Marvin Browning Obituary

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the facinating ideas here is the ides of soul-friend; the old Gaelic word for this is Anam Cara.Anam is the Gaelic word for soul, and Cara is the word for friend. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an Anam Cara, you were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the "friend of your soul". In his Conferences, John Cassian says this bond between friend is indissoluble: "This I say, is broken by no chances, what no interval of time or space can sever or destroy, and what even death itself cannot part". Marvin is the true Anam Cara.

The eternal is not elsewhere; iit is not distant. There is nothing near as the eternal. This is captured in a lovely Celtic phrase: "Ta tir na n-og ar chul an ti-tir alainn trina cheile"--that is, "The land of eternal youth is beyound the house, a beautiful land fluent within itself". The eternal world and the mortal world are not paralell, rather they are fused. The beautiful Galic phrase fighte fuaighte, "woven into and through each other," captures this. That is why our loved ones are not far away. " Bad bridges go away" he would tell me whenever I was in distress.



Go gcoinne Di thu my Anam Cara. Your soul friend,

Wild Willie

I went to Burnham School MANY, MANY years ago with Candi, and I just wanted to offer my condolences to the entire Browning Family.