Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Buddhist
JUST FRIENDS A Meditation on Friendship as Spiritual Practice

JUST FRIENDS A Meditation on Friendship as Spiritual Practice

Last updated on: November 16, 2014 at 1:51 pm by James Ford

JUST FRIENDS A Meditation on Friendship as Spiritual Practice 2014-11-16T13:51:20-08:00 James Ford

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

JUST FRIENDS

A Meditation on Friendship as Spiritual Practice

16 November 2014

James Ishmael Ford

First Unitarian Church
Providence, Rhode Island

Text

One day while walking quietly together, out of the silence the Buddha’s attendant Ananda declared, “Teacher, to have companions and comrades on the great way is so amazing! I have come to realize that friendship is fully half of an authentic spiritual life. They proceeded along quietly for a while more, before out of that silence the Holy One responded. “No, dear one. Without companions and comrades, no one can live into the deep, finding the true harmonies of life, to achieve authentic wisdom. To say it simply, friendship is the whole of the spiritual life.

Upaddha Sutta, freely adapted

By way of preamble, I’ve explored from the pulpit the nature of friendship, of our deep relationships as human beings with one another, from one direction or another, every few years ever since I entered the ministry. I probably should have given fair warning some time ago, but I intend on continuing to do so until I get it right. And so here we go, try number twelve, or thereabouts, to unpack the endless mysteries of friendship.

First, an illustration exploring a little of what friendship is and what friendship isn’t. I’ve told this little anecdote before, but it’s important for lots of reasons. So, please indulge me. It’s now been a bunch of years ago, but I remember it clearly. I received an email from a member of the congregation I was serving in Massachusetts. It was an invitation to become her Facebook friend. While I’d never before that moment given any thought to joining a web based social network, I thought that this invitation was so sweet. I mean how long has it been since you’ve been asked by someone to be their friend?

I followed the link that had been provided and filled out the required form. However as I came to the part that asked if I would like to invite my email address book to be Facebook friends, before I actually had finished reading the question and absorbing its meaning, I had already pushed the yes button. Pretty close to instantly I had nearly four hundred friends. Today, a fistful of years later, I have something north of thirty five hundred Facebook friends. What can I say?

Now, and this is connected, another aspect of my electronic life are the various list serves to which I belong, some official, most not, for the most part these days as special groups on Facebook. Among these are several for Unitarian Universalist ministers. I don’t follow any of them closely. They can be phenomenally boring, when not silly.

Actually I do tell seminarians to join the official email listserv as soon as they are allowed, if for no other reason in following what people post will assure the seminarians that if some of these characters parading their rather unlikely views of reality in front of everyone can be ministers, then there should be little doubt, so can they. And, of course, not everything that is posted is a waste of time. So, I quickly scan the messages to at least see if my name has appeared, hopefully without an epithet attached.

Sometimes we return over and over to a subject on these lists on some mysterious rhythm, probably related to the alignment of the stars. Among these regular subjects are flurries of queries and responses as to whether ministers should respond positively to Facebook “friending” requests. And related to it, should one defriend people when they leave a congregation? The concern is that in seminary they’d all been told there are two opinions about whether a minister can have friends within the congregation they serve. The majority opinion is that one may not. The minority opinion is that it is excruciatingly difficult. I believe I’ve explored this issue before. It is not a silly question. In fact right now it is closer to my heart than it has been in recent years. So, I’ll be returning to this particular point in a bit.

But, first back to Facebook friends and Facebook friendships. These writers, not all brand new ministers, are worried whether becoming Facebook friends would or could compromise their ministries. And whether remaining friends after leaving a congregation would compromise their successor’s ministry? Real questions.

So, back to who might be a friend. A dear friend once gave me a good working definition of friendship. He said a friend is someone who will help you move. Being of a somewhat jaundiced nature he added how a real friend will help you move a body. I suggest as sweet as the Facebook term friend is, no one should assume a Facebook friend will ever help you move, furniture or body. It’s all pretty lightweight stuff. Or, is to all but the most naïve. And so for my minister colleagues worried about friending or defriending on Facebook, I suggest, get a grip. And maybe, just maybe try to get some perspective.

Friendship. Friendship is something in fact, I suspect, more complicated than helping us move whatever. No doubt friendship is a mutable term with casual and more profound meanings. But I suggest today and will explore today the thesis that friendship is in fact a part of that larger whole we call love. Love, the subject I return to more than any other in this pulpit.

Friendship and love are connected, deeply. Without a doubt. The Greeks, as anyone who has studied the New Testament knows has four terms for aspects of what we in English call love. The big ones are eros, romantic or erotic love and agape, what we usually think of as Divine love. Given less attention, but nonetheless in the family of love are storge, affection or familial love, and philia, or friendship.

The Christian apologist C. S. Lewis wrote a delightful if occasionally eccentric study of these titled the Four Loves, which if you’ve not read, I commend to you. One of his theses is that these loves each inform the other. And I am really taken with that. I believe as we look at one kind of love, each of the others are illuminated and illuminate the whole of the dynamic human experience of intimacy. And that’s what its all about, intimacy. Intimacy. I’m confident that is where the Buddha was coming from when he told Ananda that friendship was the whole of the spiritual life. As we explore each aspect of our intimate encounters I believe we’re on the way to meaning and purpose and direction. We are on the way to genuine wisdom.

With that in the back of our hearts, let’s return to that caution we would-be clergy were given in seminary. I think it can hold up many of the difficulties in understanding friendship, having friends, and being a friend. A parish minister has a peculiar set of relationships, which makes it difficult to pal around, to spend a lot of social time with any small set of people. Much of this has to do with how we need to not be identified with a particular set or clique. But really it’s most of all about time.

Frankly, I feel guilty when Jan and I take a weekend away, like we did last week, driving up to Brattleboro together. Over the years whenever I would do this I would feel like I’m stealing time from work that must be done. Its one of the reasons throughout my ministerial life I’ve never taken all the time off I have coming. That difficulty acknowledged what kind of person do I become if I don’t find time for friendship? And what kind of person do I become if I don’t hazard the dangers in trying to be friendly within this community, the place I live, and carve out a little time, and have some friendships?

This week I received a note from one of us describing some health issues the writer is suffering through. In it in passing she mentioned how she saw me as one of her friends. And, she’s right. With all the complications, all the difficulties, all the ways we fail each other when we try to be friends, yes. Yes.

And here’s a point for all of us. We’re almost all of us busy beyond reason. But… What kind of people are any of us going to be, are we, if we don’t hazard the dangers, and carve out some time and try to have and to be a friend? We come here, most of us, because of some pressing spiritual question. We are here in quest of a spiritual life, a life with meaning and purpose.

The Buddha tells us friendship is in fact the whole of the spiritual life. And, you want to know something? The Buddha was right.

It is all bound up together. And at the same time dividing out the four loves helps us get some perspective on the dynamic of it all. So, agape, divine love, or as I see it our individual experience of the whole, can’t be understood without experiencing in some degree each of the other three. Here we find some of how all the loves inform one another. Some examples. Erotic love without a sense of affection inevitably becomes abusive. Familial love that doesn’t extend beyond the boundaries of the house is narrow and tribal. And sadly, so sadly, we know what evils follow narrow, tribal loves.

Any friendship that isn’t informed by all these aspects, all the dynamic variations of affection, misses its real value. Divine love informs erotic love which informs affection which informs friendship which informs all the others. We live in a multi-causal universe, and nowhere is this truth more obviously true than in how we engage and must engage our friendships.

It’s that important. And it’s that complicated. And so perhaps you get why I haven’t yet quite gotten it right. In the spiritual life nowhere do our ideals meet the actual more obviously than in how we relate to each other, in how we make, sustain and are friends.

So, what does this look like in real life? How are we friends? Is it taking time to sign up for the care crew? Is it noticing someone you know here at church hasn’t been around for a while and giving her a call? Perhaps it’s that monthly commitment to the food pantry or preparing meals for Harrington Hall. These days I write much of sermon in the living room. My auntie, who was sitting next to me watching my furious typing, asked what I was writing about. I said friendship and asked if she had a thought? She said sometimes being a friend is knowing when to say no.

Friendship has many faces, is complex. And there are no real lists of how one can do this. Boundaries are part of it. As is abandon. Getting the mix right is hard. And I’ve experienced getting it wrong a lot. But to have a worthwhile life, it is a dance we must engage, even if it means stepping on a toe now and again, or having our own foot trod on. We learn by doing.

But if we do this, it can count for so much.

Now, as our time winds down, I want to return to that thought that haunts me about ministers and continuing friendships when leaving the parish. Our UU minister at All Souls in Washington, DC, Robert Hardies, in one of his sermons wrote how “There’s an old Talmudic story about a rabbi who is on death’s threshold. In Jewish thinking he has become a goses, which is Hebrew for a soul that is trapped between life and death.

“The rabbi is ready to relinquish his hold on life, but he can’t die because his students are kneeling around his bed, praying fervently for him to live. (I can’t tell you how many times I saw this poignant story take place when I worked as a chaplain in an Intensive Care Unit.) Finally, a sensible woman climbs up on the rabbi’s roof; she takes a clay jug, and throws (it) crashing to the ground. The noise disrupts the students just long enough for their master’s soul to slip quickly into heaven.”

Robert then adds the midrash, the commentary. “Because she helped the students let go, the Talmud notes, the woman will have a place in heaven, too.”

I’m particularly caught by that story as I am so aware of my upcoming retirement, and the truths hidden among the sillier aspects of the questions about continuing Facebook friendships when one, no, when I depart this pulpit. There are changes. There are things I need to let go of. As will each of us.

For me, when the time comes, I don’t expect to sit down and delete names from my Facebook account. That analogy with the rabbi isn’t precise, I’m not dying. But, there will be a shift, and relationships will change within the great dance. There will be a new minister here, and I will become, not a goses, but certainly much less in the foreground. Allowing each other to change is part of friendship.

But. And.

No one without friends can get into heaven. Our friendships, no doubt in my mind and heart, are the soul of our spiritual exercises; the purpose of our lives is found within them. Our intimate relationships reveal our lives right now, here, as we really are.

That’s how precious each of our relationships are, nothing less than the divine dance of holding tightly, and letting go.

It is the whole of the spiritual life.

Truly.

The whole of the spiritual life.

Amen.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

November 15, 2014

Little Willie John's Fever

Next Post

November 19, 2014 A Feast for Hilda

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category A Christmas Carol Abolitionist African-American Ahmadiyya Alan Watts Aldous Huxley Allen Ginsberg Amedkar Jayanti American politics American Zen Anaheim Zen Sangha Anglican Annie Besant April Fool Armageddon Art and Religion artificial intellegence Atheist Awakening B R Ambedkar Barlaam & Josaphat Beatnik Between Bhagavad Gita Bible biography birthday bodhisattva Bodhisattva Precepts Book burning Book of Common Prayer Book of Mormon Brahmo Samaj Buddha Buddhism Buddhist Buddhist Lord's Prayer Butterflies Calendars cartoons cat ChatGPT Chicken Tortilla Soup choices Christian atheism Christian mysticism Christian origins Christian Science Christian Zen Christianity Christianity and Buddhism christmas Christmas Truce Christopher Isherwood Church of Later Day Saints Cinco de Mayo circus covenant critical thinking culture D. T. Suzuki Dalit Buddhism Daniel Defoe Desert Fathers and Mothers dharma talk Dogen Donald Trump Dongshan's Five Ranks Dorothy Day dream Duty Easter ecology Edwin Arnold emptiness Empty Moon Zen Network Episcopal Church Eternal Now Ethics evolution existentialism Faith fantasy Fathers Day film film review fire Five Ranks Folk music food Form and emptiness Four Seals Francis of Assisi Francis Xavier Free thinker friendship George MacDonald Gerald Heard Glenn Taylor Webb God Good Friday Gospel of Gospel of Mark Gospel of Thomas grace Graduate Theological Unioin Graduate Theological Union Guanyin H R Blyth Hakuin Ekaku Hanamatsuri Hanukkah Harada Yasutani Zen Heart Sutra Henry David Thoreau Hermann Hesse Hinduism History and Religion history of religion Holy Spirit home Hospitality Icon Ides of March Isaac Newton Islam Islamic mysticism Jack Kerouac James Luther Adams Jiddu Krishnamurti Joan of Arc Johannes Gutenberg John Donne joke Judaism justice karma kensho King James Bible koan Koun Yamada Kyoto School Lewis Carrol Liberal Christianity Liberal Religion Life Plan Community Liminal literature Literature and Religion Liturgy Lord's Prayer Love Mahatma Gandhi Mahayana Martin Luther King Jr Mary Baker Eddy Mary Magdelene Mary Oliver Mayflower Compact Meditation memories memory metaphor money money and religioin Mormons Mother's Day movie review mysticism mythic Neighborhood Unitarian Universalist Church New Thought Nichiren Buddhism Nonduality not knowing Omar Khayyam Pacific School of Religion pagan Palm Sunday Passover peace Pentecost perennialism Phantastes Philip Kapleau philosophy Pilgrimage poetry Poetry and Religion politics Prayer Precepts Printing Press prophecy prophetic spirituality psychology Pure Land Queer religion queering religion Quietism Ram Mohan Roy rebirth recipe Relationships and religion religion religion and history Religious syncretism Resistance Retirement Retreat review Rissho Kosei Kai Ritual Robert Aitken Roshi Robert Ingersoll Rohatsu Romani religion Rosie the Riveter saints samadhi SanboZen Sangha Satyagraha science science and reigion science and religion science fiction seminary sermon Sesshin Sex and Religion Shinran Sikh Sikh tradition silence Social Justice Socially Engaged Buddhism Society and religion Soto Zen soul spiritual community spiritual practice Spirituality Sufism Suicide superstition Taoism Television Teresa of Avila Thanksgiving theological schools Theosophy Thomas Merton Time Transcendentalism Transcendentalist Trinitarian Trinity Uncategorized unitarian Unitarian Christianity Unitarian Universalist Universalism Vajrayana Vedanta Walking war Willa Cather William Ellery Channing wisdom women and religion women in religion World Teacher Writing zazen Zen Zen Center Zen inspired retriement zen meditation Zen Precepts Zen women

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was called by God from a burning bush to lead Israel out of Egypt?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Joseph Joshua Aaron Moses