Transforming Relationships: Spiritual Friendship (Bruce Epperly)
What role does Christ play in our own relationships with one another? Is there a deeper spiritual relationship that connects our spirits with each other? Bruce Epperly explores these and other questions through the lens of Celtic spirituality, using the Celtic concept of anam cara or soul friend. May we find union with one another through Christ, our soul friend. Read, enjoy, respond.
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Transforming
Relationships: Spiritual Friendship
Bruce
G. Epperly
Celtic
spirituality views life as a process of dynamic and evolving
relationships. Our lives emerge from our
environment and shape the world beyond ourselves. As the philosopher Alfred
North Whitehead asserts, the whole universe conspires to create each occasion
of experience. While, as Whitehead also notes,
religion begins with solitariness, our spiritual growth is nurtured by creative
and loving relationships, persons whose care mirrors our spirits and enables
them to grow. The Celts spoke of anam cara, spiritual friend or soul
friend, as essential to the spiritual adventure.
St.
Brigid, the feminine spirit of Celtic Christianity, is reputed to have said
that “a person without an anam cara
is like body without a soul.” The Celts
believed that spiritual relationships awaken us to our fullest potential. Originating from the image of “one who shares
a cell,” the Celtic vision of the anam
cara evolved to become “one who shares a soul.” Our anam
cara is our soul friend, the person who shows us the mirror of God in our
own lives.
In
Plato’s Phaedrus, Socrates suggests
that each person has an eternal mirror.
Children of the same god, to use Plato’s language, or soul friends,
mediate to one another the essential wholeness and beauty that joins their
spirits. Whether the anam cara is of the same or other
gender, they are your “other soul,” the embodiment of your spiritual pilgrimage
in the unique life of another. When you
discover the one you know as anam cara,
you have a sense that you are one in spirit, connected by a deep awareness, and
that you no longer have to explain yourself or apologize for who you are. You are known, loved, and accepted without
condition. Though soul friends have
their own unique voice, they share a common spiritual melody.
In the
Celtic tradition, Christ was known as the perfect anam cara. Christ is the
intimate companion, whose love enables us fully to love the self we are
becoming. Christ mirrors our deepest yearnings and brings them to wholeness. Christ as anam
cara reveals to each soul its greatness.
In experiencing the Christ as anam cara, we discover our true destiny
as fully human embodiments of the divine wisdom. Christ is constantly knocking on the door of
our souls and our lives are transformed when we say “yes” to his invitation.
Our
human anam cara is our own personal
Christ-figure, and the nearest thing to divine revelation in everyday
experience. In knowing and being known,
the Divine Eros gives life to both friends.
Passionate in its mirroring and support, anam cara is, in the spirit of Plato’s Phaedrus, a friendship that enables us to grow wings and fly to the
heavens. As the mirror of Christ, the human anam
cara inspires and lures us toward adventures of creativity and
self-awareness. The Christ in us grows
wings and flies.
Passionate
without possessiveness, anam cara
frees us to be fully ourselves in a holy relationship, which serves as the
catalyst for the healing and transformation of all our relationships. In its greenness, it restores our spirits
and gives us new life.
Your anam cara, or spirit friend, may be your
husband, wife, or friend of the same or other gender. Regardless of the social relationship, the
vocation of anam cara is to promote
beauty and love in the world. Anam cara has as its mission service to
all creation and transformation both of ourselves and the planet. In seeing the Eternal Beauty in another, our
eyes are opened to beauty in all things.
From that personal vision of beauty, we are inspired to be seek shalom
and wholeness in our relationships and corporate lives.
As a
holy and green relationship, anam cara
compels each soul friend to aim at the highest ethical and spiritual
values. Holy friendships, such as anam cara, enhance our marriages,
parenting, and creativity, when it is lived out as the meeting of divine
centers whose fullest expression does not necessitate physical proximity or
sexual union. It neither “toils nor
spins,” nor competes with other relationships, but heals everything it touches. Anam
cara inspires the muse within us to create freely and with abandon, whether
poetry, sermons, books, music, or tales told at bedtime. Whether or not anam cara
is joined with marriage, its embodiment is chaste and holy. Anam
cara as holy relatedness vows to bring out the beauty in the other and to
nurture the wingspan of the beloved friend in her or his context. The Divine Eros incarnate in anam cara friendships creates an
environment that nurtures spiritual and creative quantum leaps.
According
to certain strands of early Christianity, Christ reveals himself uniquely to
each person. There are as many
revelations of Christ as there are persons.
The anam cara, embodying the
Christ we share with another, is the image of God whose eyes stare deeply into
our own and show us our true self. In
knowing and nurturing the soul of another, our own souls grow in stature and
soar. (This essay is adapted from The Center is Everywhere: CelticSpirituality for the Postmodern Age, Parson’s Porch Books, 2011.)
Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide,
pastor, and author of twenty one books, including Process Theology: A Guide to the Perplexed, Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living, Philippians: An Interactive Bible Study,
and The Center is Everywhere: Celtic Spirituality for the Postmodern Age. He may be reached at drbruceepperly@aol.com
for lectures, workshops, and retreats.
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