Beautiful Things #5: Anam Cara.

A friend recommended I surround myself with beautiful things last year when life was well....not so beautiful. They went on to recommend the book Anam Cara, by John O'Donahue.
I
Fell
In
Love
Not with John - I think he was celibate.
But I fell in love with what he had to say.

Anam Cara means, Soul Friend, - and he basically talks, meditates and muses on facets of the heart, community, friendship, love (both the eros and the agape) in the most beautiful of words.

It made me long for and be grateful for people all at the same time.

Do you have an Anam Cara? People that can speak to the deepest places in you and you feel at home in their presence?  I think that is how He created and designed our relationships to be - its just so often we find ourselves unable to be that or recieve that.

Am I making sense?

So, as I was going through Christmas pictures tonight, I saw these of my mother and Godmother and realized what they were communicating in these is a soul friendship.  (I adore both of these women like. whoa.)
I've included quotes from Anam Cara with the photographs.

Human presence is a creative and turbulent sacrament, a visible sign of invisible grace. Nowhere is there such intimate and frightening access to the mysterious. Friendship is the sweet grace that liberates us to approach, recognize, and inhabit this adventure.

a friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you.

The one you love, your anam cara, your soul friend, is the truest mirror to reflect your soul.

“Real friendship or love is not manufactured or achieved by an act of will or intention. Friendship is always an act of recognition.”

“One of the tasks of true friendship is to listen compassionately and creatively to the hidden silences. Often secrets are not revealed in words, they lie concealed in the silence between the words or in the depth of what is unsayable between two people.”

And this is just barb. out of focus. but being hilarious.