Anam Cara

I often wear a silver cuff bracelet with the words “Anam Cara” on it, Gaelic for “soul friend.” Brigid of Kildare said that a person  without a soul-friend is like a body without a head. And Jesus told his disciples that they were his friends. When we find that  person with whom we connect in things of mystery, with whom we can have sacred conversations, we have encountered a soul  friend. I find myself deeply grateful and, sometimes, lost in wonder, love and praise for the soul friendships I have been given in  my life. All along my life they have appeared.

Soul friendship is all too frequently idealized, as are relationships with spouses and partners, best friends and children. “Make a  list,” we are told both by idealists and magazine editors, “of the qualities that for you make a soul friend.” When I have taken the  bait, and gone out seeking with my list, I have never found such a one. What I have found instead is that soul friends have been given to me in unlikely places, through unlikely means, for differing durations of time, and that what is required of me is not the List of Qualities, but openness to the ones the Spirit brings me. Often they are surprising, utterly different than I imagined, and in some cases seem completley inappropriate.

I think of a soul friend as wild and wooly as I am prim and proper, as rebellious and angry as I am conformist and peacemaking. But the gift of soul connection is strong and constant. Another friend is young enough to be a child of mine, and sometimes we howl in laughter at the crossed wires that can come with generational gaps and experiences;  yet the journey together into mystery is sweet and nourishing. Some soul friendships have been born in shared crises together – like Greek class or PTA meetings or endless deadly dull committees. Some have lasted my life time long;others have taken a long hiatus while we were being transformed by the Spirit, and then in grace and providence we have been reconnected.

And some end. At least in the close up, personal way I like to have them. A friend of my heart died this week; the friendship began in the category of “unlikely.” He was a decade older, a seasoned church professional, a cosmopolitan scholar and ecclesiastical politician. I was a seminary student from a different theological, sociological, provincial village. We had different lenses on life. His family was grown and gone. Mine was still very much being formed at home. His arcs of influence were national and profuse; I was trying to find my first job in ministry, some place that would take a woman minister. But over years of conversation, common ministries, shared joys and sorrows, there came a soul friendship- one that was to free ask the hard question, one that allowed deep disagreement, and one that encouraged the journey of Spirit in each other. In time I found that not only was I able to learn, but that I had things to offer and to give. There was some mutuality in what had emerged for us.

As I have reflected on the gifts of this particular soul friendship this week, I find that what he gave me most powerfully was the example of the tenacity of friendship. I was imprinted in a spiritual tradition in which principles were more important than people; this often led to the cutting away of those who no longer held one’s point of view, one who transgressed the community norms or one who hurt one’s feelings. My anam cara didn’t hold with that practice, in fact, was shocked when I allowed as that was the way I was taught to do things. Without many words he held on to people in many of their imperfections and weaknesses, in their transformations and journeys along roads less taken with affection. And he refused to let disagreement and distance and disease separate friends of the heart. He didn’t like everyone; he had definite opinions about what people should do with their lives. But people, friends of his heart, were one of the main sources of God’s Word to him all his life.

I will miss his physical presence, but my soul is not bereft for he remains an anam cara , a gift of God. And in life and in death we both belong to God.