Animals and Us

Honor the Dignity, Beauty, and Wisdom of the Animal World

The animals are more ancient than us. They were here for millennia before humans surfaced on the earth. Animals are our ancient brothers and sisters. They enjoy a seamless presence — a lyrical unity with the earth. Animals live outside in the wind, in the waters, in the mountains, and in the clay. The knowing of the earth is in them. The Zen-like silence and thereness of the landscape is mirrored in the silence and solitude of animals. Animals know nothing of Freud, Jesus, Buddha, Wall Street, the Pentagon, or the Vatican. They live outside the politics of human intention. Somehow they already inhabit the eternal. The Celtic mind recognized the ancient belonging and knowing of the animal world. The dignity, beauty, and wisdom of the animal world was not diminished by any false hierarchy or human arrogance. Somewhere in the Celtic mind was a grounding perception that humans are the inheritors of this deeper world.

— John O'Donohue in Anam Cara

Anam Cara-Soul Friend

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul-love; the old Gaelic term for this is anam cara. Anam is the Gaelic word for soul and cara is the word for friend. So anam cara in the Celtic world was the "soul friend."

In the early Celtic church, a person who acted as a teacher, companion, or spiritual guide was called an anam cara. It originally referred to someone to whom you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life. With the anam cara you could share your innermost self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an anam cara, your friendship cut across all convention, morality, and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the "friend of your soul."

The Celtic understanding did not set limitations of space or time on the soul. There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into you and into your Other. This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship. In his Conferences, John Cassian says this bond between friends is indissoluble: "This, I say, is what is broken down by no chances, what no interval of time or space can sever or destroy, and what even death itself cannot part."

— John O'Donohue in Anam Cara

more about this in my musings The blessings of spiritual friends

Embrace Your Inner World

Embrace the World that Lives Inside You

It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone. Behind your image, below your words, above your thoughts, the silence of another world waits. A world lives within you. No one else can bring you news of this inner world. Through the opening of the mouth, we bring out sounds from the mountain beneath the soul. These sounds are words. The world is full of words. There are so many talking all the time, loudly, quietly, in rooms, on streets, on television, on radio, in the paper, in books. The noise of words keeps what we call the world there for us. We take each other's sounds and make patterns, predictions, benedictions, and blasphemies. Each day, our tribe of language holds what we call the world together. Yet the uttering of the word reveals how each of us relentlessly creates. Everyone is an artist. Each person brings sound out of silence and coaxes the invisible to become visible.

— John O'Donohue in Anam Cara

More about John O'Donohue here and here.

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St Kevin and the Blackbird

This is a remarkable comment by Liz Budd Ellmann of Spiritual Director International, published in the newsletter Membership Moments November 2009

For more than a thousand years, pilgrims have visited Glendalough where Saint Kevin played, prayed, and discovered his purpose. One day, the legend tells us, while Kevin the monk was praying with outstretched arms, a blackbird landed in his hand and built her nest. Imagine holding a prayer stance -- in Zen stillness -- long enough for a blackbird to build a nest and raise her young. The Irish poet Seamus Heaney beautifully teaches us about the spiritual companionship between the blackbird and Saint Kevin,

And then there was St Kevin and the blackbird,
The saint is kneeling, arms stretched out, inside
His cell, but the cell is narrow, so
One turned-up palm is out the window, stiff
As a crossbeam, when a blackbird lands
And lays in it and settles down to nest.
Kevin feels the warm eggs, the small breast, the
tucked

Neat head and claws and, finding himself linked
Into the network of eternal life,
Is moved to pity; now he must hold his hand
Like a branch out in the sun and rain for weeks
Until the young are hatched and fledged and flown.

And since the whole thing's imagined anyhow,
Imagine being Kevin. Which is he?
Self-forgetful or in agony all the time
From the neck on out down through his
hurting forearms?

Are his fingers sleeping? Does he still feel his knees?
Or has the shut-eyed blank of underearth
Crept up through him? Is there distance in his head?
Alone and mirrored clear in love's deep river,
"To labour and not to seek reward," he prays,
A prayer his body makes entirely
For he has forgotten self, forgotten bird,
And on the riverbank forgotten the river's name.

Saint Kevin’s whole body became a prayer of love that recognized God in an ordinary blackbird. Now imagine me, standing across the lake from Saint Kevin’s cave. Gazing into the lake, I contemplated the blackbird resting in Kevin’s hand and the call for contemplative action in today’s world to become responsible stewards of all God’s creation. Suddenly, my soul felt seen by Saint Kevin, staring out from his cave. In that instance, a robin started singing from a branch just over my head. In that thin place, I felt Saint Kevin’s love encouraging the kind of singing presence that sees God in all things.