Unknown

Solitude should not be equated with loneliness. Loneliness should not be equated with being alone.
The feeling of being lonely may frequently accompany the experience of being alone, but the two should never be regarded as being one and the same thing; they may be closely connected or even inseparably entwined with each other, but this should be recognized as being the particular circumstance of individual persons, not taken as being the norm. However rarely it may occur, and however fleeting it may be, a feeling of loneliness is part of most people’s life experience, but here again we have something that is too easily mistaken for something that it is not. Our occasional feeling of being lonely must never be equated with the chronic loneliness experienced by many others. It can never give us an awareness of the loneliness lived by people we never see – those who hide away from us – or of those we do see but who hide their loneliness from us; it can never give us the ability to open our eyes to see those whose paths we cross every day: the seemingly gregarious person at work, or the lost, depressed, or dispossessed persons we pass in our well frequented streets.
For many of us our short-lived feelings of loneliness are merely a form of boredom: a gap in the constant movement and buzz of our lives for which we are not prepared, primarily due to our failure to create such gaps for ourselves. We are out of practice; we do not do it any more; we do not recognize any reason for doing it; it is no longer part of our lives and it has simply faded away. When we suddenly find ourselves in such a gap, we hurriedly search for something to fill it, and whatever activity or venue may be involved is only the means to the one important end: some form of contact and communication with other people.

Thinking and writing the above has raised a mildly discomforting feeling within me: a feeling which reminds me again that we are truly astonishing creations, with a potential to become sources of comfort, compassion and consolation for others – beacons of light in the dimly lit corners of this world.
I am in no position to disagree with René Voillaume’s assertion (previous post) that human friendship ‘is probably indispensable for human perfection’, but I do not regard it as being essential for happiness. Having good friends undoubtedly contributes greatly to one’s feelings of being appreciated, valued, cared for and needed; it helps to keep us cheerful and stimulated, and engenders a feeling of being happy. But this feeling conjures up one of life’s many illusions. It is so easy to believe that feeling happy equates to real happiness, but happiness is not merely a feeling, it is a state of mind: a way of being.

The aim of our spiritual life is often thought of as being perfection. Perfection is what we strive for, and, though we are well on our way when first becoming aware of the fact, it is what we hope to achieve when we first set out on our journey. But what leads us toward that goal is nestled between the two: between our stepping out in faith and our approaching perfection. The aim of our spiritual life is friendship with God. We move toward perfection through our relationship with Him. We gradually become more perfect through being close to Him. This closeness, through the awakened consciousness of both His love for us and our growing love for Him, is experienced as a meaningful friendship with Jesus leading to an ever-closer imitation of Him, not just in our outward actions but in our thoughts, our predispositions, our whole way of being. It is also experienced as an increased belief in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and an orientation towards that Presence as Teacher, Comforter and Guide in our world, as well as the conveyor of God’s love to us. ‘... the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.’ (Romans 5:5)
It is that love which leads us to unlock doors for others, and to play a part in releasing them from the constraints of whatever form of bondage their lives have led them into: to ‘set captives free’. In so doing, and in imitation of our Lord and friend, we are called to bring His healing touch to those held and bound within their prison cells of unremitting loneliness.

“The spirit of the Lord is on me, for he has anointed me to bring the good news to the afflicted. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free ...” (Luke 4:18)

With Jesus as our model and our companion, we can more accurately judge our relationships with others. We may not find it easier as we find it easy enough already: we are far too quick to judge others. To begin with the opposite may be true; the most noticeable difference may be that we find it more difficult to make our judgments because, perhaps for the first time in our lives, we realize that we do not really know who anybody is. And, in parallel with that realization may come another: - that we are not sure who we ourselves are.
Much of what we show to the rest of the world, even to our friends, bears little resemblance to the person we may have spent years keeping buried within our outer shell. For the most part this will not have been based on conscious decisions but on subtle influences, good and bad, real and imagined, inevitably woven into a lifetime of contact and interaction with other people; and such influence applies regardless of the length of our lifetime. A nine year old boy has experienced nine years of these influences, just as his ninety year old grandmother has experienced ninety. The cumulative weight and effects of the experiences and influences are nowhere near the same; the one, as yet, has found little reason to be anything other than who he seems to be, while the other, having been through all that life shows, offers, gives, takes away, and then hides, has reached a point where she knows there is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by being anything other than who she is. Outwardly, there appears to be little difference between the two persons in their ways of facing the world and the people they meet, but in this, as in our own knowing of ourselves and others at different stages of our spiritual journey, the actual difference is great.

People struggle to see the truth behind our own revealed image, just as we have difficulty seeing beyond the images revealed by them. In Newman’s words, ‘we make clean the outside of things’, and we maintain our selves’ anonymity as best we can.
We can befriend our anonymity in such a way that it becomes a substitute for friendship: it can even become our friend. An already existing prison of loneliness can shrivel still further into a self-constructed dungeon when someone befriends and defends their anonymity in this way. They are no longer unnoticed only, but through their interior hiding from the world, and through a longing that has been perverted to a desire to remain aloof and unseen, they have, to all intents and purposes, become unseen. They have become entombed in what they think they desire: they are unknown, and unseeable.

Here is where we may experience one of the many calls on our potential as followers and companions of Christ. We are needed to follow not only the actions, but the thinking and the feeling of our Lord. It is this calling that raised the mildly discomforting feeling within me when starting to write: a nervous feeling that, in being called “to proclaim liberty to captives, sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free”, we are also being called by Christ from within those entombed in their own loneliness.
He calls us to raise them from their place of death; to lead them into the freedom of life with Him, where they may hear God’s words spoken directly to them: -

‘Yes, I know what plans I have in mind for you, the Lord declares,
plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.’
(Jeremiah 29:11)

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Never alone

Allowing thoughts to dwell on our friendships is a natural part of belonging to a particular place at a particular time. It is a normal response to our experience of being part of a community of people whose lives are based within that same time and place. Even people who spend much of their time alone have a need for contact with others, however rarely it is felt as a need, and in many cases their solitude may be bearable only because they have the sustaining knowledge of long-lasting friendships.
René Voillaume, who, in 1933, led of a small group of seminarians from Paris to make their base at the edge of the Sahara, and who called themselves the Little Brothers of Solitude, wrote: 'Friendship is something so great and splendid that it is probably indispensable for human perfection. I find it hard to believe that a man without friends can be perfect; at any rate, I am sure he will be profoundly unhappy. Without a friend a man is imprisoned within himself.' (Brothers of Men.)
Unlike Charles de Foucauld, whose life and death in the Sahara was the inspiration for the group, René was accompanied by friends. His words may well have been born of the sense of loss found in merely imagining their absence in such an inhospitable place, and, beyond that, glimpsing for a moment the utter loneliness of such a life without any friend at all, anywhere.

If a man without a friend is indeed imprisoned within himself, it is because it is only with a true friend that he can share the truth about himself, the reality of his experience of this life, and his hopes and fears about what has yet to come. But however indispensable friends may be to some of us, the belief that we cannot survive without them is at the same time an admission of the weakness of our faith.
Solitude is not a prison, and should not be a source of fear; it is a freedom, and our movement towards perfection is enabled far more in that freedom than by human companionship and encouragement. The value of time spent alone is inseparable from the building of relationships within the community; everything communal is based on what men and women have already received as individuals, and the most valuable knowledge and presence we can bring to the communal table is fruit of our own discovery of who we really are. Our real self is what the community needs, and is what the world is waiting for.
However great the contribution of others may be in our journey toward self discovery, the discovery itself, and the realization of what we find and learn, takes place within the mind and heart of the person who rises into life in our time spent alone. We may mature and blossom within a community, bearing fruit in the presence of others, but the seed will have been germinated in isolation, and nurtured in our times of solitude. And once we have been brought to fruition among people, we may find ourselves longing to leave them behind again, until, refreshed and newly empowered, we are called back to take our place among them once more. Jesus’ own life repeatedly demonstrates this pattern to us.

It is our awareness, not of our long-lasting human friendships, but of the everlasting friendship of God through the companionship of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit that sustains us in our solitude.
Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk who found himself increasingly called into time spent alone, instructs us – ‘Do not flee to solitude from community. Find God first in the community, then he will lead you to solitude.’ (Thoughts in Solitude.)
The shape of my journey is not accurately described by those words, but something within me recognizes them as being applicable to my own experience. Much of the first forty years of my life were spent in a form of solitude. I am who I am, and have not only learned a great deal about who I am, but have learned to value the person I have found within. An awareness of the presence of God and of our value in His eyes, cannot help but lead to our valuing ourselves, and in that one altered way of seeing the worth of our lives lies the key to our transformation from loneliness to fruitful solitude.

It is loneliness, not solitude, that is the prison. Many of us have experienced solitude as a form of heaven, and far too many know loneliness as a form of hell, especially when in the midst of crowds who neither see nor hear them. Heavenly solitude is filled with awareness of the presence of God, and needs no other. Hellish loneliness may be filled with the presence of people but is completely devoid of any consciousness of God’s presence: awareness of His and Her love, comfort, forgiveness, strength, friendship, companionship, acceptance, guidance – whatever we most desperately need – eludes us. God is no closer in the one than in the other: the Spirit of God is abroad throughout the world, present to every one of us. It is not the Presence which varies, and nor does it avoid or exclude anyone; the difference – and what a profound difference it is – is between one person’s awareness and another’s lack of it.

Our needs may point us towards a potential reliance on God; that potential may lead us to faith in His existence; and faith will open doors as yet unseen, yielding the awareness that ‘Bidden or not bidden, God is present.’ (Desiderius Erasmus).

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Called to care

We make many assumptions about other people's lives and their living of them, based on our own apparently similar experiences; but our experiences are not the same. Even a shared experience will be lived differently by those who share it, not only as it happens, but also in recollection and in its effects. The individuality of the essential truth within any experience, as well as the equally individual psychological, emotional, and physical experiences deriving from it, places our personal reality – whether accurately perceived or not – even further from the grasp and understanding of others than is the outer reality of the experience itself.

I recently came across a quotation I had written out years ago in one of my books of such things. For some years I have kept a written record of passages that registered with me in some way when reading; the underlying reason being that the experience of reading them touched me in some way that spoke of their potential for further thought. I have no doubt that other readers, if similarly inclined, would produce entirely different collections of quotes from the same books. We would, as it were, each find different fruit in the experience of the same tree. Everything discovered would be part of the tree, and we could each point to the words we had found, though our registering and interpreting of them may not speak to others as it does to ourselves.
If we spent time dwelling on this “food for thought” we would no doubt discard some items, perhaps many, but from others we may manage to tease out the meaningful heart of what had touched us in those words, and then, perhaps, we would be able to convey the fruit of our thinking to others. The fruit we had found would have fed us, and, bit by bit, such feeding, along with all the other small touches we experience, would bring about the beginnings of an overflowing: a gentle and unstoppable pouring, through our own giftedness, of God’s love into the world. This is all part of the individuality of the essential truth within any experience. We must hope to make sense of what seems to speak to us, not only for ourselves but for the potential benefit of those whose paths we cross. In my own way, this is what I attempt to do here: to unravel the threads of my ongoing soliloquy that I may better understand my own inner self, and through that better understanding, find and offer something that may in its turn speak to another.

The author of the recently reread quotation had apparently gathered bits and pieces which touched him in a particular way: in a way very similar to my own recording of whatever words spoke to me. He had eventually used them to form the basis of a book which brought them into a form which could be passed on to others. The gathering and keeping; the sorting and re-writing; the wish to pass on the heart and soul of something felt to be of importance; this all seems so familiar to me.
And the subject matter, drawing me as it does with its echoes of highlands and islands –primarily of Scotland, but by association within my memory and longing, also of Ireland – only serves to strengthen the feeling that the indefinable up-welling of emotion accompanying my thoughts of such places is something very real, very important in my life, and worth passing on to others.
The author’s harvesting of words also says something similar about my faith and my journey, the reassurance coming from a realization that there are others who experience the same feelings that are so important to me. It is simply through awareness of the existence of such persons that I find I am not alone in my solitude, nor lost in the losing of myself to the power of love and life. The author is one of these others, and he has not allowed fear, self-doubt, or timidity, to keep him from achieving his aim.
At the end of his introduction, he writes: -
'What I have done in this book is a very simple thing. I have taken the little ships of tradition and custom and legend and history, and I have towed them into port. For years, forlornly and apart, they have floated among my note-books, or drifted past the treacherous shoals of memory. Now they have come to the anchorage of the printed word.' (Alistair Maclean. Hebridean Altars.)
He also writes, 'Whoever brings a gentle mind to what is written here, may He bless, who loves us all, and, as they read, may each catch a vision of The One Face.'

The considerable and constant pull exerted on my mind and heart by these places is a form of meaningful friendship. Regardless of the length of time between my visits, we are inseparable; and though there is an ongoing relationship, it is of course one-sided, and could never be regarded as anything but an unrequited love. And yet, the land itself continues to call me in its own indefinable way, as though local and individual histories from such times as the Highland Clearances, and the Irish Famines, are still reaching out to those who are able to hear their whispers. It seems that the comparatively small part of my blood belonging to these lands, insists that I acknowledge its capacity for fighting well above its weight. Part of the ‘fight’ to which I am called by these ancestral links is the remembrance of those long gone, whose fearful voices still cry out with a longing not to be forgotten - a longing within themselves that someone, somewhere, should always remember them, and a longing cry that can never be forgotten by the one who experiences it.
In some way I am linked to them; they know me as their friend.

In a sermon on The Incarnation, Ronald Knox said, 'It would be a poor doctor who should never call again when his patient had passed the crisis; it is a poor friend who loses interest before he ceases to be of use.' (The Pastoral Sermons.)
Surely, it is a poor friend who loses interest whether or not he is of use. Friendship is not a using of one person by another; it is an uninhibited two way sharing of strengths and weaknesses, which is not barred from any particular aspect or corner of people's lives. It is complete, and it is ever-present, with or without the physical presence of the friend. It is being companions; spending time together, or surviving long absences through having previously spent time in each other’s company; it is sharing the highs and lows, the wonders and the ordinariness of life. A real friend is felt as a companion even when not present, as the reality of the relationship brings a trust, and a knowledge of the permanence of the other's care.
It is in the knowledge that there is someone who will always care, that strength and peace may be found.
In our human friendships, in our remembering of those who have journeyed before us, and even in a consciousness of past desperations and needs in the landscapes to which we are drawn, we each have the ability to bring a constant caring to those who may have no other friend to bring it to them.
However little we really understand each other’s experiences and the emotions aroused by them, there are common threads that run through them all. Above and beneath all degrees of sickness and health, poverty and wealth, exhaustion and strength, ignominy and honour, is the common theme of our humanity. In so many men and women, recognition of the evils and injustices in our world is buried so deep that they are unable even to know that we are all equal, as members of the human race, and in the eyes of God. And, above and beneath that truth, and even less known, is the Spirit of God constantly breathing into the lives of every one of us.

The strength and peace we bring is not our own; the caring is not entirely our own.
What we bring is the compassion of Jesus, and the wonder that is the Holy Spirit.
In spending time with others, we bring them to a meeting: the meeting of Christ in us with Christ in them; and in all such meetings, let us hope that we ‘may each catch a vision of The One Face.'
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A new day

‘To you I pray, Lord.
At daybreak you hear my voice;
at daybreak I lay my case before you
and fix my eyes on you.’
(Psalm 5:3)
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The new day dawns; misty, with a gradually increasing hint of blue in the draining greyness of the sky. No breath of wind: no wind, no breeze, no breath. Not a single leaf stirs.
The gap between trees, where the slope of North Hill props up the southern end of the sky, is a uniform pale grey; the hills have yet to be born into my day.
A brightening: mist bleaching from grey to white; unfocussed shafts of light as the sun begins taking command of the scene, and draws the autumnal quilt from this corner of the Earth – the green acre in which my family has made a home.
And now, in that wedge of distance, from within the thinning mist, a diagonal line appears; and in the darkening of the space beneath, a reassurance that the world is as it had been the previous day: the rebirth of granite hills into my certainties.

At the centre of my view, amid the first gentle stirrings of leaves on the nearest Ash tree as the Spirit of God moves through the garden, a deeper waving of a high Beech branch seems to beckon me: ‘come, up, out, and into the world’. A Collared Dove has alighted at the branch’s tip, and as its perch settles into stillness once more, the Dove’s swaying body rejoins the unwavering steadiness of its head.
It remains for a while, appearing to return my gaze through the window, until, setting the branch into a repeat of its gentle beckoning, it flies toward me, up and over the house.
God’s touch continues to shimmer among the leaves, and the Spirit stirs once more within me.

Not only the few minutes it has seemed: the clock shows evidence of another time, another place, another life.
Not just a brief appreciation of a beautiful morning: an hour and a half has come, settled, and flown into the awakening day.
The book I had been about to open still lies untouched beside me, and I am returned, awake, from time spent in the peace and the presence of God. – I know what I shall write today.

‘My heart is ready, God,
I will sing and make music;
come, my glory!
Awake, lyre and harp,
I will awake the Dawn!’
(Psalm 108:1-2)
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One to one (5)

'Whoever fears the Lord makes true friends,
for as a person is, so is his friend too.’
(Ecclesiasticus 6:17)

Physical presence is of the utmost importance in a meaningful friendship. In a crisis, a real friend’s presence is the most effective support of all; it outweighs any words that may be said. That presence may include small but significant touches of love such as making a drink, draping a shawl around shoulders, answering the door ...; it may even involve a leaving of one’s needy friend for a period once one’s presence has been felt, perhaps to travel a great distance for them, to meet with someone, or to bring someone back; to deliver or collect something of vital importance to them; a literal going of the extra mile for them. The task may be of such importance for them that, paradoxically, such an absence would be experienced by them as a continuation of one’s presence.
Love may be proved by our actions, by deeds, but there are times when we are called to quell all thoughts of doing things: to prove the depth and dependability of our friendship by simply being there; feeling, loving, watching and waiting. Waiting until the time to listen; listening until the time to speak.

‘They sat there on the ground beside him for seven days and seven nights. To Job they spoke never a word, for they saw how much he was suffering. In the end it was Job who broke the silence...’ (Job 2:13–3:1)

Just as a friend’s physical presence may be experienced as continuing when they have left to undertake some vital deed, so, in a similar way, a much needed friend’s presence may be experienced as having already begun as soon as news is received that they are on their way. In both cases, the presence essential to the creation and deepening of the already mature and meaningful relationship is in the past. The chain holding the friendship together was forged in earlier times spent face to face, and its final links closed by mutual experience and a shared hope.

I have witnessed both types of such meaningful and supportive absences.
The first, a dying lady’s relief and contentment resulting from the arrival of one particular person, who, though out of the house more than in it, and far more than actually at the lady’s bedside, was present to her throughout the night and day, even when absent for several hours. She had known, without any doubt, that once her friend had come to her, any absences were to achieve the essential outcomes required for her own wellbeing and peace of mind. She had complete faith in her friend. And it did not occur to the friend that she could have done things in any other way: at the time, she felt that she existed only to be there and to do the things that had to be done.
The second, involved another dying lady and a member of my own family. As a mother in the middle of Christmas celebrations with her young children and husband, with no wish to be anywhere else and knowing that this was where she was meant to be, she received news that a much loved aunt and friend, Mai, in the west of Ireland was dying and asking for her constantly: -

“Where is she?”... “Is she coming?” ... “Is she here yet?” ... “Is that you ...?” She was becoming increasingly distressed because the one person she needed was not there.
After agonizing over the situation and the seemingly impossible decision she was called upon to make, the young mother travelled from Worcestershire to Ireland to be with Mai. On arrival, she found she was too late – at least, that was how it felt.

As soon as Mai had heard the news that the one person who mattered was on her way, she relaxed, rested, and was content. She died shortly before the longed for arrival. To Mai, hearing what amounted to “I’m coming”, had been an immediate knowledge that she was already there.
Mai’s distress appeared to have been due to her increasing difficulty in maintaining her ability to live: maintaining her refusal to die before the arrival of the one person whose presence would make all things well.

In thinking of these two friendships, and those two deaths, something speaks to me of the continuation of friendship and love, not only during absences through life, but into and beyond the longest absence of all: the one that follows a death and which continues until we are returned to each other’s company through our own passing.
I cannot help but hear again those words from Julian of Norwich’s ‘Revelations of Divine Love’: “… all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.”
The anticipated arrival, as well as the actual presence of a friend, can speak those words to us. Once we have overcome our grief, the absence of a friend through death can also breathe with an awareness of their continued presence. The above words were spoken to Julian by Jesus, and, through hearing or otherwise experiencing them through a meaningful friendship, we too are being reassured by Him. He is present with us as our Friend, speaking to us through a relationship that is truly meaningful because He is present within it.

The two words, ‘friendship’ and ‘meaningful’, mean different things to different people. For some, almost every person they meet more than once is regarded as a friend, and they may bathe in the knowledge that they have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook or some similar social networking internet site. With the mindset of some others, those same people would regard almost every one of those “friends” merely as acquaintances, and their few friends may not include any they would regard as being particularly close. Whoever we are, and whatever our interpretation of those words, it is only when a friendship includes the integrity of mind, body and spirit, that it becomes both humanly and spiritually meaningful, and develops its own invitations. It places us at the heart of an invitation to unite with and in the presence of Jesus, and it invites the Holy Spirit to come deeper into our friendship and into the rest of our lives.
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One to one (4)

In today’s world it is difficult to believe that worthwhile meetings can only occur when people are physically present to each other. The telephone seems to provide ample evidence to the contrary. It has existed long enough for us to almost forget that there was a time when it was not even dreamed of. It had to be invented before we were able to speak to people as though they were in the same room with us, when they were many miles away, even on the other side of the world. We take it for granted that we can remain “in touch” with others when they are far beyond, not only touching distance, but the natural range of seeing and hearing.
The mobile phone allows us to reach and be reached almost anywhere, and we no longer need the telephone at all when we have access to a computer; and with the lines becoming more blurred all the time, I am no longer sure that a separate computer is needed when we have one of today’s ‘mobiles’. With Skype, for example, we can speak to anyone, anytime, almost anywhere in the world, and for as long as we may wish, without concerns about time and cost restricting the natural flow of words, feeling and emotion. And seeing the person to whom we are speaking removes the most obvious difference between this way of communicating and real physical contact. When cameras allow us to see each other while we converse, we are better able to assess and understand the feelings behind the words we hear, and it is more difficult to hide our own true feelings behind the words we use.
We could say that such live video communication does bring people face to face in all but living physical reality, and it is much easier to regard this as providing a means of meaningful contact, than it is to ask ourselves what more there could be. It is a question of degree. How real does our contact have to be before we regard it as being meaningful?

To meet face to face, to stand facing; to be opposite to. This is one of the meanings of the word ‘confront’, though it generally hints at something less relaxed, with elements of disagreement and friction – to face in defiance or hostility; to present a bold front to, to stand against, to oppose – and it leads into confrontation, with the possibility of third party involvement: the bringing of persons face to face for accusation and defence, for questioning and for discovering the truth.

Our usual thoughts on one-to-one relationships naturally fall into the areas of friendship, of family ties, of pleasure or displeasure in the interactions at work or with our neighbours; affection, concern, jealousy, frustration, annoyance and anger towards parents, children, siblings, or lovers. And, in one form or another, for one reason or another, fear is always in the mix somewhere.
In the context of our spiritual lives, the thoughts tend to focus on our fear of becoming better known; our reluctance to face the embarrassment of admitting that we are less than the person whose image we strive to portray and maintain. Our temptations, our unholy thoughts, our un-diminishing weakness in particular areas of life, and our failures and mistakes, are all carried with some degree of disregard and lightness in our daily lives, but weigh heavily in our conscience when we think to be more honest about ourselves.
A greater degree of closeness in a spiritual friendship moves our focus beyond these troubles to an appreciation of what a true friend can be. It allows us to discover the beginnings of an understanding of what the word ‘meaningful’ can mean in our relationships, and it draws us closer to a way of seeing ourselves and others in a more forgiving, reconciling, and supportive way: a way that more easily attunes us to the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in the lives of others, and makes Jesus’ way of seeing us and our world so much easier to understand and to follow.

Our relationships are not meant to provide company and no more; they should not consist of agreement and praise in all things, nor should they be nothing more than mutual confessions of failure and perceived inadequacy; they should not make us life-members of a club for serial-penitents and those who have grown comfortable with their routine of recurring faults. They should bring us into the light, and once we are there they should make that light undeniable for us.
There is good and bad in each of us, and while the bad can so easily go unnoticed in a life without any thought of who we are and why we are here, a spiritual life brings us to a recognition of at least some of our poor qualities. This is necessary, and it is good, but it can so easily become the focus on which we constantly dwell rather than a stepping stone into reality. Jesus calls us to that recognition, but in order that we may change and move beyond it, into a discovery of the gifts with which we have been blessed; a discovery of our potential for good in this world, and a realization of the person into whom we can be transformed.

A truly meaningful friendship needs the complete presence of one person to another. Whatever the apparent relationship – master and servant, companions, lovers – friendship is what makes it work in a positive and meaningful way. It needs not only the honesty, trust, acceptance and support, but the touch, the silences, the creation of space: the intimacy and the safety that come only when people are true friends and in each other’s company. We hear this expressed in many ways: – “I know she’s my mum, but she’s my best friend as well.” - “My very best friend has always been my brother.” - “I don’t see him often, but I feel so safe when I do. I can talk to him about anything and he always says the right thing. If that is friendship, then I only have one real friend.”
It is our presence to one another that leads us beyond our regrets and failings to the quest for fulfilment and the joy that it engenders. We may see clearly the good in our friends that they cannot see for themselves, just as we may be blind to what they see so clearly in us.

‘You have to start seeing yourself as your truthful friends see you. ... You look up to everyone in whom you see goodness, beauty and love because you do not see any of these qualities in yourself. As a result, you begin leaning on others without realizing that you have everything you need to stand on your own feet. You cannot force things, however. You cannot make yourself see what others see. ... You have to trust that God will give you the people to keep showing you the truth of who you are.’
(Henri Nouwen. ‘The Inner Voice of Love’.)

I find that a beautiful definition of a real friend:– Someone who keeps showing you the truth of who you are.
There is no more complete way of showing another the truth about themselves than being with them. For a person who is blind, all I have said about seeing people face to face via video conversations has little meaning; they do not see them when they really are in the same room. But when they are there before them, their heightened awareness via the other senses makes them every bit as present as they would be for me. The same applies to any person who, for whatever reason, is unable to experience the world in the way that we mistakenly regard as the only possible way.
Presence is essential. And who, more than anyone else, can show us the truth about who we are? Who is our closest and most reliable friend? It is Jesus: the person who was present as a friend to the adulteress about to be stoned to death. He led her beyond her regret and the mistakes she had made, and showed her the truth of who she was. He was also present to the men who encircled her, and He showed them also the truth about who they were. That they failed to recognize Him as their friend too was part of the story of the Incarnation: part of why Christ came to them, to us, to all mankind.

He is the one who joins us whenever we meet face to face in His name.
It is His presence that makes our own presence to each other so much more than anything I can suggest among these pages.

‘For where two or three meet in my name, I am there among them.’
(Matthew 18:20)
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