I saw the world differently after reading in Chesterton (in The Ethics of Elfland) that fairy tales help us see that reality is more wonderful than we can imagine. This is profound; our real-life situation is better than a fairy tale! This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the reality of true friendship.
Yet immediately we experience a paradox: what is so wonderful is also so difficult to achieve, and even can seem to throw roadblocks in our way. Many people (dare I say most?) find life is too much with us. The relentless challenges and difficulties seem to point to a design flaw. Why is it so difficult?
Such a question can express an existential crisis of the first order. Yet perhaps the question contains in seed its answer. Somehow achieving a good life demands that this question, even this crisis, be faced. The challenge and the crisis is the path, indeed the ascent, to seeing things as they are—in all of their transcendent beauty.
Teaching a course on friendship (and I hope also taking it!) brings these things constantly to mind. The assertions of the wise can sound, as the old saying goes, ‘too good to be true’—or in any case, perhaps too difficult to be achieved. The words of Aelred of Rievaulx in his Spiritual Friendship are an example.
Each finds it a pleasure to disregard himself for the sake of another, to prefer another’s will to one’s own, to meet another’s need rather than one’s own, to oppose and expose oneself to adversity! Meanwhile, how delightful friends find their meetings together, the exchange of mutual interests, the exploration of every question, and the attainment of mutual agreement in everything.
Can this really be done? Such words can be at once powerfully appealing and deeply discouraging. But that these words are so appealing is a strong indication that in the end they are true. The wise simply couldn’t make this up. And so it must be possible. What they suggest rings truer than any fairy tale.
It is no wonder then that a central feature of human life is exemplified in a great image: a parent, grandparent, or other loving mentor, puts a hand on the shoulder of the young, the less experienced, and gently but firmly assures him…
“This can be done! Steady onward! Follow the narrow path. It is the way to life. Indeed, just to be on it is already to come alive. This path has been chalked out with exceeding care. Of course sometimes you won’t understand—only he who has passed through it begins to understand. So expect surprises—they are the doors to new insight. To open the door you need but trust and go on.”
That true friendship is an archetype of what can seem unachievable is no accident. In the end the wise attest that the path of life is the path of friendship itself, human and divine. If, as Aelred asserts, “We call [true] friends only those to whom we have no qualm about entrusting our heart and all its contents,” then it is no surprise that built-in to the path of life is the most intense schooling in trust—a trust beyond what we could have imagined. Of course life demands we grow in trust! … and this ultimately for God as well as for other human persons, precisely because such trust is at the heart of the friendships that surpasses any fairy tale.
There is a lovely kernel in what seems a silly line in a song in a Danny Kay movie our family always enjoys: “What starts as a scary tale, ends as a fairy tale. Life couldn’t possibly better be.” ~ ~ ~
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Trust, indeed, is at the core of friendship. And as we cannot love without first accepting God’s love, we cannot trust another without first surrendering to God in trust. I recently reconnected with a good friend from 44 years ago. As we were talking she said: I hope you don’t mind the details but I trust you. Of course I didn’t. Trust makes such friendship.
Well said, Bob; nice example!
I so very much appreciate Bob’s comment and agree!
How divinely timed this topic is on Friendship which beckons “trust” … as we have just celebrated Divine Mercy Sunday. “No longer slaves, I call you ‘friends.’” ~ Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ as recorded in John’s Gospel. To have this particular Gift of Friendship promised by Jesus Himself is to have that Hand on my shoulder … an invitation to walk on the Narrow Way …
Amen, Lisa! In the offer of friendship is the very heart of the Good News!
Friendship is the brew that is true!
Oh yes, another Court Jester fan!
I just found your Friendship book as I unpacked some boxes today and I have put it aside to re read. I am trying to cultivate friendships this year and am finding it a challenge but it is true – the one whom I trust my heart with, is a true friend. It is fine if that is only a few people.
May God bless your intention this year, Cate. I trust it will bear much fruit!
I have read your book more than once and there is joy in sensing such agreement with what you have written. With that said I wonder though if friendship ought better to be viewed as if it existed on a continuum rather than what may be implied as either/or propositions. On one end of the continuum are those relationships we all have which are pleasant and superficial (and for which the world does go round and round in a better way perhaps); and on the other end, the friendship you describe as true with total trust and openness between two parties. I would posit that the only opportunity for the latter however is in a marriage between a loving husband and wife. It is only there where total trust and desire to always be there for the other person has an opportunity to occur. However, while not achieving what a husband and wife might be able to achieve, there are wonderful, incredibly close friendships that can develop between people of the same sex – and it is important that these be male/male or female/female friendships as it is simply inappropriate for non married people of the opposite sex to forge a closeness that should only happen in marriage. And in this section of the continuum, there are degrees or ranges of such good and wholesome friendships with some being closer than others, but all that can be considered more than casual or utilitarian.
Thank you Bob for this comment. I certainly see the force of your point, and I agree very much with most of what you say. Indeed, Aquinas argued that friendship in marriage can (and thus should be) the greatest natural friendship, since therein is the context to share most in one life together. I see no reason, however, to combine that with an assertion that “the only opportunity for the latter however is in marriage…” This I think misses the fact that same sex friendships can achieve a kind of ‘total’ trust and openness. St. Aelred in his book Spiritual Friendship is writing most of all with monks in mind. In short, yes, marriage is a unique and irrepeatable context; but there are also contexts where two people of the same sex can have the fullest of friendships. Indeed, St. Gregory Nazianzen famously wrote of his friendship with St. Basil: “We seemed to be two bodies with a single spirit… Our single object and ambition was virtue… If it is not too boastful to say, we found in each other a standard and rule for discerning right from wrong.”
Thanks