Friends, Friends, Friends
I am writing you from my friend’s home in Arizona, where I lived before moving back to my home state of Washington. I am caretaking a friend’s house and two precious dogs as she travels to Ireland with a friend. While I sit in her office blogging, a friend of mine is staying in my home in Spokane as he wanted to take a trip to visit his friends.
Friendship is a currency (and oh so much more than that) which we don’t often think about as such.
Twenty year ago I interviewed a woman close to 100 years old who was a congregant of Dr. Ernest Holmes. She agreed to an interview as long as I would minister to her afterward. Her distress…her friend wouldn’t talk to her. I still to this day think about our conversation. She is near death, her body is failing her, and her focus is her friendship. Her angst was around a relationship that wasn’t functional in the moment. Also around that same time, before the Affordable Care Act was law and when magazines were a big thing, I read an article written by a high profile professional woman who had invested well, was insuranced up, and had lots of cash on hand. Then she got cancer. Within a few years her assets were gone and her insurance wouldn’t cover what was needed. Her friends rallied and came to the rescue. They dialed for dollars. They did fundraisers. They got on the news. It was their love for her that kept her treatments going and kept her alive. She wrote that her best investment wasn’t insurance or savings, but was friendships.
What is friendship? I’d define it as a sharing of The Heart. Meaning, one heart between two people. Meaning, at the depth of your being, you are NOT alone, another is with you. It includes shared interests and fascinations, hobbies, goals, dreams, activities, deep conversations, creativity. All kinds of stuff. Yet at the Center is a shared invisible space we’d call Love. Emotionally intimate love. Non-sexual love between two people.
On this trip I am dog sitting, working, and I am visiting friends. Many lunches, dinners, a drag show, a day trip to a castle, a visioning session, a day trip to Superstition Mountains, meeting up at a UFO gathering (very popular to do in the desert), a farmer’s market, the botanical gardens and walking. As I connect with some friends I saw in July and others I haven’t seen for years we pick up where we left off. Sometimes we don’t remember where that is, and it just works. I’ve learned about my friend’s kids, grandkids, travels, love interests, ran into Mark Victor Hansen with my writing friend Beverly (who is 93 and is in the blog picture this article). Beverly wants everyone to know her age as she is vital and the Life Force pumps through her beautifully. One of my closest friends Nina who died ten years ago at Beverly’s age told me before she died that it is important to have friends across all age brackets. She said to stay young you need to be around young people. To begin and end my trip a friend is drove me to and from the airport. One of my friends says that a ride to the airport is reserved for only the closest of friends. I am rich in friendships.
What if making friends is hard for you to do? What if you never learned or you haven’t healed the false beliefs that lie within you that you aren’t worthy of friendships? Within each of us is a God-sized hole that we try to fill with all kinds of stuff until we realize that no one and no thing can fill it but our Inner Divine Presence. The Ultimate Friendship. We begin with spiritual practice and participating in a spiritual community where spiritual friendships can be created and uncomfortable conversations are welcomed and understood. David Brooks wrote a book How to Know a Person. It is a primer in relationships. I thought it was valuable enough to be our first book study and the notes for hosting a book study on this book can be found at www.spiritualcenterspokane.org/book-club. Here is a quote from the chapter Hard Conversations in Brook’s book:
As soon as somebody starts talking about times when they felt exclded, betrayed, or wronged, stop and listen. When somebody is tlaking to you about pain in their life, even in those cases when you may think their pain is performative or exaggerated, it’s best not to try to yank the conversations back to your frame. Your first job is to stay within the other person’s standpoint to more fully understand how the world looks to them. Your next job is to encourage them to go into more depth about what they have just said. “I want to understand your point of view as much as possible. What is missing here?” Curiosity is the ability to explore something even in stressful and difficult circumstances. (page 115). This book is very instructional and applicable.
As I close this blog I think of some famous friendships we are all familiar with:
Oprah Winfrey and Gayle King
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler
Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart
Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper
Steve Martin and Martin Short
I close with two quotes from Oprah about her relationship with Gayle…
"She is the mother I never had. She is the sister everybody would want. She is the friend that everybody deserves. I don't know a better person."
"We have been in sync, in each other's corner, supportive of one another, looking forward to the best that could happen for each other."
Gotta run. I’ve off to meet a friend,
