"A true friend is the best possession." - Ben Franklin

It's time to close my singing about friends series!

A lot of my friends are in the same boat with me - we all have children growing up and out of the nest. On a quiet Sunday afternoon, I cherished what doesn't go up and out - my friends.

Of course, there are friends that come and go, but I am happy for the friends who have stayed with me - through many moves, through births of our children, through crisis, loss, victories and elation.

In many cases, family members are my friends. But mostly, I count among my friends those who I have met along my journey, and our journeys crossed and intertwined and my life has been shaped and refined by their good graces.

Our capacity for friendship seems equal to our capacity to understand God. But what if there is a time when we are without friends? "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank?" writes Mary Baker Eddy.  "Then the time will come when you will be solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with divine Love."  Even in times of seeming loneliness, there is Love.  It is the substance of life, it is its foundation. And from that foundation, we grow friends! 

Some gems on friendship:

My friends are my estate.
- Emily Dickinson 

Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together.
-Woodrow Wilson

A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of nature.
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

A true friend is the best possession.
-Ben Franklin

Forsake not an old friend; for the new is not comparable to him: a new friend is as new wine; when it is old, thou shall drink it with pleasure.
- Sirach 9:10 

A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away.
- Arabian Proverb

Love never loses sight of loveliness. Its halo rests upon its object. One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful.
-Mary Baker Eddy

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The power of Paula

Spiritual resource to share: our home

Although Paula was much prettier,
this photo
 reminds me of her. 
When she would sing, her voice
filled up every single room
 in the house.

Thinking about friends for this FRIEND series, I knew I had to write about Paula.  I have lost track of her now, and writing this blog helps me put out there how much this older woman did for our family.  She was a true friend and wonderful mother for our family, she will never be forgotten.

Our family regularly included someone living with us for one of any number of reasons: to house sit or to help out, to wait for another house to open up, to have a place while going to college, etc.  So to have another person come and live with us was a normal thing. 

Paula came to our house when we heard she needed a place while going through a transition in her life.  Paula was the one who gave our sons and me voice and piano lessons.  So, when she moved in, she continued and added helping with dinners four evenings a week. For me, a working mom with a heavy travel schedule, it was heaven!
Paula lived with us for a year and a half. Paula was a gentle woman of amazing stories. These stories were shared with a humble heart that had experienced a side of life that was totally foreign to us. 

Through her, I learned what it was like to live growing up with great grandparents who were former slaves, living through the civil rights movement, and daily dealing with racism in her work, her church and her community.  Throughout her ordeals, she never lost sight of what she loved and found a way to actively pursue her first love: singing opera.

After a few months of music lessons, we had recitals at our house, and she would show off the boys' developing talents.  Then, at our insistence, she would sing.  She would sing in Latin, then German, and follow it up with pieces from opera in English and Italian. She would get herself in a corner (an effective acoustic strategy) and then open her mouth and fill that whole house with sound.  Her opera training gave her a set of lungs that blew us away. 

Into our house of men, she brought the beauty and drama of a life well lived. Her care of the boys was very parent-centered and her mild manner and humility made it easy to immediately claim her as family. Her stories of her great grandfather and her early battles with racism, were received with respect and awe.

The power of Paula was such that she had a steely reserve and a gentle touch: an abundance of talent and the humble willingess to share it with us rookies.  Meekness, might, humility and grace blessed our home and she became one of our dearest friends.  She opened my eyes to the depth of character we all possess, and how an earnest listening ear can bring out the brilliance in another.  She certainly brought out all that was good in our family. She gave our home a consistency of mothering for that year and a half,  teaching us compassion, how to cook and how to live by singing out our hearts.

The foreverness of friends - revisited

spiritual resource to share:  Friends ( third in my series)

The northern lights right off Lake Superior's coast

With one son off to school, the other son and husband off to a ten day wilderness canoe trip, I planned to take three days off to a hiking, swimming, camping venture on an island on Lake Superior with a friend I hadn't seen in about six years.

The morning of our trip, I got a call from her and as we were making rendezvous plans, she blurted "I can't wait! You're my best friend!" And she is mine, too! We have had an almost twenty-five year history of paddling whitewater, wilderness camping and leading trips including co-leading a rafting trip on the Rio Grande down in Texas' Big Bend area, and had a memorable hike on the Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota that she wrote about in a regional magazine (as well as writing a book about the Lake Superior area).

The first time we saw each other in the parking lot on Day One of our trip, it was like we had never been apart. I have heard about that with other people who have really good friends. Distance and time just don't cut the bonds of friendship.

She brought another friend along, and the three of us proceeded to have three days of really good food, great stories, hiking along the rocky shoreline and walking the boardwalk and swimming in the clear waters. We figured out one another's life problems, read some, sang some, and walked some more. Then our last evening together was topped off with the northern lights.

Mary Baker Eddy has some great things to say about friends:

Pure humanity, friendship, home, the interchange of love, bring to earth a foretaste of heaven. They unite terrestrial and celestial joys, and crown them with blessings infinite. (Miscellaneous Writings)

There are no greater miracles known to earth than perfection and an unbroken friendship. (Retrospection and Introspection)

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seeing through Laura's eyes

Spiritual resource to share:  renewal

I was starting to feel a bit dull about my life here.  After all, I have lived here for over six years, and I haven't lived in one place for over six years for a long, long time.  I was looking for a change.  Not anything major, mind you, but I was just wanting something different.

Then, my buddy Laura came for a visit.  Laura and I met through work during one of the most exciting work projects I had ever been on.  Although we had different jobs pioneering different tasks, we were both working on the same goal.  It was thrilling.  But then our jobs ended, and that's when our friendship bloomed. 

Laura was always the one to get new ideas started and going, and she took on Herculean tasks. Her energy, focus and determination was palpable.  I could feel her jolt just talking to her on the phone when she called to see if she could come for a visit.

I wondered how she would repond to my quiet life up in the Northwoods.  This is where it got interesting. 
The day came when she arrived and entered my house.  "I love this house!" she burst out, "It is so you!"  I had to agree. Later, we hiked one of my favorite trails.  "Oh, this is just gorgeous," she commented looking over the lake reflecting its fringe of colored leaves.  I realized she was right.  Another time, we cruised the main street of my town known for its tiny shops of antiques, clothes, tea and chocolates, hand-made quilts from the Midwest, and imported pottery from Italy and art from local artisans and more.  "This is fascinating," she oohed at a hand thrown bowl.  I could see I was starting to wake up.  "Oh you are just so beautiful," she said.  Yes, I am, I nodded in agreement.

On one of our hikes, I pointed out the remnants of several art installations that were put on the trail years ago.  We were so engrossed in our talking that we missed a major art sculpture just two feet from the trail. After a couple of days of non-stop conversations, she left to go back home, leaving me with the reminder of how good life is, and how precious and connected we all are to one another.  She left me seeing things in sharper focus with a brighter light, and I got to see the wonder that lives right here with me right now.

Love never loses sight of loveliness. 

Its halo rests upon its object. 

One marvels that a friend can ever seem less than beautiful.
-Mary Baker Eddy



Mocha sits next to the art sculpture
on the Raven Trail in Minocqua

Part of the Forest Art Wisconsin Native/Invasive Events by Edgardo Madanes of Argentina right in my neighborhood

         

My breakfast with Cori

Spiritual resource to share:  our art --- of books and healing

Sitting down in to an early morning send-off, my friend and I had breakfast at my favorite place.  Last month, she had just completed a month long artist's residency at the Anderson Center in Red Wing and wanted to share her latest project.

Cori is a book artist, and her work has stretched and opened my ideas as to what a book is and can be.

She has distilled the meaning of a book to three of its native elements:  it is a narrative ( each sentence, phrase or word has its own story), it is interactive (the reader is integral to the book  --  can you have a book if you have no reader?*) and it is on a time continuum (whether you read a book cover-to-cover, read a sentence, or one word, you have a starting point and ending point).   Her latest book project would involve the highlighting of our life journeys: the importance of seeing the entire landscape, while at the same time idenitifying the singular weed  by the road -- all in a way that crystalizes those moments and puts it on a pedestal to make each moment sacred.

Throughout her explanation, over tea and mango eggs, I had to ask her to stop until I was able to wrap my head around some of the ideas she was sharing.  I had to give up how I normally perceived a road weed, a life journey, not to mention what I thought a book was!  Once I abandoned my own assumptions, I was open to see things in a new way.

"I need this kind of mind-stretching," I said.  "It keeps my thought fresh and open to new ways of seeing things."

"Kim," she said, "that is exactly how I feel when you explain Christian Science to me."

I immediately got the connection.  In Christian Science, we see beyond the limited and the stereotyped to the most primal spiritual essence of things.  We strive to see things the way God sees them - as spiritual.  In doing so, we change the basis of thought - from the material to the spiritual; the limited to the unlimited; the dull to the brilliant; the academic to the inspirational.  Only when this is done, can we make real (realize) our original perfection.  And in the case of our art, only when we slough off the limited, etc., can we make original, transformative art!  Mary Baker Eddy summarizes it like this:

When understanding changes the standpoints of life and intelligence from a material to a spiritual basis, we shall gain the reality of Life, the control of Soul over sense, and we shall perceive Christianity, or Truth, in its divine Principle. This must be the climax before harmonious and immortal man is obtained and his capabilities revealed.

*As each reader brings his or her experience to the book, so no one can experience the book in the same way.  And the reader, who is always a dynamic, growing force him or herself, can never read the same book in the same way.  This explains why we always seem to get new ideas from books we love and re-read over and over again!

the natural nature of companionship

Spiritual resource to share: companionship

I just had an "aha!" about relationships. From the book of Genesis, we read that "...God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them."

It has struck me that male and female were created at the same time. So then I reasoned that we are created in relationship already. Having relationships to one another is our natural state.

This is echoed in the first two words of the Lords Prayer that starts out: "Our Father...." This shows that we share a common heritage with others. It also points out that getting our relationship to God - our Father - right, lays the groundwork for getting all of our relationships right.

It is characteristic that Life -another word for God- demands expression and part of that expression is in relationship to others (kind of like John Donne's "No man is an island...."). We, created in the image and likeness of God (who is Life), naturally reflect engagement, companionship, as well as thinking, moving, laughing, connecting.

I remember asking this question long ago when I felt quite alone. I was encouraged by MBEddy's idea from Science and Health "Would existence without personal friends be to you a blank? Then the time will become solitary, left without sympathy; but this seeming vacuum is already filled with Love."

It was a solitary time, but I got to feel a whole new concept of God as Love. There were mornings where I woke up feeling loved. This became the basis for all the new friendships that developed after that experience. It helped me to see that my happiness was not so much dependent on another person as it was about my relationship to God. But this relationship to God had a very active expression: in relationships with others.

Again, getting my primary relationship to God right, then became the basis for many lasting friendships and family relationships that followed. Wonderful, yes?







To share your thoughts on this or to explore this idea further, please feel free to be in contact with me, add your own comments below, email this article to a friend, or add to the healing finds and sites on the web to the right.