This article is featured in the Autumn 2015 issue of The Wayfarer (Vol 4 Issue 2)
When my eighty-five year old grandmother arrived at our house for a belated Christmas celebration, the family was surprised to see several neatly wrapped parcels tucked under her Gore-Tex winter jacket. This was unexpected because my grandmother swore off of gift giving four years ago in protest of the holiday’s materialism. She handed each grandchild an envelope containing twenty dollars to accompany a book from her personal collection to suit their respective personality. My youngest cousin was given a copy of Grimm’s Fairy Tales, while my sister, the only redhead in the family, was given The Redhead Book: A Book for and about Redheads. I took my turn peeling back the layers of scotch tape, and found beneath the wrapping Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.
In Celtic tradition, Anam Cara is a spiritual companion whose aim is to bring a person’s inmost nature to the surface. It is a means by which the soul…
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