Tag Archives: Faith

What is a good friend?

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Yep, I know-who?

Bear with me.

Ten years ago we discovered that our adopted son had molested some of his siblings and their friends.

I went to my friend and asked him what I should do and he said,

The truth will set you free.

So I told people the truth

Church

Work

Neighbor

Community

Family

Truth

And most people stopped being our friends.

So not who, what

A good friend never leaves, never forsakes, never hides your sin, but doesn’t abandon.

Jesus is a good friend.

What is Love

What is justice

There were times we all faced this extreme solitude of the truth. People who had been out friends could not risk the chance that we were contagious.

But Jesus was always there, the sojourning older son, back from afar, standing on the other side of the street, in sight of the house, I-am-here-darling present with us

never alone because

What a friend we have in Jesus

The Good Friend

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Recently I have started “meditating” on the good friend. I put meditation in quotes because it can seem monastic and old fashioned, could just say thinking about.

But I say meditation because the particular focus for me is the life-long friendship God calls us to pursue.

God calls us to pursue.

What is a good friend?

Who qualifies as a good friend?

How does one be a good friend?

What do good friends do together?

How much time does good friendship require?

Is there a schlepping requirement?

All these things are on the big stone table of this miraculous friendship God has called me to through the doorway of Jesus.

Very Christiany, I know.

But then I also know I could not draw close to the Holy Divine if I did not have

A friend like Jesus.

Eurydice

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She lames her ankle on the descent, finds her ever-less-corporal-self still bound by grief and pain as the light cotton shift falls to her feet

You must shower, girl, leave all the light behind

And enter into this entirely different kind of

Love story

Walk ahead, don’t look back

Never let him know how much it costs to stay

Inside the dark box of the bet he lost

For both of you

I want

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I want rudimentary shelving in the wild backyard for the Walmart canoes

I want an art table

And an extra large button-down shirt with flecks of paint already on it

I want a shelter for the sun and shelter for the darkness

I want the trees to grow up around us, ramparts

And the tiny praying mantis to have a disproportionate number of siblings

Rain, so the river can rise above the exposed and naked roots of the

Already. Dying.

Uriah

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He has found a little stream, dips his feet into the water away from all the others. When I ask him about all he has lost, he shrugs as if to say

Lost wife

Lost country

Lost king

Lost friends

But he has new friends now, even among the children and grandchildren and great grandchildren of his erstwhile wife.

He recites these my-life-for-yours words as if the man who wrote them had written them for him…

….He that is first in his own cause seemeth just; but his neighbour cometh and searcheth him. [18] The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty. [19] A brother offended is harder to be won than a strong city: and their contentions are like the bars of a castle. [20] A man’s belly shall be satisfied with the fruit of his mouth; and with the increase of his lips shall he be filled. [21] Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. [22] Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing , and obtaineth favour of the Lord . [23] The poor useth intreaties; but the rich answereth roughly. 24] A man that hath friends must shew himself friendly:

…there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.

Let us wait here, darling

Until he comes.

Close

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Days before the Passover lamb, John the Baptist mends her long robe, pours oil over wounds with words which make sense only to the dead, faith the fire we warm our hands by,

Let me in, let me in says the moon and the wind, let me in to the stillness of everlasting, as even now the children begin to

Lay down their outer garments, their palm branches, as we all sing, hosanna, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.

We are close now, so close .

Eulogizing Joe

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Methuselah lived 969 years, which means that at just over 100, my grandfather was a spring chicken, as lifespans go. That notwithstanding he got a lot done. Married, participated in at least three wars, fathered children, buried some. Lost a wife, found another, called me his oldest unmarried granddaughter for as long as it applied.

I loved him in all his iterations, in all his familiar imperfections, but I know Someone who loves him more.

The One who is the Road

The All and Only

Road Home.

Psalm 116