On Friendship

What a journey through varied thoughts of love and relationship this sermon's preparation has been. I've traveled through thoughts of friendships short and long, young and overdrawn, mistaken, wished, lost missed. At times I've been a great friend and times I've fallen short of the mark. There were times when friends have been less than I expected and times when friendships were more than I could have imagined.

What is true about all the friendships we invite in our lives is that something within us is touched and challenged. A new way of being presents an opportunity for understanding. We find we are not alone and yet we help fill the world with our difference.

Thomas Moore writes in his book Soul Mates that "each friend is indeed a world .... We are all made up of many worlds and each friendship brings one or more of those worlds to life."

The definition of a friend spans the spectrum of experience, from a financial contributor to a soul mate. The word, "friend", comes from an Anglo-Saxon root meaning "to love." It is, indeed, through our friendships that we learn most about depth and breadth of love: love of self and love of other. Friendship, more than romantic or even parental love, is the relational bread of life, it is what feeds the soul and strengthens the heart for the days journey. All relationships are deeply enhanced if the element of friendship abides.

"If the body is in pain," Thomas Moore points out, "one of the first things to look for is infection; if the soul is in pain, we might look for lack of friendship."

This sermon was the challenge of last spring's auction winner. It's a topic that has great significance in each of our lives, for when we consider our friendships, we consider the health of our world.

"Imagine how radically our social structures would change if we made friendship our highest priority", muses Thomas Moore. The qualities of friendship considered in this hour are the qualities of friendships that help heal our worlds, friendships that nurture our growth, friendships that strengthen the strands of our interdependent web.

You come to your friend with your hunger, writes the mystic poet Kahlil Gibran, and seek him for your peace .... In this kind of friendship there must be mutual regard, unconditional longing to understand and be understood, to see and be seen. A colleague described friendship to me as "being ever loyal," riding the waves of change and confusion, giving room for growth and learning, facing mistakes with honesty. The hunger is the longing for meaning. It is in our relating that a sense of self can be known. When a friend upholds our being with mutual regard, then peace abides.

"When someone deeply listens to you," writes John Fox, "your bare feet are on the earth and a beloved land that seemed distant is now at home within you."

I heard a phrase recently that I carry with me to ponder. Relationships are for learning, not for life. Now at first glance this may seem like a prescription for shallow flashy relationships that end when the initial thrill is gone, but that is not its intention. If we stop learning, we become lifeless. If we stop nurturing growth in our relationships, if we are not open to new information and vision, then the relationship has lost its potential for learning and becomes, instead a burden and then a block toward health.

"Sometimes a friendship turns," John O'Donohue writes in his book Anam Cara, "and the partners fix on each other at their points of negativity. When you meet only at the point of poverty between you, it is as if you give birth to a ghost who would devour every shred of your affection. Your essence is rifled. You become helpless and repetitive with each other ... the blade of nothingness cuts deeply ... (sometimes we become) addicted to hurt as a confirmation of identity."

In a friendship that is open to learning, one has no claim on the other. Each celebrates and encourages authentic response. This kind of friendship naturally last for life, not because it is supposed to, but because it is endless in its response to life. With the surety of intention, a friendship even lasts beyond a life, for in death a person dies, but not necessarily the relationship.

A group of fine women have begun a tradition of meeting in Havre de Grace to formally celebrate each other around the anniversary of the death of one of their friends. These women, knowing the spirit that their gathering and their love bring, dressed to the hilt this year and brought flowers and poems to share during the evening. "A good meal was eaten," writes one friend, "and then we drove together down to the boardwalk by the lighthouse. As we walked toward the lighthouse, carrying our flowers and laughing and talking, a young girl who was walking just a bit ahead of her parents and younger sister suddenly turned (and said something to her sister who let her take her flower. The girl) ran to us and with a big smile handed it to us. (Then she rejoined her family.) She never said a word .... It seemed like the child knew what we were doing and was drawn to join in."

It seems clear that the girl did sense that something special was happening, something welcoming and full of grace, something to which one offers a gift of self, something that transcends the boundary of stranger ... the power of friendship.

"For that which you love most in her may be clearer in her absence," Gibran affirms, "as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain."

When we are free from the constraints of pretense, expectation, or possessiveness, we have a friendship that can bring out our stunning selves.

John O'Donohue reminds us that "A friend is a loved one who awakens your life in order to free the wild possibilities within you."

When we are grounded in self and secure in our companionship, we can be open to surprise. When we know that however we field our days our friends will stay with us, we are free to respond without defensiveness or judgement. When that way of relating is available to us, more often than not, we're brilliant.

Lunt and Fontanne were a famous husband-wife acting team some decades ago. It is said that after the couple had performed a stage play for some time, Lunt asked the stage manager to make the phone ring when Fontanne was near it in a scene. When the phone rang in the midst of a performance, Fontanne picked up the receiver, listened for a moment and said to Lunt who was across the stage, "It's for you" ....

I've found that when I am surprised into a new perspective by a long-standing friend, my world is expanded, and my need to have life's definition persuaded into joy. This moment is often accompanied with laughter—the cleansing kind, the belly laugh that clears those energy blocks in an instant and gives one hope for what may come in the next moment.

"And in the sweetness of friendship, " Gibran muses, "let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."

It is friendship that allows time its course without affecting the connection. Friendships need to be nurtured, but they also need to be trusted in order to last through the changes and turbulence that comes with life.

There are friends whom we've been lucky enough to connect with at an open-hearted time in our life. Or friends who shared a life transforming experience with us. These are the friends that pick up conversations years after they were begun as if no time had passed at all. These are the friends that agree with a rhythm of relating that soothes the soul and reminds us of a piece of home, that calmness of heart that welcomes happiness.

This society of the quick fix and consumerism emphasizes romantic love, seduction, the intensity of drama and the conquering our needs. But the first rush of love is merely the presenting factor of a certain kind of love and perhaps opportunity, but by no means does it represent all the work of a love that deepens, and widens and heals and transforms.

Romance is a wonderful aspect of the spirit of our lives together. It can transcend indifference and inspire chivalry. It encourages discovery. But it is not all that there is in finding life's worth. We are lucky when we blend our lives with passion and fury, but we are even luckier if we forge a friendship in the mix.

Ralph Waldo Emerson surmised that "A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature."

A colleague told me of a worship service that he had put together of four people who were asked to answer the question: "what is most important in your life?" A young adult, a thirty-something, a middle-ager and a third-ager gave their answers. The man in is 80's who had lived a full and prosperous life said without hesitation that his wife and companion of 60 years was the most important part of his life. At the end of the day, the one who had companioned him through life was the treasure of his life.

Let us nurture our friendships. Let us believe we are worthy of good friends. And let us honor the power of life within us to strengthen hope and love in the world. So may it be. Amen.