About Anam Cara
Welcome
Anam Cara Ministries was founded in 2007 as a place where true soul friendship can be found. Our name, Anam Cara, is an ancient Celtic word meaning “soul friend.” With a soul friend, our entire selves find a place of belonging and presence with another.
At Anam Cara Ministries, we believe this kind of trusting and committed relationship is essential to following the Way of Christ. Celtic Christianity and its practices form a foundation to our work. We aim to be a place of grace and hope, where a deeper relationship with God can be pursued in a context of hospitality and safety.
To that end, we offer spiritual direction through a curated network of trained spiritual directors who reflect this heart. We facilitate spaces of wrestling and exploration, where community and Scripture, faith and doubt, questions and certainty exist in creative tension. We also offer training in the practice of spiritual direction through a relationally formational experience called the Anam Cara Apprenticeship, as well as supervision and support to spiritual directors in a home called the Peregrini Program.
Our Values
Anam Cara Ministries is rooted in and anchored by a set of values that shape our rhythms, practices, and presence in the world.
Dignity
God created us with inherent worth and dignity. Anam Cara seeks to be a non-manipulative presence in all that we do, extending kindness, honoring each person we encounter, and believing that each soul bears the divine image of God.
God in Christ
Anam Cara is deeply rooted in the Christian tradition, grappling with the realities of an ancient faith in present time. We are in a constant posture of surrendering to God, trusting that God in Christ accompanies us.
Soul Friendship
In true soul friendship, we extend and receive intentional love toward the other. This friendship is not based on transaction, but on gift. As such, it pours forth transformative power beyond the relationship into the world.
Centered
Anam Cara is grounded by the communal narrative and practices of Christianity, understanding there has been a conversation going on for centuries around what it means to follow Christ. We choose to listen first, then act, living and contributing both out of and into that conversation.
Wrestling
We believe that to live fully in the reality of what it means to be the people of God is to both acknowledge and enact a faith that is in motion. This motion often (although not always) takes the form of wrestling, which we believe is an important practice of encounter and intimacy.
Tov
Tov is the Hebrew word (טוב) for Scriptural “good.” It encompasses the reality that things are not only as they are intended to be, but are dynamic and flourishing, giving life and reproducing. The definition we like to use is “the actualization of the potential for life, embedded in the creation by God, when the creation brings it forth with the seeds of future life already in it.” If you’d like to know how we get to that definition, please join us for a Scripture Circle.
Shalom
True shalom is far beyond the absence of conflict, or superficial peace. Shalom is the reality of peace that means everything as God intends it to be, wholly integrated and in place, with nothing missing. Shalom is complete, congruent, and full.
Spacious
Anam Cara believes that with God, there is sacred abundance and more than enough. There is a hospitality that is overflowing with grace and rest. There is space to be welcomed in, space to form friendships, even space to wrestle or wait.
Our Board
Anam Cara Ministries is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. As such, we are led by a community of people. While our founder and executive director Tara Owens leads the day-to-day operations, our values, vision, and mission are curated and tended by a group of people who pray for everyone who interacts with Anam Cara on a regular basis. These folks (pictured at left) are always available to answer questions or interact with the Anam Cara community.
Rachel Reed, Ken Wilson, Sarah Jackson (Board Chair), Christy Janssen, Tara Owens, Bryan Owens and Tami Magaldi (Not Pictured)
Our Commitment
Anam Cara’s goal is to cultivate and nurture soul friendships that foster communities of shalom
Our vision is to reach all those who desire to experience healthy and holistic soul friendship, no matter their wealth, location, language and background. As a creedal organization, our practitioners come from diverse contexts and histories. Guided by the Apostles’ and Nicene creeds, we hold space for the breadth and depth of expressions of the Christian faith and make room at the margins for all people who are curious and desire an anam cara relationship.
We want to create an environment that invites participation from people of all races, social or economic statuses, ethnicities, genders, orientations, ages, abilities, and free from discrimination, prosthelization, patronization or harassment.
Equality, diversity, and inclusion are at the heart of Anam Cara Ministries and the practice of soul friendship. However, as a global community our approach to equality, diversity, and inclusion may not be that of one singular perspective but aims to integrate many different perspectives on the topic.
- Equality at its heart is about removing barriers, biases, and obstacles that impede equal access. We are emphasizing equality of opportunity.
- Diversity is about progressing towards a community that reflects our global community and the diversity of society on various levels.
- Inclusion is about creating programs and an environment that is free from discrimination, where every participant is welcome, included, and respected.
In order to promote the above goals of equality, diversity, and inclusion, Anam Cara Ministries aims for:
- Participant diversity – making spiritual direction and our events, both hosted by Anam Cara and our Peregrini community, available to attendees as broadly as possible, with scholarships, participatory funding models, and where possible offerings that are free-of-charge.
- Practitioner and speaker diversity – recruiting speakers, practitioners, and panelists from diverse populations, backgrounds, and practice areas within spiritual direction and spiritual formation to increase diversity in thinking and perspective. We recognize that speakers and panelists will come representing intersectional identities. In our recruitment processes, we will seek to identify the richness of what spiritual direction and spiritual formation practitioners bring in their being and in their practice(s). We also acknowledge that in a global community, recruited speakers may not always be able to speak at our events or communities. We acknowledge the power inherent in the speaker selection process, and we are working as a community to draft and commit to strategies that address that power differential.
- This is a co-creative process. Here are some ways you can help us build a more diverse experience:
- Recommend appropriate speakers and/or panelists to our team by sending an email to admin@anamcara.com.
- Be Active! Join the Anam Cara Ministries Facebook page and Instagram account and encourage others to as well. Join us for Sundays at the Abbey via Zoom.
- Share your best practices to increase inclusion of marginalized groups for Anam Cara Ministries by sending us an email at admin@anamcara.com.
We value diversity in the communities we bring together, and we welcome your contributions to bringing a balanced representation of the richness of our collective human experience.
This Diversity statement is licensed from O’Reilly Media, Inc. under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en. Modifications to the statement have been made by Anam Cara Ministries.