{"id":2583,"date":"2007-08-31T00:30:55","date_gmt":"2007-08-31T00:30:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html"},"modified":"2007-08-31T00:30:55","modified_gmt":"2007-08-31T00:30:55","slug":"friday-is-for-friends-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html","title":{"rendered":"Friday is for Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Do you have an anamchara, the Celtic word for &#8220;soul friend&#8221; or &#8220;spiritual director&#8221;? Tracy Balzer&#8217;s second chapter, in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&amp;location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2FThin-Places-Evangelical-Journey-Christianity%2Fdp%2F0891125132%3Fie%3DUTF8%26s%3Dbooks%26qid%3D1188511408%26sr%3D1-1&amp;tag=jescre-20&amp;linkCode=ur2&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325\">Thin Places<\/a><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" style=\"border:none !important;margin:0px !important\" \/>, is a delicate and insightful survey of the Celtic practice and how spiritual direction or soul friendship can be developed in our world.<!--more|inline--><br \/>\nHere are our questions: Do you have any experience with spiritual direction? Either as the director or the one receiving direction? Experience with spiritual friendships or soul friends?<br \/>\nSt. Camgall of Bangor, a 7th Century saint, said &#8220;it is not good to be your own guide.&#8221; Many of us are. Do we need to rethink our independence, our rugged individualism, and consider having an anamchara? St. Brigid, a 6th Century saint, said &#8220;a person without a soul friend is like a body without a head.&#8221;<br \/>\nA soul friend provides sanctuary &#8212; a safe place to reveal, to ponder, and to learn &#8212; and confession &#8212; so that the words may be heard in an audible way making us more aware of our sins and accountability.<br \/>\nWe lack safe places today and we grow restless in spirit &#8212; we are afraid to voice our honest questions because of fear of condemnation. An anamchara can help.<br \/>\nTracy tells the story of a friend who spoke to her students about the &#8220;power of the secret&#8221; (life) and the need to &#8220;break the secret.&#8221;<br \/>\nThe anamchara asks questions and listens well. In essence, the anamchara enables a person to hear from God, listen to God, and to walk the life of faith better.<br \/>\nIt is not good to be your own guide&#8230; that statement, at the close of the chapter, was for me the best thing said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Do you have an anamchara, the Celtic word for &#8220;soul friend&#8221; or &#8220;spiritual director&#8221;? Tracy Balzer&#8217;s second chapter, in Thin Places, is a delicate and insightful survey of the Celtic practice and how spiritual direction or soul friendship can be developed in our world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-prayer-and-formation"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Friday is for Friends - Jesus Creed<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Friday is for Friends - Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Do you have an anamchara, the Celtic word for &#8220;soul friend&#8221; or &#8220;spiritual director&#8221;? Tracy Balzer&#8217;s second chapter, in Thin Places, is a delicate and insightful survey of the Celtic practice and how spiritual direction or soul friendship can be developed in our world.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-08-31T00:30:55+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"xscot mcknight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Friday is for Friends - Jesus Creed","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Friday is for Friends - Jesus Creed","og_description":"Do you have an anamchara, the Celtic word for &#8220;soul friend&#8221; or &#8220;spiritual director&#8221;? Tracy Balzer&#8217;s second chapter, in Thin Places, is a delicate and insightful survey of the Celtic practice and how spiritual direction or soul friendship can be developed in our world.","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html","og_site_name":"Jesus Creed","article_published_time":"2007-08-31T00:30:55+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1"}],"author":"xscot mcknight","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html","name":"Friday is for Friends - Jesus Creed","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1","datePublished":"2007-08-31T00:30:55+00:00","dateModified":"2007-08-31T00:30:55+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1","contentUrl":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=jescre-20&amp;l=ur2&amp;o=1"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/2007\/08\/friday-is-for-friends-55.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Friday is for Friends"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/","name":"Jesus Creed","description":"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith for today","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/9c0db2eaf4d047d76276f907b62843f0","name":"xscot mcknight","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/1f0\/1f0cb0f88d1f99f6e05597a2de7f1949x96.jpg","caption":"xscot mcknight"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/author\/xscot-mcknight"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/jesuscreed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}