As we work to build our line of books here at Anamchara Books, we spend a fair amount of time thinking and talking about who we are. What defines us as a publishing house—and what defines the books we publish?
 
The word we keep coming back to is “inclusive.” As is my habit, I turn to my etymological dictionaries so I can better understand what I mean when I use this word—and I discover that the Latin includere meant “to enclose,” a root tied to words that had to do with safety and strongholds. So how is that related to what we’re doing here at Anamchara Books?
 
The word “enclose” makes me think of arms that reach out to embrace and welcome. It’s that sense of welcome and safety that is so important to my concept of Anamchara. We are working to build a literary space where everyone is welcome to come into God’s presence, a place where we are safe to ask questions, unafraid to confront differences, willing to risk the discomfort of being challenged by concepts of the Divine that lie outside what we have known.
 
Author Carl McColman (anamchara.com) describes the ministry of the anamchara (the soul friend) as something that “belongs” to no single religious tradition or belief. “Rather,” he writes, “it represents the deep hospitality and compassion characterized by Celtic spirituality at its best. This is a hospitality and compassion that breaks down barriers.” In McColman’s interview with John O’Donahue, the author of Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, O’Donahue tells McColman: “The Celtic imagination represents a vision of the divine where no one or nothing is excluded and where there is a depth of imagination to allow what is uniquely individual in you, the thing that is the signature of your utmost uniqueness, to somehow coalesce without losing itself with the greater flow of spirit and nature in the world. The Celtic imagination offers the world the seeds of a new understanding of what friendship is . . . and brings us in to that kind of embrace where there is real friendship, where otherness is not reduced but embraced as the greatest gift that anyone can give you.”
 
I was raised in a religious tradition that believed “correct doctrine” was an essential part of the spiritual life. Defining exactly what we believed was necessary—and by doing so, we drew solid, dark lines between what we believed and what everyone else did. We were right. They were wrong. We were “saved.” Tragically, they were “lost.” Looking at the world from this perspective, the word “inclusive” meant a willingness to accept anything, willy-nilly, to espouse a weak, watery faith that meant everything and nothing.
 
How does my adult faith defend itself against the accusation of my background? Letting go of our earliest thought patterns is a constant challenge; they are like shadowy watermarks on today’s thinking. They subtly shape us—or we react against them in anger and rebellion, distorting our relationship with the Divine even as we try to break free.
 
So as I work to make the spirit of anamchara real through our books, I am challenged to look backward at my own faith tradition—and stretch out arms open in welcome, unafraid to embrace and learn even from that which I’ve discarded. The “signature of my utmost uniqueness” is found in my connection to God; within that security, I can reach both backward and forward in friendship, knowing that in “otherness” is (as Donahue said) “the greatest gift anyone can give you.”
 
If I take inclusiveness seriously, there’s no room for arrogance or smugness.