Anam Cara: 25th Anniversary Edition

Caitlín Matthews, The Little Book of Celtic Blessings, Element Books, Shaftesbury, 1994.

In a certain sense, we are always waiting for the great moment of gathering or belonging and it always evades us. We are haunted with a deep sense of absence. There is something missing from our lives. We always expect it to be filled by a definite person, object, or project. We are desperate to fill this emptiness, but the soul tells us, if we lis

We are seldom in the place where we stand and in the time that is now. Many people are haunted by the past, things that they have not done, things that they should have done that they regret not doing. They are prisoners of their past. Other people are haunted by the future; they are anxious and worried about what is coming.

Often our loneliness and isolation is due to a failure of spiritual imagination.

Rilke said: ‘Being here is so much.’ It is uncanny how social reality can deaden and numb us so that the mystical wonder of our lives goes totally unnoticed. We are here.

How you view your future actually shapes it. In other words, expectation helps create the future.

They play a continual game, fashioning a careful persona which they think the world will accept or admire. Even when they are in their solitude they remain afraid of meeting themselves. One of the most sacred duties of one’s destiny is the duty to be yourself. When you come to accept yourself and like yourself, you learn not to be afraid of your ow

Your death can be a wonderfully creative event opening you up to embrace the divine that always lived secretly inside you.

When someone in the village dies, everyone goes to the funeral. First everyone comes to the house to sympathize. All the neighbours gather around to support the family and to help them. It is a lovely gift. When you are really desperate and lonely, you need neighbours to help you, support you and bring you through that broken time.