Friendship

"It is only love that givers us life, and without God's love we would cease to be, and perhaps without our friends' good, natural love and charity, which argues for us always in God's sight without their always knowing it, he would long ago have given us up to our punishment and turned His face away and let us hurtle over the edge of the abyss, where the love of friends still holds us in their spoken or unspoken pray"

Thomas Merton, 1941

I am in one of those moods again I guess, which in a way is a good thing. I find it easier to write when I am in a mood.

Its raining, but thats alright I suppose, they skies needed to rain.

Ancient clerics thought of friendship as the richest type of love. Its unatural these days to think of friendship being the supreme type of love; we usually place romantic and filial love before friendship. But perhaps coming from the point of view of a monk or priest, who has given up marriage and in some cases, contact with the family, friendship would be the highest love. Men especially, in this age, have difficulties with truly having male friends; their is often a space between them. Perhaps this is only me, I have but one true male friendship, discounting my brother. I tend to stick with girls; strangely enough, with emotionally distant girls. It is odd because we usually think of men as being emotionally distant and girls as being more in touch with their emotions; but the people who seem to struggle the most with getting in touch with what they truly want at an emotional level, in my life, seem to be women. Very strange.

This is a long winded way of saying I miss my friends. Out here I have family, but as my sister often points out, thats not the same as friendship. Worse still, I have only the dimmist notion of how to make friends. I am shy when I'm around people I don't know, sometimes when i'm around people I do know.

Let us not forget how valuable and precious friendship can be. The genisis of the church is found in the closest friends of Jesus. His family had an extremely important place in the scheme of things (especially if your a catholic) but it was his friends who where called to carry on his work on earth. Now I am not a open person and do not reveal quickly the inside; some of my close friends now this well. And I completely expecting less then a dozen people to attend my funeral. But I know that that handful are more then I truly deserve at my side; That their love has and shall sustain me through hardships that I would not have been able to stand if not for them.

And they still manage to surprise me, although I should know better. I should have known, for example, that Kathleen would be reading this site.

I thank God for my friends (and don't worry, my family too, but that is for another post) and am secure in the knowledge that they have been put in my path for a reason, and that still, despite the seperation of thousand of kilometers, are still upon the same path as I am. So I leave you with another quote before I leave. Perhaps not as deep as Merton's, but its from one of my favorite movies (you can figure it out yourself).

"I have been, and always will be, your friend"


God bless you all, beloved brothers and sisters, beloved friends.

Making Faith Real

With some Encouragement, I have decided to try and post a little more regularly. Some of the people who have read it seemed quite touched, and this in turn has touch me, and inspired me to write more often.

But I will not lie to you, it is difficult. It is hard to take faith, as in a belief system, and turn it into something concrete and real; at least it is for me. I struggle with making my faith a physical as well as spiritual reality, to make the great leap from faith to action. This is a very catholic way of explaining this problem. But it is important to all christians and all people who have found great love.

Making faith real. This blog is part of how I begin to make my faith real. I am a shy man, I find it hard to deal with people I do not know. This is like an exercise, a way to prepare myself for the day when I might need to speak aloud. But do I need to do more? How much more?

Do I need to feed the poor? Stop the destruction of the enviroment? Spread the faith? Go across the world in missions? Raise a family? Remain celebant for the rest of my life?

I think that in the end, we must each find our own way to walk the path; in Catholicism, we believe each person has a unique 'calling' which must be discerned. Its a dangerous thing to say, because people *have* walked their own path and have found themselves looking across a chasm at the God which they originally desired to see. But two things can help: One, always follow the path of love; two, paradoxily perhaps, be willing to submit yourself to others who share in your love of god and man, or what I would call the Church (submit is a strong word, but it is nessecary to reconize that perhaps a single wo/man cannot completely understand the will of god alone; s/he might require others who share in his/her faith to provide guidence). And perhaps, you will find that your destinity leads you to celibicy in Africa where you clean the wounds of the sick; or maybe your destiny will be parenthood in a little suburb. All that really matters is that you find your true calling and that you live with the love of god and man in your heart. And remember, all callings are equal in the eyes of God, something that Catholics sometimes have a hard time remembering.

Do not for a moment think that I have mastered any of this. Even As I write, I wonder, am I trying to hard, is it enough, does it say what needs to be said, is it truly from god? All of these things I wonder, and I might always wonder. Its a struggle, but we are called to struggle. I hope I have said something useful.