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"Soul friendship joins friends togetherin a common dwelling that neither time nor spacenor death itself can separate."-Edward Sellner
The special friend who accompanies a person through life's journey is more precious than gold. The early Christian Celts had a heartwarming name for this person: the Anamchara. (Anam is the Gaelic word for soul; chara is the word for friend-"friend of the soul.") This special friend was someone with whom a person could talk through practical matters, reveal hidden intimacies, and break through the barriers of convention and egotism to an eternal unity of soul.
Ray Simpson brings this ancient concept into the twenty-first century, drawing practical applications from the long history of soul friendship. He describes a spiritual bond that lasts beyond this life into eternity, for it flows directly from God, who is the pattern of all friendship, the center and source of all human relationships.
About the author
Ray Simpson was educated at Woking Grammar School for Boys, London University and London College of Divinity. He was ordained into 'the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church' at Lichfield Cathedral, founded by Saint Chad of Lindisfarne in 669.
In 1978, he was uniquely commissioned by Anglican, Baptist, Catholic, Methodist, United Reformed Churches and The Religious Society of Friends, with a Salvation Army band and 'the right hand of fellowship' from Community and Pentecostal churches to establish 'one family of Christians for one neighbourhood' at Bowthorpe, Norwich, in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
He is the Founding Guardian of the dispersed International Ecumenical Community of Aidan and Hilda. The CORE of CAH comprises followers of the way from Catholic, Orthodox, Reformed and Emerging expressions of the worldwide Body of Christ and other faith communities.
He lived on England's Holy Island of Lindisfarne for over two decades where he established the Celtic Christian Library and the Community's retreat accommodation for pilgrims.
He has been the Community's principal liturgist and Celtic Studies tutor, is the author of over forty books on prayer, spirituality and new monasticism and has travelled and lectured widely on three continents. His popular auto-biography, Monk In the Marketplace, was published in 2021. For information about his daily prayer tweet, weekly blog, downloads and books, see: www.raysimpson.org.
