Anam Cara

In the intuitive world-view of the Celtic Imagination, the web of belonging still continued to hold a person, especially when times were bleak. In Catholic theology, there is a teaching reminiscent of this. It has to do with the validity and wholesomeness of the sacraments. In a case where the minister of the sacrament is unworthy, the sacrament still continues to be real and effective because the community of believers supplies the deficit. It is called the ex-opere-operato principle. From the adjacent abundance of grace, the Church fills out what is absent in the unworthiness of the celebrant. Within the embrace of folk culture, the web of belonging supplied similar secret psychic and spiritual shelter to the individual. This is one of the deepest poverties in our times. That whole web of ‘betweenness’ seems to be unravelling. It is rarely acknowledged any more, but that does not mean that it has ceased to exist. The ‘web of betweenness’ is still there but in order to become a presence again, it needs to be invoked. As in the rainforest, a dazzling diversity of life-forms complement and sustain each other; there is secret oxygen with which we unknowingly sustain one another. True community is not produced; it is invoked and awakened. True community is an ideal where the full identities of awakened and realized individuals challenge and complement each other. In this sense both individuality and originality enrich self and others.

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THE HUMAN EYE ALWAYS SEES TWICE IN THE ONE LOOK: THE THING and the emptiness. This difference is registered by the eye and conveyed to the mind. Because the eye discovers and guarantees the world, it has little difficulty schooling the mind in the habit of separation. The instinct of the eye is not to trust sequence. The eye prefers to insist on the loneliness of the object. No object intensifies the neighbouring emptiness like the human body. The eye underlines this separation. Because the mind knows the passion and difference of the interior world locked inside the body, it easily comes to believe the individual is an island. The conviction that each individual is separate and utterly alone makes us blind to that subtle world that dwells between things.

Because the eye loves to hit its glimpse at the centre of a thing, it has no radar to pick up this in-between world. Though it may not be seen directly, the eye of the imagination will often be drawn to the edges of things where the visible and invisible worlds coalesce. There is a subtle and unknown intimacy around each of us which is usually more evident in our homes. The things we have, the clothes, furniture, paintings, music, books, rooms, all are infused with us. In truth, there is no distance between us and the things we live among. This nearness is intensified a thousand times when it comes to the people close to us.

There is no map for this invisible territory, yet sometimes its force completely engages your heart. The atmosphere between you and a friend takes on a life of its own; though both of you influence its rhythm and shapes, neither of you ultimately controls it. Indeed, it is fascinating how much we can awaken in each other. There are some people in your life with whom you felt a wonderful affinity the moment you met them. The more they told you, the more you felt as if they were talking from a common world you had somehow secretly shared before you ever came to know each other. Within the newly discovered affinity, so much can be assumed and intuited. Nothing needs to be said, tested or proved. You sense each other’s spirit and in some inexplicable way, you do know each other. Trust is not a question; you settled into an embrace of belonging that seemed to have always held you. Sometimes this interim world – this invisible territory – knows more than we do, even things we have yet to discover as we continue to imagine who we are.

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But beauty interrupts restrictions in every place and thing.

STEPHEN DAVID ROSS