“It feels strange to so strongly recommend this book because I feel like I am almost recommending myself, if that is not too narcissistic to say! Although Diarmuid is genuinely much more a scholar and scientist than I am, we have come to so many of the same conclusions about the Gospel, church, religious life, spirituality, and meaning itself. Read and be fed by my Irish brother.”—Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, Center for Action and Contemplation

“Diarmuid O’Murchu has written a brave and honest book that opens our hearts and minds to the power of human reconciliation with Spirit and Earth and the necessary rebuilding of a sacred ethos for our time. Paschal Paradox is a tribute to one man’s search for truth and the profound inner changes he undergoes to be free of punitive or exclusive cultural and religious identities, and, ultimately, to embrace a different understanding of God—an evolutionary spirituality of an expansive, unfolding universe of cosmic wonder. What makes this book particularly compelling is O’Murchu’s quotidian details of soul challenges embedded in the Irish struggles, Catholic identity, and religious sectarianism.”—Beverly Lanzetta, author, Birthing a New Mysticism

“This is an autobiography with a mystical twist. It is not a chronological outline from childhood through to old age. Instead, I am reflecting on those times that might be described as quantum leaps in which the extraordinary infiltrated the ordinary, and from there on the territory never looked the same again. And what I had gained from the new breakthrough involved a dying and letting go of former securities. Only with hindsight did the puzzling pattern begin to make sense."

“For me, it has always been a journey heavily influenced by faith. The Christian notion of dying and rising again, or, more accurately, being knocked down only to be raised up again, is a recurring theme throughout the story of my life. I describe not merely the ‘ups-and-downs’ of life but an evolving pattern—a paschal journey—within which my personal narrative unfolds, frequently leading into the transpersonal realm in which the horizons of meaning expand and deepen.”—From the Introduction

Diarmuid O’Murchu, a member of the Sacred Heart Missionary Order who lives in Ireland, is a social psychologist and the author of many books, including Evolutionary Faith, Ancestral Grace, Divine Radiance, and Ecological Spirituality, all from Orbis Books.