Anam Cara - Anam Chairde

Genesis 2:7-9, 15-25

Then the LORD God formed the man out of the dust of the ground and blew into his nostrils, the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

The LORD God said: It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suited to him. So the LORD God formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds of the air, and he brought them to the man to see what he would call them; whatever the man called each living creature was then its name. The man gave names to all the tame animals, all the birds of the air, and all the wild animals; but none proved to be a helper suited to the man.

So the LORD God cast a deep sleep on the man, and while he was asleep, he took out one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. The LORD God then built the rib that he had taken from the man into a woman. 

Reflection
When God created us, we were created with a need to belong. In the creation story of Genesis, man had everything but a companion so he was lonely. God saw that it was not right for Adam to be alone so he created a woman out his rib. Because both Man and Woman were created from the same clay, we are the same as each other. Within in us, despite, or in spite of, all else, to be alone is not enough. We were created to belong and the longing is more ancient our understanding of our nature. We were not created to be alone. That is why we long from deep down inside our being where no one or no thing can touch except for the Divine

While we may crave solitude, silence, and stillness, the fact is we are still called to belong and we all must retreat from the quiet places of seclusion we might find comforting to seek the company of the others. We are drawn to each other. We need each other. We seek a friendship that extends beyond the trivialities of the shallow interactions of the cascade of days we call life to a land where we are known, loved, accepted and we can return all of those same things to another. If we are denied either the chance to accept or extend the grace of knowing and belonging , we will burst and then sink into a lost state or will never become who we are meant to be.

When we find the friend who offers these things, we have what the Irish call an Anam Cara, a soul friend, a person in whom we can completely yield our deepest needs concerns, fears and stories we suspect and fear will turn others against us if they knew what festered beneath the façade of our daily faces. We are at home in the friendship and we can abandon our anxiety in the friendship regardless of whether the duration is brief or lifelong. Time is not an element we use to define an Anam Cara.

When we marry, we expect our mate to be an Anam Cara. It is a natural outgrowth of a sacramentally blessed relationship but the idea of Anam Cara extends far beyond our spouses. The people we need to become an Anam Cara can come from anywhere. They can be close to us or simply important to us. We can have broad relationships that span time and place or they can be serendipitous, here one moment and gone the next. An Anam Cara is in the Now and the Now can be sustained for a lifetime, a few years or it may just simply one encounter that changed the Now from what it was to what it needed to be.

My purpose, other than to prompt each other to wonder who in our life may be or may have been our own Anam Cara, is to push your thinking beyond a single friend to think about the possibility of  encountering and embracing soul friends, Anam Cairde.

Colossians 3:12-14

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection.

Paul offers us a good image of what it means to be a friend. More than that, he is giving us sitting around this virtual table a set of instructions on how we are to carry out our friendship and, over the years, we have done just that.

We here are a "Ciorcal de Chairde Anam," a circle of soul friends.

I first dreamt this reflection when Covid 19 was just another threat out there that seemed to be no more a thing than SARS, the swine flu or the bird flu. There was great wailing and gnashing of teeth but whatever came of those illnesses seemed to have happened to others in other places but they never infected us or anyone we knew. We shrugged off the possibilities and dire warnings to just about our business as if there were no threat at all. Covid 19, we collectively agreed, would surely follow the same path.We were wrong. Horribly wrong. 

In between the time I initially finished the reflection and when we were scheduled to meet at Perkins at 7 on Wednesday March 18 to share these ideas of spirituality, as we have for the past decade, the world changed dramatically and permanently. A barbarian virus slipped in between the cracks of the castle walls, windows and doors and began to wreak havoc. 5 weeks later there is no real clue when we might return to normal.

Here is a truth. The old normal is gone and will never return. What has happened in the last month is I have had time to reflect on what I had taken for granted. Showing up at Perkins and teasing Dan for being late or digging at smiley Chris for petting his beard like it was tame weasel is just a memory. So is getting my feathers ruffled by a co-worker, drawing mystical cards and playing poker on breaks. When we come back together, if we do, we will be different because as the Resurrection revealed Jesus in a new way, our resurrection from this chaos will reveal us to each other in a new way. A new normal will emerge.

More importantly, however, is that I miss the little embraces and encounters with those who play the role of Anam Cara in my life. I don't need to call you out by name. You know who you are and I love you for your gifts and strength. I also mourn even more the opportunity to be an Anam Cara to those whom I am an Anam Cara and those whom I am unwittingly serving. To receive the grace of friendship renews us but to share that same grace of being a friend is how we sustain the souls we inhabit.

Our challenge today and in coming days is to review our current and past lives to see where we were graced by the influence of an Anam Cara. We next might consider those for whom we have been graced with the blessing of being an Anam Cara.

Pray with gratitude for God to send blessings to all those we name in the quiet of our hearts.

I offer blessings of friendship and love to all of you who read this in equal measure to what I receive and I am gifted with more than I can comprehend. 

Is tú mo Anam chairde. Beannachtaí na Cásca oraibh go léir -

You are my soul friends. Easter Blessings to you all.