Hi There!
So, no doubt about it.
Out here on the street of everyday living,
one of the greatest boons to our spiritual lives is a friend.
Sure enough and happily, there all sorts and types of friends.
There are friendly people at work, in the neighborhood, down at our favorite hardware store,
over at church/synagogue/mosque/temple.
They give a lift to our day and way.
As the years widen, we spend generous portions of time, trust and sharing
with more select and closer friends.
Support, enthusiasm and delight are shared.
This friend will stretch to care about our hurts, celebrate our successes,
lend us a lawn mower, drive us to the airport at five in the morning.
A time or few we are surprised and gifted in life with a friend
in the rarest and fullest way - a Soul Friend.
We may or may not share surface things like musical tastes, tattoos,
political persuasions, religious affiliations, a taste for Lebanon bologna.
What we do share, and where we do meet, is at the core of who we are.
It's a union closer than that of lovers.
Of course, if friend is lover, it's about as good as it gets!!!
Lovers share body, emotion, passion.
Soul Friends share a more naked self.
They bare the mystery they are and merge right there.
They reverence and embrace where each evolves from Infinity
and where each evolves into Infinity.
It's deeper than vast.
A Soul Friend is another self as much as individuality will allow.
Paradoxically, that is at once complete and distinct.
We'll never figure that out with our head, but the heart sure gets it.
Yes, friends are a boon to our spiritual lives whatever the depth and fullness we enjoy.
Let's take time each day this week to sense, to savor
the Soul Shares about friend that follow in our Meditation Markers.
May that contemplation re-sensitize us, open us yet more to the gift of friend.
Thank you for the goodness of your presence in our sharing here.
See you next week.
As always, holding you in
God's Dear Love,
John Frank
MEDITATION MARKERS
- "The language of friendship is not words but meaning."
Henry David Thoreau
- "One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."
Euripides
- " As iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend."
Solomon
- "Friendship is essentially a partnership."
Aristotle
- "Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want
is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down."
Oprah Winfrey
- "Friendship is a sheltering tree."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- "Eros will have naked bodies; friendship naked personalities."
C. S. Lewis
- " Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend."
Plautus
-"Let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit."
Khalil Gibran
- " Friendship needs no words - it is solitude delivered from the anguish of loneliness."
Dag Hammarskjold
- "A friendship like love is warm; a love like friendship, steady."
Thomas Moore
A Man for All Seasons
- " As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you. now remain in my love...
Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this,
that he lay down his life for his friends...I have called you friends,
for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you...
Love each other."
Jesus
John 15: 9-17
- "Better is open rebuke than hidden love.
Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses."
Proverbs 27: 5-6
