Photo by Thomas Rousing

Hello to our readers!

With the end of summer concludes our series on EGG (Ethnicity, Generations, Gender). For the remainder of the year and into 2018, we will be embarking on something quite different: blog themes loosely pulled from the book, Anam Cara, by John O’ Donahue.

Below you will find Young Lee Hertig’s introduction of the book, as well as why she believes the themes in this book are worth reflecting upon, speaking appropriately to the times that we find ourselves in. We hope you will enjoy and be encouraged by our honest reflections, and through our blog, find companionship in your own faith journey!

–Joy Wong, AAWOL blog editor

By Young Lee Hertig

May the light of your soul guide you.
May the light of your soul bless the work you do with the
Secret love and warmth of your heart.
-John O’Donohue

Violent rhetoric leads to violent behavior. The case of Charlottesville testifies to increasing hate crimes against peaceful protest against white supremacy groups, while the shocking responses from the President of the United States equalized white supremacist groups with anti-hate groups, legitimatizing the white supremacists. The 45^th president’s responses to the Charlottesville incident rattled many citizens in the United States and around the globe. Incidentally, it is against the law to display the symbols of Nazis in Germany but allowed in the United States. We are left in a dire moral and spiritual crisis.

In such a climate, one can easily resort to despair of the total depravity of humanity which can hollow out our soul.  Regretfully, the little bits of progress made since the passing of the Civil Rights Act in the last half a century are imperiled by this new administration.

Nevertheless, I choose peace within from the book Anam Cara by John O’Donohue which has replenished my soul.  Anam refers to “soul”, and cara to “friend” in Gaelic. A soulful friendship resides in the depth of the interior that doesn’t get tainted by exterior circumstances and titles, transcending time and space.  O’Donohue shares, “The anam cara was a person to whom you could reveal the hidden intimacies of your life.  This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging.”

Chapter 1 covers the recognition and awakening of the ancient belonging between two friends which reveals the presence of the divine and the soul as the house of belonging.  Chapter 2 covers a spirituality of friendship with the body which resides in the soul.  Chapter 3 explores the art of inner friendship: “When you cease to fear your solitude, a new creativity awakens in you,” writes O’Donohue.  Chapter 4 reflects on work as a poetic of growth: “When our inner life can befriend the outer world of work, new imagination is awakened and great changes take place.”  Chapter 5 contemplates our friendship with the harvest time of life and stresses that the passionate heart never ages.  Chapter 6 probes death, our “invisible companion,” and “the root of all fear and negativity.” Yet, befriending death enables us to celebrate the eternity of the soul, untouchable by death.

This book guides me through daily meditation.  One of the themes that jumps out at me in the moment is on “Shrunken Identity.”  What O’Donohue calls a “shrunken identity” is an identity awakened by will and intellect and thus becoming a prisoner of one’s roles.  Having achieved multiple degrees and titles, I have to admit that a bulk of my identity has been based on academic work.  The summer 2002, however, was a major turning point when I gave up an endowed chair position in Ohio to return to Los Angeles.

Consequently, I noticed people treated me differently when I no longer served the academy as full-time faculty.  More people tend to treat others based on their positions rather than who the person is.  For example, during my visit to Seoul in July, I visited one of the mega- churches in the suburb of Seoul to worship and to see an old student on pastoral staff there. He did not bother to come and greet me, although something tells me that things would have been different had I maintained my formal titles and positions!

In contrast, a friend of four decades adjusted her schedule and arranged a soulful overnight retreat with me at a Christian retreat center.  I have many friends with whom I share a long history and memories. This particular friend, however, is an exception, because we live so far apart. However, we connect deeply when we travel to each other’s location despite the ocean that separates us.  We simply pick up from where we left off last time when we met.  No external circumstances and changes in life have altered our soulful friendship.

John O’Donohue describes this kind of friendship “the anam-cara experience” that “opens a friendship that is not wounded or limited by separation or distance…  Such friendship can remain alive even when the friend lives far away from each other…  When you have an anam cara, your friendship cuts across all convention and category.”

It is in this friendship that I feel right at home whenever I visit Seoul.  I am deeply grateful for this friend who makes a soulful space for me to feel belonging as I have become an outsider at my home of youth.  As such, I am looking forward to reading about the anam cara experiences of our AAWOL bloggers!

Rev. Dr. Young Lee Hertig is executive director and a founding member of ISAAC (Institute for the Study of Asian American Christianity) and AAWOL (Asian American Women On Leadership). She teaches in the Global Studies and Sociology Department at Azusa Pacific University and is an ordained Presbyterian clergy as well as a commissioner of the Presbyterian Church USA to the National Council of Churches Faith and Order.