognised as Saints in the Celtic world as is the case of Saint Brigid of Kildare in the fifth century. We are introduced to the earliest Celtic Christian representatives, like for example Pelagius (400 CE), to the ninth-century Irish teacher John Scotus Eriugena, to the spiritual resistance movement of the Gaelic speaking population of Scotland in the XVI century that created Carmina Gadelica, a unique collection of the oral Celtic tradition of song and prayer, to the prophets of the nineteenth-century as Alexander John Scott and John Muir, to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French scientist and priest that on the 20th century recovered the ancient Gallic vision of life as a whole, to George Macleod in 21 st century Scotland and to conclude to the Scottish poet, Kenneth Steven. From my point of view, the great achievement and merit of the author is to bridge all these teachings from different periods in history, bringing together those different personalities of the Celtic World finding a common thread to all their teachings: an awareness of the sacred essence of all things that finds existence in the sacredness of the earth and of each human soul. It’s the core of the Celtic spiritual tradition offered in the nutshell of this book that makes me feel wanting to retain each one of these teachings in my being. I also understood that the Celtic spiritual tradition is not disconnected from the spiritual wisdom of other great religious traditions as well. In fact the insight of the author that “what is deepest in us corresponds to what is true is not a new concept (…) it has been argued that for us to recognise truth, there must be something within us that already knows it” was a touchstone for me. The reading of this book was a call for raising awareness, because to embody these teachings offers possibilities for transformation, not only in our lives but also in the current planetary context we are living in as human species. For the simple reason that everything is interrelated. This is another idea that the author underlines and with which I do resonate too. These teachings are more relevant, verosímil and needed than ever in the midst of the various crisis that we are facing today in every level of our civilisation. These crisis are a result of disconnection that mislead us to “treat the earth and one another as less than sacred.” This point of view made me see that the Celtic spiritual teachings offers by merit possibilities to change the paradigma that has ruled so far and has failed and created so many delusions in so many fronts of the world. For the same logical understanding that “to awaken again to this deep knowing is to be transformed in the ways we choose to live and relate and act.” This book leaves a message of hope in the groundswell of waking up to the dignity of every human being and living creature on earth. “There is no going back,” in the words of the author. I felt very grateful with the “pearls of wisdom” in this book, namely: the words and prayers of awareness associated to each one of the nine spiritual Celtic teachers revealed.