I think that one thing many of us often struggle to get right is the idea of friendship. It really is a nebulous concept with so many meanings and dimensions from friends on Facebook to friends with benefits. There are friends who are really acquaintances and friends who exist at your convenience, or you exist at their convenience. There are true friends who will always be there when you're in a crisis, but otherwise seem to disappear from off the face of the earth and there are those you can never quite get free from and you both feel like hostages to each other. You still love each other but perhaps one of you ought to leave the country for a few months?
Friendship and the needs of friendship also change throughout our lives. As children we have our best friend forever, as adolescents our particular gang or clique that becomes our tribe, or our nation in miniature, as young adults we fumble from one relationship to another, and the many who end up married or partnered acquire other couples as friends who unceremoniously vanish once divorce or separation has changed the ph. As we get older we still need people in our lives, but not as often and not as suffocatingly close as when we were teenagers. I am thinking here of older adults like me: people who are single, who are not necessarily seeking to be partnered again, and simply want good, honest, reliable people in their lives who will respect them and know when to leave them alone...and when not to leave them alone. The courtesy, of course has to be mutual. I had this conversation recently with someone I work with. I mentioned that all my friends and I seem to have this curious balance of fondness and respect for each other. This knowing when and when not to leave each other alone, and how much I like this.
It has taken a lot of time and effort and patience and humility to find and establish these new friendships. I am grateful for all of you and I hope you each take this blogpost as a love letter of gratitude that you are all in my life, as we continue to grow together and to learn from one another. You are many different people to me, all ages, you come from a diversity of backgrounds but we all seem held together by this mutual goodwill and this desire to grow and to inspire one another to grow along our journey in life and for this reason I thank each one of you for being there.
I am also, of course, always curious about what our next steps are going to be, and of where our journeys are going to take us. I do know that we are all on this journey together and that in time we will reach our goal, whatever and wherever it is. I think this is likely to happen in our next life, when we are living openly and unashamed in the presence of God and we will truly know and be known to one another, face to face.
In the meantime there is this matter of being a friend, of staying open to others, of being there for the stranger, not with the expectation of friendship but for expressing the very courtesy of our shared humanity. I am thinking of some very brief but enjoyable encounters today with strangers along the way. While taking one of my insanely long hikes through the snow today I stopped to chat with a fellow who was wiping the snow from his car. He said he is from the prairies, and like me, he likes to laugh and poke fun at all the local sissies in Vancouver who faint and whinge and whimper and stay home locked up safe because of a little bit of snow. On my way back from the coffee shop I chatted a bit with an Asian youth who smiled hugely and said how much he loves the snow. Later at the bus stop I chatted with a First Nations woman in her fifties or so. Like me she accepts the snow as a mixed blessing. We'll be glad to see it go, but in the meantime, why not embrace it and enjoy it because, after all, it is beautiful, isn't it? I have to say that each encounter felt warm, mutual and well received and that these are people I would gladly see again if God so wills it.
So, then, it isn't just a matter of collecting friends as though they are butterflies that have to be killed then stuck to a page in a book, but remaining and living in an active state of friendship towards others. And also to celebrate those who stick around to share with me the blessing of friendship. It is also a matter of drawing the circle wide, wider, and wider still, because really, we all belong, don't we? Shouldn't we?
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