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Friends are friends foreverSaturday, December 10, 2016
Sirach 48:11 He wrote a book, On Spiritual Friendship, which might be centuries old but is on many 21st century reading lists. After a prologue he begins the book with, "Here we are then, you and I, and I hope a third, Christ, is in our midst." Aelred delights in the relationship between himself and another, mediated and blessed by the presence of God. Another man who knew something about friendship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote in his masterpiece Life Together, "Human love is directed to the other person for his own sake, spiritual love loves him for Christ's sake ... Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality. Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a psychic (human) reality." We don't do this alone. Without the grounding that comes as I receive God's love for me, I run a high risk of unconsciously seeking what Bonhoeffer calls "a complete fusion of I and Thou ... but spiritual love knows that it has no immediate access to other persons." No wonder so many of our relationships seem shallow and impermanent. No wonder so many of us end up divorced and/or alone. In America, at least, we are not good at grounding ourselves in God's love. We don't need it when we are comfortable and well-fed. We have most everything at our fingertips. But that does not extend to the love of others, or to loving others. How that happens seems beyond us, mysterious to us, until we find our way to each other through the mediation of Christ. "And I hope, a third is in our midst." In my going in and my coming out, Lord, in my rising and my resting and my sleep, let me be held close and warm in your friendship. Bring us together as men and women because we know our kinship as children of God. Because you are our friend, and we sleep first with you in safety. |
In the twelfth century, a charismatic courtier-become-monk helped establish several monasteries in northern England and Scotland. But this man, Aelred of Rievaulx, was most famous simply for how he was a friend.