You're my best friend. What does this declaration conjure up? From what depths of our earliest memories, from what recent episodes of our unfolding stories does this avowal claim us? What song does it sing? What sadness does it touch? What fullness does it hold? By whose name is it called? Friend, companion, comrade, buddy, playmate, crony, confidant, ally, partner, maybe even lover....so generous is our language, so rife is it with options for citing one we deem our friend.
Early friendships walk hand in hand with play, un-self conscious, curious serious play. Friend equals playmate. One of my first playmates was Billy Wiedemeyer. Billy lived just a few houses down North Adams Street in the small Iowa town where I spent my first 17 years. When I ran down to Billy's house, banged on his door, and asked if Billy could come out and play, not even God knew what might happen. We were hopelessly mischievous--a couple of four-year-olds going on two. One summer day not unlike this one we were cavorting in his front yard. When the urge beckoned to run for something as boring as a bathroom, we couldn't be bothered. So we decided that I could make a fountain just as good as Billy's right there at curbside on the main street of our town. Anything he could do, I could do at least as well! Well, don't you know that Mrs. Wiedemeyer, in all her vindictive glory, stepped outside at high tide, and who needs a last judgment when you've seen that glare? Poor Billy was hauled indoors to who knows what and my Mom, strict but not rigidly prudent, probably just pursed her lips and said, "Janice Marie White, you just don't do that in public!"
I simply trust the fates that Billy Wiedemeyer has not converted from his Roman Catholic upbringing to Unitarian Universalism, migrating to the Big Apple, and choosing to try All Souls on this sunny Sunday morning. Or, if you are out there, Billy, I hope you're still laughing, even after your Mom got hold of you.
Friends lift our spirits. As we grow into those spirits, friends connect us with ourselves and the world out there, give cause for laughter, and hear us out through our tears. As Melaney offered the words of Anne Sexton, I thought to myself, "Yes, there is so much abundance in the people I have," the names I could name, each name a face, a voice, an ever flowing river that sometimes clouds what is and really has been there and sometimes lets me see all the way through to the stones catching the sun's passing on the bottom of the riverbed.
"... God is filling me,
though there are times of doubt...
still God is filling me...
and my heart takes it all in...."
Trust, honesty, betrayal, reunion, mourning, exhilaration--all describe moments of our living together as just friends, simply but not so simply, friends. They all play out over the course of our lives, so why should we be surprised when they all play out in episode after episode of Biblical narrative?
In the Book of Exodus, we read of the journey through the wilderness of the people of Israel, led by Moses, guided by God, from slavery to freedom. Even after the wrath of God through Moses is visited upon the people for their fickle ways, their worship of an item as synthetic as a golden calf, they are not deserted. And God, the ultimate Ally, speaks directly with their leader.
"Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp; and he called it the tent of meeting. And every one who sought the Lord would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people rose up, and every man stood at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the door of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. And when all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the door of the tent, all the people would rise up and worship, every man at his tent door. Thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as [one] speaks to their friend." (Exodus 33: 7-11a)
God is portrayed as addressing Moses in the utmost honesty, face to face, as friends speak. To look into the eyes of a friend is to look into your own soul's mirror. When we truly want the attention of a friend, we go to a place apart, a coffee shop perhaps, or a terrace, or a back porch, or even a sparsely populated beach inviting a long walk. We find a site "outside the camp" and speak face to face. Time and space matter.
When I was ordained in this sanctuary last April, my dear friend, Ann Carmer, was present in the liturgy, though not incarnate, for she was off in Morocco as a Peace Corps Volunteer. In Greetings from Our Global Community, she spoke nonetheless through the voice of Adriana O'Toole, a mutual friend. Ann recalled the seemingly mundane, but time precious act of early Sunday coffee at our favorite cafe, a time and place apart to speak face to face. Ann spoke also of that day as a culmination of one of my dreams--to become a Unitarian Universalist minister--and bid me to "keep on dreaming." A good friend does that. She gently nudges you to keep on dreaming. This gentle nudge and dear friend of 20 years is here this morning, at the mid-point in realizing one of her dreams--to serve as a Peace Corps volunteer. Welcome, Ann, and keep on dreaming!
Friends bring out the best of our dreams. Friends empower one another to be true to the divine spark within us and those with whom we share our life journey. "This is my commandment," Jesus said to his disciples, "that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no [one] than this, that a [person] lay down their life for their friends....No longer do I call you servants, for [servants do] not know what [their] master is doing; but I have called you friends...." (John 15:12-15a) I wonder if Jesus was speaking not only of sacrificing your life for a friend as indicative of this supreme love, but of the love filling what happens when we lay forth our lives, open our hearts, to one another.
Martin Buber speaks of opening one's heart through an "I and Thou" connection. Reverence for life includes reverence for the holy in the other with whom we are in connection. Those who are sometimes called Quakers understand this well. They are known formally as the Society of Friends. For many years, the "Friends" referred to one another routinely as Thou. The many acts of justice and compassion emanating from the Society of Friends are rooted in an affirmation of the holy, the "Thou," in each and all of the variable creatures composing humankind.
This is not easy stuff. Rumi, the 13th century Sufi poet, found the wherewithal for his art in the "Thou" of his almost mystical friendships--first with a wandering dervish known as Shams of Tabriz, then, when Shams mysteriously disappeared, with a goldsmith, Saladi Zarkub, and, when he died, with Husam Chelebi, Rumi's scribe and student. Rumi chose his friends carefully, reverently. From the deep well of his own heart, he instructs us in his "Song About a Donkey."
"Meet the Friend on your own," he began.
"Try to dissolve out of selfishness into a voice beyond those limits."
He tells the tale of a wandering sufi who came with his donkey into a community of sufis who were quite poor. The wayfarer left his donkey with his servant and went inside, giving occasion for a group of resident Sufis to sell the donkey and make a great feast. This otherwise poor enclave of sufis then wined and dined, and they brought their guest into the fold of their celebration.
"If you are rich and full-fed, don't laugh
at the impulsiveness of the poor," bids Rumi.
"They were not acting from their souls,
...they were acting out of some necessity."
The feast goes on. They dance and sing, turning into lyrics the fact that the donkey was gone. Caught up in the full spirit of revelry, the guest joined in and "sang more passionately than all the rest" of the absent donkey. But the feast ended, and the guest inquired for his donkey.
"Where's my donkey?" ...."What do you mean?" they asked, incredulous....
"They sold your donkey! That's how we had such a celebration!"
"Why didn't you come and tell me?
"Several times I came near, but you were always singing so loudly, 'The donkey's gone, the donkey's gone,' that I thought you knew. I thought you had a secret insight." "Yes. It was my imitation of their joy that caused this."
Then Rumi, the narrator, continues: "Even the good delight of friends is at firsta reflection in you. Stay with them until it becomes a realization....
Remember there's only one reason to do anything: a meeting with the Friend is the only real payment."
Ah, love and friendship, and justice and clear seeing drive hard bargains when they seek to walk on the same two legs! Just to be friends is one thing. Living out just friendship is an entirely different matter. Our wandering sufi, filtered through the poetry of Rumi, could easily have drowned in his own joy soup, but he surfaces and stays with his newly found friends until his delight is more than a reflection, but a realization, a meeting.
The Episcopal priest and theologian Carter Heyward claims that "Love, like truth and beauty, is concrete." We could just as easily substitute friendship for love in what she tells us. "Friendship....is concrete... [It] is not fundamentally a sweet feeling; not, at heart, a matter of sentiment, attachment, or being 'drawn toward.' [Friendship] is active, effective, a matter of making reciprocal and mutually beneficial relation.... [Friendship] does not just happen....[It] is a choice--not simply, or necessarily, a rational choice, but rather a willingness to be present to others without pretense or guile."
Hmmm....time to start thinking about all those occasions when we say defensively, "Oh, we're just friends." What we may be saying, is that we--whoever the we may be--are not lovers, or, if we are, we don't want it known to whoever might be standing at the door of their tents to check out what's happening. But to imagine that being just friends is a casual connection is to turn friendship into a golden calf. Idol worship debases ourselves as well as those with whom we presume to be in connection.
"....may I be the friend of that which is eternal and abides. ....May I never fail a friend. May I respect myself." We spoke responsively, echoing the words of the third century theologian, Eusebius.
Perhaps when we have failed friends, and we all have, we do so because we neglect to recognize that which is eternal and abides or we part ways with the Thou inside us. Or we simply don't bother to find that time and space apart. Or we don't take seriously our dreams. Or we no longer relish play. Or we get into power play.
Maybe the reason that I as a wife and mother sometimes am challenged being a just friend to my husband and adult daughters is that marriage and parenthood are so rife with opportunities for power play. Friendship happens when we hold fast to the Thou inside ourselves and cheer the unleashing of the Thou in our spouse or partner or children. What if we said to our adult children: "No longer do I call you children...but I call you friends?" What if we said to our spouse or partner: "No longer do I call you husband...or wife...or partner...but I call you friend?" A whole other spectrum of mutuality moves in, wherein we might be present face to face, "without pretense or guile" to one with whom our connection has been built on premises of power gradients.
This lifelong business of being friends--of being just friends is a pilgrimage inward and a pilgrimage communal. Denise Levertov tells us more.
And the secret names of all we meet who lead us deeper into our labyrinth of valleys and mountains, twisting valleys and steeper mountains--their hidden names are always, like Proverb, promises:
Rune, Omen, Fable, Parable, those we meet for only one crucial moment, gaze to gaze, or for years know and don't recognize....
(from her poem, "I learned that her name was Proverb")
How, as a congregation of All Souls stretching beyond the doors of this building, might we be just friends? How might we meet face to face without pretense or guile? How might we proceed on this pilgrimage that is inward and communal, cherishing her or him whom "we meet for only one crucial moment, gaze to gaze," turning our faces towards her or him whom we have known for years and not recognized?
Can we trust our donkey to our fellow pilgrims, revel in what follows, and then remember--really remember--that our very meeting is ample payment? Canta canticum. Carpe diem. Amen. Copyright AllSouls 1999.