Anam Cara

Our culture has little to offer us for our crossings. Never was there such talk of communication or such technology to facilitate it. Yet at the heart of our newfound wealth and progress there is a gaping emptiness, and we are haunted by loneliness. While we seem to have progressed to become experts in so many things—multiplying and acquiring stuff we neither need nor truly want—we have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging. With the demise of religion, many people are left stranded in a chasm of emptiness and doubt; without rituals to recognize, celebrate, or negotiate the vital thresholds of people’s lives, the key crossings pass by, undistinguished from the mundane, everyday rituals of life. This is where we need to retrieve and reawaken our capacity for blessing. If we approach our decisive thresholds with reverence and attention, the crossing will bring us more than we could ever have hoped for. This is where blessing invokes and awakens every gift the crossing has to offer. In our present ritual poverty, the Celtic tradition has much to offer us.

THE CELTIC SENSE OF TIME AS CREATIVE OCCASION

Always, when my father left home to go to work in the fields or to go to town, the last thing he did as he walked out the door was to turn back toward us in the kitchen and inhale a full explicit breath. I had never really thought about this image from childhood until I started writing this book. And it seems that what he was doing as he left was inhaling the spirit of his loved ones to nourish and protect his journey, coming back to take for himself a blessing-breath.

We know that there will be a time when a certain farewell will be the last. In French, au revoir and in German Auf wiedersehen both explicitly state the wish that we might be seen again. In Irish, we say slan leat or go dte tu slan: “safety be with you,” or “may you go safely.” Our forms of greeting express joy and delight that the person is still there. In German, the surprise is almost palpable: Da bist Du…“there you are.” Or Gruss Dich “greetings to you.”

In Irish we say, Dia Dhuit, “God to you,” and the response is, Dia ‘s Muire Dhuit, “God and Mary to you.” Beyond the courtesy of convention, this manner of words suggests that your being there still is an act of divine kindness. Blessing always shores up the heart against the ravages of time; this is wonderfully expressed in Conamara when one puts on a new garment: Go maire tu agus go gcaithe tu e agus go gcaithe tu seacht gcinn nios fearr na e: “May you live and may you wear it and may you wear seven more even better than it.” Blessing is intended to strengthen human presence, and it often harnesses the energy of nature to affect this.

In the Celtic world there is a great tradition of blessing. Because it was primarily an oral tradition, the blessings were learned by heart and handed on from one generation to the next. There are blessings for every possible occasion. The Celtic mind had a refined sense of occasion.

The human mind cannot encompass the full weight of time. We break time up into divisions we can manage. But the word occasion suggests a period of special time when something of significance unfolds. In Western culture, occasion is now mere social occasion. Yet for the person who lives time consciously, there is a continuous undertow of possibility always at work. Accordingly, it is received and appreciated as continuous occasions of invitation. To live like this is to experience time as a constant invitation to growth—to become more than you have been, to transform loss into presence, and to allow what is false to fall away. At the gates of time, blessing waits to usher toward us the grace we need.

TO BLESS WITH HOLY WATER

While blessing is an act of the senses expressed in word and gesture, the source and the destination of blessing remain invisible. Perhaps this is why water has always been used as a vehicle of blessing. In elemental terms, water stands midway between the physicality of earth and fire and the unseen air. Water is colorless, odorless, and transparent; it has a huge affinity with the unseen and yet achieves a tentative and sometimes forceful visibility. The origin of water retains its secrecy; the source is always out of human view. Crucially water is the mother and vehicle of life. The human body is over eighty percent water, and the fertility of the earth is directly dependent on it. Given this metaphoric range, water is the ideal liturgical vehicle to confer blessing.