Written by Christopher Haggerty
The Irish have a proverb from ancient times that I love and quote often.
A man without an Anam Cara is like a body without a head.
They believed their life depended on friendship.
So, the other day, I lost sight. Really bad. Lost sight of who I am. It happened when I talked with someone, who, at least on the surface, seemed to be living the life I desire, the life I've been waiting to live. The story of ease and serendipity that brought him to that life, left me feeling like an orphaned child.
I'd been pin-pricked by an incomplete story. I hadn't heard anything about my new friends' struggles, or his personal battles, which no doubt he has. Just the good stuff. Our conversation was too brief for more. I got angry, really angry. I was beside myself. My prayers were, pointed, to say the least, like arrows to the Throne room. (Please don't read anger at God here, this is anger at how the conversation made me feel. This was not a catastrophic event, just frustration with the pace of life).
Experience has taught me that this can be part of my process. I can move along in a state of coping for a time, incapable of rousing the deeper things, until I get pin-pricked like that. Then a truckload of desire gets dumped.
Just as I am un-offended by my children's occasional meltdowns, I believe my Father is un-offended by mine, even gratified that my full attention and dependence are on Him. He remembers my frame. (ps.103:14)
Then came that evening. I was invited to a friends house for conversation. No agenda, just three of us talking on a porch. Two men I love and respect. Two men that have my trust and know it. I was still carrying the weight of the morning, until one of them asked: so, what's going on in your heart? Because of what we'd already invested in each other, and the resulting sanctuary, there was no holding back. I told them everything.
I confessed.
I exercised the ancient privilege of Anam Cara. I looked to these men to be the priests I needed. The priests I know them to be. I needed them to help me regain perspective. I knew that what I shared would never be repeated, I knew they would hear me.
Knowing my story, my friends gathered me in, back to myself. They caused me to re-member, to be put back together. They weren't surprised or ashamed by me. They continued to see the best.
Without our prior time together these good men would have had nothing to offer but platitudes and pity. Instead they offered great wisdom and true compassion. We talked through the tension that upset me and what it means to continue to wait on God. They had earned that place in my life.
Here's the kicker, I've known one of them for a year and the other for about nine months. We're all busy fathers, husbands and making our livings, but we do something extraordinary. We value friendship, like our lives depend on it.
We take risks and share deep personal story, tell bad jokes and laugh our butts off. We speak the spiritual language of encouragement and blessing. We pray for each other and our families and hope for the best. We give each other room to explore spiritual concepts.
To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. C.S.Lewis - The Four Loves
By and large, our modern culture has forgotten how to be friends. We "network". Like every other aspect of our lives, we've allowed commerce into the temple of our relationships. But friendship is what we truly need. The school of virtue indeed. I am a better man because of my friendships. Paul goes so far as to say that He who loves another has fulfilled the law! (Romans 13:8b)
The result of friendship is a life above reproach.
As I was writing this I began to think about the Anam Cara friendship of Jesus. Jesus spent his years of healing and teaching and modeling perfect love with his friends, and in the end he called us friends. I love how Jesus describes, in no uncertain terms, the tell-tale sign of his friendship.
Listen to this:
No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. (John 15:15)
We do this! We share what is rolling around in our hearts. The things that the Father is speaking to us, we bring to the table and we feast. This is the token of our friendship. I love that! We don't withhold, we don't compete. We spend time together to explore true friendship. True revelation. We love each other like our lives depend on it.
Christ goes on to say These things I command you, that you love one another. (John 15:17)
Without each other, we are the Body without it's Head.
It's an amazing thing to experience, it is our richest frontier.
One more quote:
Come on in boys, the water is fine! Delmar
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