Anam Cara  (Soul Friend)

I am only a chapter into this extraordinary book and already feel like it's going to take an honored and treasured place in my psychic library. I am listening to it and I'm grateful that I had the intuition that this would be a book better heard than read - all the better to let the spoken words sink in and work their magic unawares. 

To stay that the language is poetic is to understate the experience. Read in a sonorous, Gaelic-tinged accent, it makes the most of the vast vocabulary of the English language, a language that  mostly does not lend itself easily to beautiful prose, save in the hands of exceptional writers. The recital is both firm and lilting. It silences the analytic, dualistic mind and seduces you into listening with your heart where, I’m led to believe, wisdom accumulates.

It begins with a paean to friendship, holding out the promise of restoring that word to to it’s hallowed place in this era of crude Facebook de-friendings and social media trivialization. And then it blossoms into a sublime elucidation of the word “love” so immediate and intimate that I felt my heart stir. 

All this in the first chapter!