The Heritage Work mid-year 2018
Learning the transformative nature of friendship
Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another,
'What! You too?! I thought I was the only one".
C.S. Lewis
Perhaps we all have heard the good news that God loves us.
We might even believe he loves without condition, relentlessly pursuing us into a relationship of acceptance and freedom.
But does God 'like' us — as a friend would?
Would he like being with the real me — as I am — consumed with the baseball playoff race, procrastinating, hiking, enjoying a craft beer, watching quirky movies, inefficiently exploring a lesser-travelled mountain road? To be together with no agenda, being ourselves, just because. No need to feel self-conscious, or a need to put on a better face or spin a story of my day to sound more important than it was?
Would He accept me 'as is', not as I should be — and linger there?
Or as Frederick Buechner says about friendship,
You meet with a clean slate every time, and you meet on equal terms. Anything may come of it, or nothing may. That doesn't matter. Only the meeting matters.
Do I know Him this way? Does God have 'margins' of unproductive time to hang with me? Do I have margin for Him? Margin for cultivating friendships with neighbors? To truly know them and linger? What inhibits communicating acceptance and sense of friendship? What does communicate acceptance and friendship?
After all, God invested in the unique combination of BOTH loving and liking us.
John 15: 13-15 says:
Greater love has no one than this,
that one lay down his life for his friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command
(to love one another--v. 12).
I no longer call you servants,
because a servant does not know his master's business.
Instead, I have called you friends,
for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
I'm learning the importance of friendship-- later in life, and desiring to cultivate this reality in everyday relationships. What part of my life can I 'lay down' to communicate friendship? , Which personal interests and compulsive agenda? What transparency of communication can I learn which creates intimacy? I believe when we do, it can be transformative. God bet his life on it.
Henri Nouwen used the term 'spritual friend' or 'soul friend', who is someone who talks to you and is willing to pray with you about your life, and respond with wisdom and understanding to your questions about how to live spiritually in a world of ambiguity and distraction.
Man strives for glory, honor, fame, that all the world may know his name. He amasses wealth by brain and hand, and becomes a power in the land. But when he nears the end of life, and looks back over the years of strife, he finds that happiness depends on none of these, but love of friends. — unknown
Abraham, my friend. — Isaiah 41:8
A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.
— Proverbs 17:17
The Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. — Exodus 33:11
The people to whom we serve and speak will not recall 99 percent of what we say to them. But they will never forget the kind of persons we are. — Dallas Willard
A true friend is one
who is delighted to see you,
and has no immediate plans for
your improvement.
— unknown
The ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the other nor of the self, the ultimate touchstone is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone. — David Whyte
