Are you REALLY my friend? Am I REALLY your friend? What does it mean to “friend” somebody?

One of the good things about my too-mobile life (moving from Omaha to Wheaton to Wichita to Wheaton/Carol Stream to Orange County California to now Breezy Point Minnesota) is that it has forced me to truly KNOW what I believe and live about friendship. So when everyone was posting Sunday’s New York Times article about friendship (I will post a link as a comment to this post, but my point here is not to share that link) I was surprised to realize that other 50-somethings haven’t necessarily arrived at my conclusions about the subject. So here they are:

1) “Friendship” doesn’t have to be mutual:

“Friendship” and “mutual” are nice, but not necessary to a community I love … just as it is sweet when my child is thrilled that I am his mom and I am thrilled that that child is my child at the same point in time, but as nevertheless over time we build a lifetime of history regardless of those moments.

2) Love on the people you love!:

There are people I love, for some odd reason. I don’t need to be able to explain why, to myself or to anyone else. I don’t need them to love me to want to stay in their lives, and so I can choose to reach out and try to connect when that is possible. There are too many of these people to actually build “bestie” or even regular friendships with all of them … which is not a problem, because love does not require deep friendship but simply motivates it, and because when one of them does not love me back and makes it too obvious to not feel, I have more time to enjoy others that I love. (I tried to see some of those people who live in California when I was just there. If I saw you, it means I love YOU. If I didn’t contact you, it does not mean the opposite, though … I wanted to see many more people than I had time to track down! That includes Alix and Trevecca and Marita and Dominique and Angela and many other friends that I thought about while I was in So Cal or the bay area … and the people I did see don’t necessarily love me the way I love them … but since I love them, seeing them was AWESOME.)

3) Don’t worry about being loved back:

Loving is what gives me energy, not being loved. This fact has freed me up from being the narcissistic neurotic creature that “Maria” was and allowed me to live comfortably inside the head and body of “EmKay”. It also allows me to endure the disapproval of some key people in my life but remain faithful both to my desire to show them real love and also to remain faithful to my need to be honest with myself about who I really am and what I really believe to be true.

4) Giving love is real faith:

My faith in God, and God’s clearest expression of God’s grace to me, are mysteriously embodied best in the love and faithfulness I describe above. THAT is real CHURCH, not just the local gathering around a building nor even a wider denominational gathering around certain creeds, confessions, and polity. We are created as social creatures, and we are in need of lifelong community … and we have each been gifted with the ability to be ordained as a minister and pastor and preacher to our own “church”. (This is supported in Christian teaching by the covenant communities of the people of God in both the Old Testament and New Testament. God knew that faith without works is dead, and that the works that build life can’t be done in isolation from a community of faith … and that we were each to form that community around us without excluding the stranger or our enemy or the one in prison or the one who is sick.)

5) Loving is what lasts:

Our presence lingers in the lives, hearts, and minds of the people we love. That is a privilege, responsibility, and calling to each of us. Some of my friends who are teachers seem to be most conscious of this, but we all should be. It is not only parents and pastors and teachers who can grow a healthy world. It is US. All of us. Right here, right now.