Anam Cara

Fixated on the visible, we forget that the decisive presences in our lives—soul, mind, thought, love, meaning, time, and life itself—are all invisible. No surgeon has ever opened a brain to discover crevices full of thoughts. And yet our thought determines who we think we are, who we think others are, and how we consider the world to be. We are not the masters of our own reality; granted, we do choose the lenses through which we see the world, yet the shape and color of these lenses are offered to us from the primal benevolence of the unseen world. Everything that is here has had its origin there. The invisible is the parent of the visible.

Before time began the invisible world rested in the eternal. With the creation of our world, time and space began. Every stone, bush, raindrop, star, mountain, and flower has its origin in the invisible world. That is where the first sighting of each of us occurred. We emerged from the folds of time, each an intense mixture of visible and invisible. Our eyes cannot see this world. Our hearts are usually too encumbered to navigate it, our minds too darkened to decipher it. As the Bible says: “Now we see through a glass darkly.” Yet it is exactly on this threshold between visible and invisible that our most creative conflicts and challenges come alive. Each new beginning, each new difficulty always finds us on that frontier. And this is exactly why we reach for blessing. In our confusion, fear, and uncertainty we call upon the invisible structures of original kindness to come to our assistance and open pathways of possibility by refreshing and activating in us our invisible potential. When we bless, we work from a place of inner vision, clearer than our hearts, brighter than our minds. Blessing is the art of harvesting the wisdom of the invisible world. From day to day it offers us new gifts.

THE WONDER AND STRANGENESS OF A DAY

Each new day is a path of wonder, a different invitation. Days are where our lives gradually become visible.

Often it seems that we have to undertake the longest journey to arrive at what has been nearest all along. Mornings rarely find us so astounded at the new day that we are unable to decide between adventures. We take on days with the same conditioned reflex with which we wash and put on our clothes each morning. If we could be mindful of how short our time is, we might learn how precious each day is. There are people who will never forget today.

A man awakes this morning beset by an old emptiness that has gnawed for years. By now he is adept at managing it. He accommodates himself to another day; instinctively, he sets the compass of his mind. Later in the morning, at work, he receives a call from a woman he once knew. He had never forgotten her. He always sensed that she might have had the measure of his emptiness. Now, out of the blue, she is wondering if they might meet for dinner. As he puts down the phone, he imagines he can hear a door opening—and senses that things may never be the same again.

Somewhere else a woman awakes beside her husband; she already feels weary at the prospect of the morning’s work and the rest of the day minding young children. But she stops herself, coaxes her heart to realize that things are actually great. The relationship has deepened in the last while, the awkwardness with their eldest son has calmed, and the money situation has improved significantly. She gets up, goes to take her shower. At this stage she is even singing quietly to herself. She does her routine breast check and finds the lump. An abyss opens. She will never forget this day.

Meanwhile, we dodder through our days as if they were our surest belongings. No day belongs to us. Each day is a gift. Tragically, it is often only when we are about to lose a thing that the scales fall from our eyes, but it is usually too late. On its way toward us, destiny travels silently, until it arrives. Then something we had never expected becomes loud around us. Time is where eternity unfolds. The contemplative tradition has always recognized the morning as the time to recognize the new day with a sense of creative expectation and openheartedness.

TO RECEIVE EACH DAY AS AN INVITATION

One night recently I visited our family farm. A calf had just been born. It had just slumped to earth in a wet, steaming mass. At midnight I went out to look at the cow again; by this time she had licked her new calf dry and he had sucked his first milk. Everything was mild and gentle, illuminated by the moon’s mint light. What a beautiful night it was to arrive on earth. Even if this newborn were a genius, it could never possibly imagine the surprise of the world that was waiting when the dawn would break in a miracle of color illuminating the personality of mountains, river, and sky.