Friendship is Unnecessary
But it just might make life worth living: on Anam Cara and Soul Friendships
“Friendship is unnecessary,” C.S. Lewis once wrote.
What a strange and harsh statement for a man so defined by his friendships - the man of the Inklings and pints at “The Bird and Baby” - the man who so often stumbled in his romantic relationships and never quite let his wounded motherless heart heal.
Lewis found rest in his friends. They were his intellectual sparring partners, his greatest editors, and ultimately his route to faith.
In The Four Loves Lewis devotes an entire chapter to this most unnecessary of loves - “Friendship (philia) love.” What he goes on to say is that while friendship might be unnecessary in the most basic biological sense (we need parents, we need spouses, in ways that we don’t need friends), it is precisely that lack of obligation that has the potential to elevate friendship to an extraordinarily high, even near divine, place in our lives.
The full quote goes -
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.”
Jesus said “no longer will I call you servants… Indeed, I have called you friends" (John 15:15). In the Incarnation, that true myth Lewis gave his life over to, mankind is called into friendship with the Divine. Friendship is freely given, freely received, and in its purest form, untainted by lust, obligation, or duty. It simply is.
The company of good friends is like nothing else - there is a feeling of warm affection, comraderie, belonging. That sense of safety, of togetherness, can be earned over the years or only lately discovered in a new soul-companion (Lewis also movingly wrote about the experience of meeting someone, a true friend, in this world - “What, you too? I thought I was the only one!”) Importantly, good friends do not form cliques or inner circles, and one’s desire for friendship is not based on the hubristic need to feel part of a group. In fact, friendship, at its purest, celebrates and encourages the particularity, even the oddities, of the individual. How lucky are we when an old friend, someone who truly knows us, can give us a particular knowing smile, saying, oh only you would think that way! only you would say that! Friendship delights in the uniqueness of the other and demands, indeed would heartily resist, conformity.
There is a Celtic phrase Anam Cara that is best translated as “soul friend.” It is an anglicization of the Irish word anamchara, anam meaning "soul" and cara meaning "friend". The Irish have a deep and abiding respect for friendship, as anyone who has been the recipient of their famed hospitality can attest. One of Ireland’s most famous saints (whose feast we recently celebrated on February 1st), St. Brigid of Kildare, counseled a young cleric that "anyone without a soul friend is like a body without a head."1
So what is a soul friend? Is it the same as Plato’s soul mate - our halved selves walking around empty and clumsy until we meet that infamous puzzle piece? Not quite. Indeed soul friends understand that we are already fully whole. Friendship epitomizes St. Thomas Aquinas’ definition of love as willing the good of the other. It demands nothing, but simply accompanies, affirms, and rejoices. It is good company and hearty laughter and deep, often unspoken generosity and understanding. A person who is an anam cara is that friend you can immediately fall into deep talks with, the person you feel you can bare all those hurt and wounded memories to. They are a place where you are free to laugh or to doubt or to cry or simply to sit quietly. There is no performance in soul friendship.
If one is lucky, you may have more than one anam cara. If you’re particularly lucky, your partner or spouse may be one of them. But they do not have to be. Lewis devotes an entire chapter to Eros, Romantic Love, and that is its own particular Beauty and reflection of love.
These soul friends - outside of familial obligation or spousal devotion - are essential. It is not good that Man should be Alone. One of the first breaths and hopes and observations of God. We are not meant to be alone. How lonely Adam was in his naming, in his dominance and his ruling over that garden. Human beings were made out of one another and for one another, breath to breath, and without those soul friends, it is a lonely, lonely road though this life.
I think of a line of Charles Lamb’s about wandering the world, mourning the loss of so many friends. He describes the ‘Earth [as] a desert I was bound to traverse, / Seeking to find the old familiar faces.”
Seeking the old familiar faces.
Because there is a deep familiarity in friendship, isn’t there? I can think of a few people who, when we met, I simply felt at ease. In fact, I could swear I had known them once before. I danced with you once upon a dream, or something along those lines. There was a simple contentment and knowing there, and again, no forced performance.
Anne Shirley called them ‘kindred spirits.’ The Irish call them ‘anam cara.’ Charles Lamb called them “the old familiar faces.” And Jesus called them, simply, “friends.”
With Valentine’s Day approaching, we may take the opportunity to celebrate romantic partners, and as it should be. Eros and marriage and family are beautiful, beautiful things, Hallmark cards and candy hearts and all. But perhaps this sometimes gimmicky time of performative love and teddy bears and chocolate boxes can celebrate those deeper loves as well, those true, meaning-making soul friends, accompanying us through life’s many trials and joys.
“Kindred spirits alone do not change with the changing years.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island
I want to take this opportunity to share with you that if you’ve been thinking about joining me and
on our October 2024 tour through Ireland, there is a great chance to sign up over “Valentine’s Week.” If you sign up between February 14-21 with another person (any other person you are sharing a room with, friend or spouse, enthusiastic stranger of the street, you decide!) you’ll get a combined $300 off the cost of your trip.This is a pretty incredible opportunity (and a pretty great Valentine’s Day gift, just saying). All you need to do is register and pay the deposit online between February 14, 2024, at 12:01 AM and February 21, 2024, at 11:59 PM EST. Select will automatically discount your final balance by $300. There are no codes or coupons necessary.
Just some highlights you can look forward to - praying at The Shrine of Our Lady of Knock, hiking St. Patrick’s Holy Mountain, wandering ancient monasteries, having high tea at a castle, hearing traditional music in the countryside, seeing a traditional sheepherding demonstration, exploring Dublin with Risking Enchantment host Rachel Sherlock, seeing the Book of Kells, the Trinity Library, and so much more. Read all the details here.
I absolutely hate selling things and promotion is not really my strong suit, but I truly feel that I was meant to put this trip out there, that there is a group of people meant to go. The internet can be awkward and sometimes seems like the opposite of anam cara, lots of in-groups and mimicking and conformity, right? Well, I think that is maybe the number one reason I felt so called to do something in person, to demand a sort of radical engagement with the physical world, to encounter Beauty and God and History and Truth, with new and old friends, in a real, embodied way.
Invite an anam cara to join you on this trip, or trust you will find one when you sign up solo.
Also, I wanted to throw this out there, if you are a solo traveler willing to share a room and would like to take advantage of the discount, send me an email, and if someone else also emails, I could connect you two to see if you’d like to possibly room together and get the discount. I want everyone who wants to go on this trip to be able to go and I think this could be a great way to cut costs and meet new friends. (also something to keep in mind, if you are a bargain hunter when it comes to plane tickets, you can book sans air)
As I said, I hate self promotion, I don’t want to sell you things, but I want you all to go on this trip, I really do. If you could share it with your friend groups, small groups, book clubs, family members, I would be so appreciative. I’m also booking this trip without social media (show me it can be done!) so I am relying on in-person communities to share and promote. (and of course if you don’t follow Christy on Instagram you really should - she’ll be promoting the trip, answering questions, and I truly miss her flower photos and vegetable garden updates and on-point Crown recaps - you do not want to miss out)
Christy and I are counting the days to toasting over a pint with you!
Download the brochure / Commonly asked questions / Sign up!
Slainte, mo chairde!
A Friendship Blessing by John O’Donohue
May you be blessed with good friends.
May you learn to be a good friend to yourself.
May you be able to journey to that place in your soul where
there is great love, warmth, feeling, and forgiveness.
May this change you.
May it transfigure that which is negative, distant, or cold in you.
May you be brought in to the real passion, kinship, and affinity of belonging.
May you treasure your friends.
May you be good to them and may you be there for them;
may they bring you all the blessing, challenges, truth,
and light that you need for your journey.
May you never be isolated.
May you always be in the gentle nest of belonging with your anam ċara.
as recounted in The Martyrology of Óengus
I was hoping you'd mention Anne of Green Gables "kindred spirits"! :) I have always loved that term. It is so hard as a military wife to make good friends, and even harder to find fellow kindred spirits, in real life, which is why I value my online friendships so much. But I've also started praying that God will help me find a good group of friends in real life too! I'm starting to crave that. Cannot wait to meet up in person after we move to MD! (Need to text you and update about when we will be there!)
One of my best friends is from Dublin. We met at an Irish Music Festival at Snug Harbor, NY. It was instant fireworks. We got into so much trouble here in America and in Ireland--Dublin and Belfast--but more than anything we laughed for years on end. Then we both got married and moved away from each other, but those years! We were so alive together. I just finished reading Dostoevsky's Devils where a group of young men are drawn together by a "Big Idea." It's the opposite of friendship because for this idea they are willing to sacrifice each other-- not themselves. When we don't have good friends, we can easily get sucked into ideologies that are poor substitutes for love.