By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
November 13,, 2011
Reading
Let Us Give Thanks
Let us give thanks,
For generous friends...with hearts...and smiles as bright as their
blossoms;
For feisty friends as tart as apples;
For continuous friends, who, like scallions and cucumbers, keep
reminding us that we've had them;
For crotchety friends, as sour as rhubarb and as indestructible;
For handsome friends, who are as gorgeous as eggplants and as
elegant as a row of corn, and the others, as plain as potatoes and
as good for you;
For funny friends, who are as silly as Brussels sprouts and as
amusing as Jerusalem artichokes, and serious friends, as complex as
cauliflowers and as intricate as onions.
For friends as unpretentious as cabbages, as subtle as summer
squash, as persistent as parsley, as delightful as dill, as endless
as zucchini, and who, like parsnips, can be counted on to see you
throughout the winter;
For old friends, nodding like sunflowers in the evening-time and
young friends coming on as fast as radishes;
For loving friends, who wind around us like tendrils and hold us,
despite our blights, wilts, and witherings;
And, finally, for those friends now gone, like gardens past that
have been harvested, and who fed us in their times that we might
have life thereafter;
For all these we give thanks.
Max Coots
Sermon
My topic this morning is friendship.
Now this may seem a bland subject. Friendship doesn't have the grit
of the great themes like love, death, truth, salvation, sacrifice,
justice. Friendship doesn't inspire a lot of music or drama and
there are some novels that celebrate friendship, they aren't the big
ones. It's not controversial either. I mean, who's against
friendship?
Yet, friendship can be a matter of life and death. Literally, life
and death.
A survey last year of 148 studies on the relationship between health
and social relationships found a 50% higher rate of death among
those without friends, compared with those who had a strong social
network. For purposes of comparison, the only other lifestyle factor
that had such a significant adverse effect was smoking. The rate of
death of smokers and of those without friends was roughly the same.
Other risk factors such as obesity, high cholesterol, alcohol abuse,
and high blood pressure, were not as dangerous to one’s health as
lack of friendships. Another such study concluded that men in their
fifties who would seem to be at high risk because of very low social
and economic status, but who have a lot of friends, live far longer
than men with high status but few friends.
That is to say: our lives may depend on our friendships.
When we are young, friendships come easier. For children,
friendships just seem to happen—although I may be romanticizing the
ease of this process from the perspective of an adult. I remember
when our youngest daughter was a preschooler, attending a one-week
summer camp. The first afternoon she came home and said, “I didn’t
make a friend today.” And then the next afternoon, “I didn’t make a
friend yet.” This continued the whole week. But when she went to
kindergarten the following fall, she came home on the second
afternoon and announced, “I almost made a friend today.” And then
the following afternoon, “Today I made a friend.” I don’t know how
she determined when another child was or was not a friend, but it
seemed to her to be quite clear.
When we are teenagers, friendship may involve great turbulence—who
is whose friend and who isn't and who did what to whom, etc. There
develops an intensity of friendship during those years that we
rarely approach again. I remember walking to high school every
morning with a friend—about a half hour's walk—and the conversations
that took place then. And the walk home every afternoon with another
friend. I also recall that those walks—and those
conversations—ceased when I got a car and started to drive to and
from school. I drove those same friends to and from school, but the
conversations changed.
Friendships are more difficult to start and maintain for adults. We
get involved in other things. We move to new parts of the country,
we get jobs, we are married, we have children, we become terribly
terribly busy. The time we used to devote to friendship just isn't
there anymore. And then we notice one day that we so rarely take
time to just talk with a friend. We miss the easy sharing and
laughter that comes with friendship. Or we face a dilemma and would
really like someone with whom we could talk—not a professional and
not a spouse but a friend—but no one comes to mind.
Then we may realize that the friendships that were so important to
us earlier in life aren't as available anymore. The world becomes
little harder and colder than it was.
● ● ●
I would like to suggest in this sermon that friendship may be
considered a spiritual discipline. It's a method of spiritual
development and growth just as meditation or keeping a journal or
painting or participating in religious ritual. Friendship requires
similar disciplines and offers similar rewards.
There is, first of all, practice. Religious disciplines take
practice. You do them regularly, even when you don't feel like it,
even when at a given moment it doesn’t seem to be working.
Meditation involves repetition. Writing in a journal needs to be
part of a routine or it loses its value. Religious ritual builds in
meaning as you repeat the patterns over time. Those who meet in a
support group can tell you that as you stay with it, the experience
deepens in surprising ways, even though at some points you might
wonder why you’re even there.
Practicing a religious discipline also is a matter of gaining skill.
I have been meditating off and on for some forty years and over time
its benefits deepen. And as a writer I know that the single most
important factor in writing is writing: doing it regularly over and
over again. Those who use painting or dance as religious discipline
speak of how they have to get good enough at the craft of these
practices to be able to respond to the guidance of the spirit. In
developing a spiritual discipline, we are learning something that is
not normally called upon in everyday life. It takes time to gain the
skills involved.
So too friendship. In our busy and crowded lives, friendship rarely
develops on a purely spontaneous basis. It takes planning and
practice. It often requires a routine—a regular time of meeting—for
the friendship to develop. I know of people who schedule time for
friendship, such as, my father for many years met every Saturday
morning with a friend for breakfast; it was a regular routine. I
know of others who schedule walks with friends or groups that meet
weekly or monthly. We have several of those groups here at Davies.
The key is that the time be regularly scheduled. Without that
discipline, we drift away from each other.
Life in our society is not set up to nourish the spirit. It rarely
happens naturally. So we have to do something intentional to create
space in our lives for spiritual growth to occur. It takes practice,
organization, intentionality to make room for the spirit to enter.
● ● ●
Regular practice, then, is a first step. A second is letting go,
surrendering to what may occur. It is a delicate balance.
Maintaining enough discipline to stick with your practice but also
knowing when to release your grip and let yourself be led.
People who approach an art or craft as a spiritual discipline speak
of having to come to their activity regularly. On some occasions,
nothing happens. You do your work, and that's all it is: work. But
then every once in a while, something magic occurs. The painting
begins to speak or the words come together in new ways or the music
becomes clear and intense. Then, it's time to let the spirit lead.
Friendship follows a similar pattern. A certain discipline is
required to make sure that we get together on a regular basis. And
on some of those occasions, nothing much may happen. But then at
other times, something clicks. Something else seems to take over and
the relationship assumes a life of its own.
There is an element of surprise in friendship. It's hard to know in
advance which relationships will develop and which won't. One person
observed that we don't choose friends, we recognize them. Or as
another put it, “We can't help who we like.” You may have had the
experience of someone saying, “I know a person you would just adore.
You are so much alike.” So a meeting is arranged, and a few polite
words are exchanged, but nothing much happens. You may not even like
that person who is so much like you.
But then you meet someone else quite different from you—someone with
whom you may disagree on all kinds of things, someone whose life is
quite different from yours—yet here a friendship develops. You just
enjoy the other's company.
That’s one way in which friendship is different from, say, marriage.
In marriage there is a constant need for bringing together two
lives. You deal with such issues as religion, politics, finances,
tastes in decorating, child-rearing technique. Somehow you have to
make those elements fit in your relationship.
In friendship you don't have to do that. You don’t have to match all
those elements of your life. So you can have friends who are quite
different from you. For example, as a fairly careful spender, it has
been fun to have some non-frugal friends—to experience the thrill of
spending vicariously. And as a congenitally responsible person, I've
loved having some irresponsible friends, but I certainly couldn't
live with them every day.
In friendship, the values don't have to match or the lifestyle or
the politics or the religion. All that's necessary is that you enjoy
each other's company.
● ● ●
Another similarity between friendship and spiritual discipline is
that in meditation or ritual or journaling or any spiritual
practice, we may sometimes experience a state of consciousness in
which we are no longer striving, doing, producing, achieving. We
come to a point in which we are simply being. Right here, right now
is enough. Life centers in the moment.
So too with friendship. Friendship has been described as,
“pointless, yet significant.” That's a nice way of putting it.
Friendship is pointless in that it's not a means to a further end.
Friendship is not an activity we engage in to advance some larger
plan or to move us toward some goal. So friendship and networking,
for example, are different. Jane Austen observed, “Business may
bring money, but friendship hardly ever does.”
Now certainly there are benefits from friendship, not the least of
which—as I’ve already noted—is that people with close friends live
longer. But that's not why you develop friendships.
You may take up running in the hope that you'll be healthier and
live longer. You may eat more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains so
that you'll feel better and lower your cholesterol and blood
pressure. But having friends is an end in itself. You don't
cultivate a friendship in order to live longer. You have a friend in
order to have a friend.
Friendship, therefore, is a form of play—as is spirituality. Play
also is pointless: an activity undertaken because it feels good and
the fact that it may also be good for you is beside the point. A
child racing around on a playground isn't doing it for the exercise;
he or she is doing it because it feels good. You meet a friend for
breakfast or coffee or a walk. You talk about what's going on in
each other's lives. You relax and unwind. The purpose is not to
solve problems or make business contacts or set goals and
directions: the purpose is to be together and enjoy each other's
company.
The purpose of friendship is friendship itself. The best moments of
a friendship are those times spent doing nothing in particular,
talking about this or that, laughing, engaging in no productive
activity. Not doing, being.
Pointless, yet significant.
● ● ●
What gets in the way of our forming friendships? Why do adults often
find it more difficult to make and keep friends?
The writer and theologian, Martin Marty, offers three reasons why
friendships don't develop as easily when we become adults. It
strikes me that these barriers to friendship are similar to those
that keep us from deepening our spirituality.
The first: egotism.
Very simply, we get too wrapped up in ourselves and our own lives to
be fully open to other people. The great “I” becomes all-important
and there isn't room for anyone else. I expect you've had the
experience of talking with someone who keeps steering the
conversation back to himself or herself and that person's ideas and
experiences and thoughts and opinions and so forth and so on. It's
hard to be a friend with a person if there's no room for you in the
relationship.
Friendship is a give-and-take proposition. As is spirituality. In
order to make progress in either, we must be able to let go of
ourselves. We must be able to open ourselves to the person in front
of us. We must be able to open ourselves to the force of life and
whatever it may be trying to tell us.
To name a second reason why adults find it difficult to sustain
friendships, Marty calls upon an odd word, “crispation,” which he
insists is a real word (though the spell check doesn’t buy it.)
He explains, “A leaf is crispated when it shrivels and curls. Once
you could have seen light through its green translucency. Now it has
become opaque. The snail also is crisped and curled inside its
shell. So is the person who is turned in on her own schedule and so
is the fanatic. Such people are incapable of being friends.”
If we become brittle, if we can no longer bend, then it's difficult
to engage in the give and take of friendship. As it is also
difficult to respond to the movement of the spirit through our
lives.
The third reason: encumbrance. We are weighed down by the things we
take on, by our responsibilities, by our projects.
Studs Turkel, in his book called Working, recorded interviews with
people talking about their work and their lives. He recognized his
own encumbrance after interviewing a fireman from Brooklyn.
“On occasions, overly committed, pressed by circumstances of my own
thoughtless making, I found myself neglecting the amenities and
graces that offer mutual pleasure to visitor and host. It was the
Brooklyn fireman who astonished me into shame. After what I had felt
was an overwhelming experience—meeting him—he invited me to stay for
supper. (He said,) ‘We'll pick up some spaghetti at the Italian
joint on the corner.’
“I had already unplugged my tape recorder. ‘Oh no,’ I remember the
manner in which I mumbled, ‘I'm supposed to see this hotel clerk on
the other side of town.’
“He said, ‘You runnin' off just like that? Here we been talkin.' All
afternoon. It won't sound nice. This guy, Studs, comes to the house,
gets my life on tape, and says, ‘I gotta go...’
“It was a memorable supper. And yet, looking back, how could I have
been so insensitive?”
To be a friend sometimes we have to put aside those things we have
to do and have spaghetti with our friend.
Hence reasons why adults may be less likely than younger people to
have close friends: egotism, crispation, and encumbrance. These also
are reasons why adults may stop growing spiritually: egotism,
crispation, and encumbrance.
● ● ●
What else can I say about friendship?
Well, friendship is subversive. Friendship subverts creeds,
doctrines, political systems, fervent nationalism, extreme causes,
fanatic religions, and separatism of all kinds. For these reduce
people to pawns in a larger game. They dehumanize individuals.
If you are preparing for war, the first thing you do is make it more
difficult for your people to meet with and get to know and like
those who would be your enemies. It’s much harder to demonize people
you already know.
If you are a dictator trying to control your people, you will want
to break up small circles of friends. You sow distrust, you make it
more difficult to meet and compare stories and develop alternative
explanations for events. You close the bars and the coffee houses.
Into the vacuum created when friendships are restricted, you insert
your own doctrines.
Friendship subverts these ambitions because our friends remind us of
our common link of humanity. They also keep us from taking ourselves
too seriously.
My best friend in college was a convinced Marxist who hung around
with other convinced Marxists. At times, his eyes glowed with
altogether too much revolutionary fervor. It was my job then, as a
friend, to laugh at him. To say, “Come off it. You're getting
carried away.”
And as I took to hanging around with Unitarian Universalists, it
became his job as a friend to needle me. He said, “You liberals are
so complacent. You just sit around and grove on each other. Come on,
you've got to stand for something.”
He was right, and I was right. We kept each other from getting
swallowed by the short-sightedness of our respective visions.
Friends do that. They keep us on a human level. They remind us when
our schemes and ambitions and plots grow more important than they
ought to be. Make no mistake about it: friendship is subversive.
● ● ●
I remember occasions of friendship.
There was my irresponsible friend in college who would appear at my
room at midnight—just when responsible me was preparing for bed—and
he would convince me to go out for pizza. We would always go to the
same pizza place and always sit in a booth and always order the same
thing: a mushroom and sausage pizza, two cokes. Then, having
performed the ritual correctly, we would open up and talk about
things we could not address at other times.
With another friend, the ritual was coffee and donuts. To have
coffee and donuts meant that this was a time set apart—a time for
real talk about real things—sacred time.
This friend claimed that coffee and donuts constitute a complete
balanced diet. And while his theory may not be nutritionally sound,
it is right, spiritually. Coffee and donuts was our communion: the
rite through which we confessed and were assured of forgiveness.
From which we gained insight and strength to go back into the world
and confront it once again.
In the Christian Bible, Jesus is asked to describe the Kingdom of
God in terms that mortal beings can understand. The image he often
uses is of a group of friends, gathered around a table, sharing food
and drink, swapping stories and ideas and opinions, laughing often.
This, he said, is what the Kingdom of God is like: friends gathered
around a table, being not doing, offering the gift of themselves.
Such is the spiritual discipline of friendship: pizza at midnight,
coffee and donuts at any hour, a gathering of people for food and
drink and laughter.
A time when the world may pause and our souls mingle.
Let us sing together Hymn #1021 in the Teal Hymnal, “Lean on Me.”
● ● ●
|
