Last Post: Breathless

Heartfelt Thanks 

This is the final post on the Still In the Storm blog site. After twelve amazing years, I have retired from the staff of JustFaith Ministries. Thanks to all who have followed this blog over the years.  If you wish to continue exploring “engaged presence” with me, follow the link to my new blog site, In the Storm Still (below). Copies of the Still In the Storm publication are available at: http://justfaith.org/shop/

With a grateful heart,

joe

 

Photo by Joe Grant © 2016

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it,

but you know not whence it comes or where it goes.

So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.  –John 3:8

 

Seeker,

When was the last time life left you breathless?  

 

Inner-city living

leaves me longing

for Nature’s elegance.

 

Whenever possible,

I make for the woods,

to marinate in Creation.

 

I am blessed with a sanctuary,

a sacred soaking place

I visit religiously.

 

Here I amble amid cathedral colonnades

of maple, sycamore,

and black walnut…

 

To read the rest of this blog post visit Joe Grant’s brand new blog site (click the ‘follow’ button):

https://engagedpresence.wordpress.com/2016/07/08/breathless/

Blessings and thanks!

Now! Here! This!

Photo by Joe Grant © 2016

Before You the whole world is like a speck that tips the scales, like a drop of morning dew that falls on the ground. But You are merciful to all, You who can do all things, You who overlook our falling short, so we may repent. For You love all things that exist, and detest no thing You have ever made, for you would not have made anything if you had hated it. How would anything have endured if You had not willed it? Or how would anything not called forth by You have been preserved? You spare all things, for they are Yours, Most Holy, You who love the living.

-Wisdom 11:22-26

Seeker,

With places to go and needs all around, how are you most likely to be found?     

 

In life,

some are runners, others are reservoirs,

Both are necessary.

 

Once a conductor of motion and sound,

at another time and place,

I am now intent on being still, becoming a holding space.

 

My running days long-gone,

it is a slower current I seek—

deeper-wider restoration.

 

There are others, thanks be,

nimble, fresh, and ready to run,

who are eager to turn possibilities into projects.

 

Yet, we all crave refreshment,

re-sourcing from creativity’s font—

a well of mercy to make us well.

 

At the center of our being is Being itself, and in this we are ultimately sustained and come to know ourselves as we truly are. -Cynthia Bourgeault

 

In all our coming and going—

days of doing, demanding, desiring—

how on earth do we stay well-grounded?

 

And how do we get ourselves back, body and soul,

from NEXT to NOW, from THERE to HERE,

from THAT into THIS?

 

In any moment, our first act is simply being,

being present, being now (not then), being here (not there),

being this (not that). Might this be true purpose of prayer?

 

When we present ourselves to life,

the moment expands to let us see

we what we can do, where we might go, and who life calls us to be.

 

While there is much to do,

We are not here to do.

Under the want to problem-solve

Is the need to being-solve. -Mark Nepo

 

With each breath, practice being,

every sigh breathing attitude into action

in a singular desire to dissolve into NOW! HERE! THIS!

 

Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion   -T. S. Eliot

 

May you clear a way

at least once a day

to pause, to rest, and to restore.

 

And may you hold open a holding space,

in this tempest-tossed time,

for the ones who have no choice but to be on the run.

 

joe

A Note of Thanks

After twelve amazing years on the staff of JustFaith Ministries, I have retired from full-time employment.

My heartfelt thanks to all of you who have followed and shared Still In the Storm over its five years and nearly two hundred posts. This blog site will be retired in July, 2016.

Copies of the Still In the Storm publication are available through JustFaith Books and Videos: http://justfaith.org/shop/

Those willing to continue exploring “engaged presence” with me will be prompted in July to follow my new blog:

In the Storm Still.

With a grateful heart,

joe

Most Blessed Sacrament of LIFE

Photo by Joe Grant © 2016

God reigns! Let earth rejoice and the many coastlands be glad!

The heavens declare your righteousness

as the people behold your glory.

-Psalm 97: 1, 6

 

 

Seeker,

How have you welcomed, celebrated, shared the blessed sacrament of today?

 

Sacraments are not magic,

they are messy, majestic,

and at their core, mysterious.

 

Pungent though they be,

we don’t see what we don’t see.

To resurrection’s ubiquitous release, how blind can we be?

 

Pollen to irritate the eyes,

perfumes and resplendent bouquets

to overwhelm the senses.

 

Still the miracle fails to arrest us,

draw us out of our heads,

teach humility, school us in awe.

 

First we must free ourselves

from fractious fears,

and frustrations.

 

For every day is earth day

when we open the soul’s window

to let in the bird-song Psalms.

 

Now we practice holy communion,

the sacramental act of breath-receiving and returning—

first and final sounds we ever make.

 

In the face of that first inhalation,

in the wake of that final exhalation,

surely all else pales.

 

This grand show is eternal. It is always sunrise somewhere; the dew is never dry all at once; a shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloaming, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the round earth rolls.

-John Muir

 

I went one day

for a walk into the woods,

and time lost track of me.

 

So, on I amble, and sometimes stumble,

knowing less and less about anything

and more and more about everything.

 

Don’t we need to lose sight to regain vision?

And knowing we are blind might be the first prerequisite

to letting ourselves be led into the path of another’s pain.

 

…you have to understand,
that no one puts their children in a boat
unless the water is safer than the land
no one burns their palms
under trains
beneath carriages
no one spends days and nights in the stomach of a truck
feeding on newspaper unless the miles travelled
means something more than journey.
no one crawls under fences
no one wants to be beaten
pitied… -Warsan Shire

 

In all this wide,

wonderful and woeful universe,

all that is real is love.

 

We understand this best

when letting-go of what and whomsoever

we have come to love

 

For we do not, cannot make love.

We can only welcome it,

make room to receive it, share it with abandon.

 

This is our sacramental mission,

from first breath to final.

Love is not attachment; it is release, losing, falling, letting-go.

 

Prayer is our humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. It is all we can offer in return for the mystery by which we live. It is embarrassing to live! Only one response can maintain us: gratefulness for witnessing the wonder, for the gift of our unearned right to serve, to adore, and to fulfill. It is gratefulness which makes the soul great.

-Abraham Heschel

 

How has the blessed-broken sacrament of life touched you?

 

joe

Uncap the Well

Photo by Joe Grant © 2016

Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back. Luke 6:37-38

Seeker,

Do you worry and wonder at what is happening to us?

 

In times of frustration, fear and fury

we are tempted to protect personal assets,

throw walls around territories, stock up for scarcity.

 

The manipulation of messages

preys upon silent masses, milking the venom of vindictiveness,

heightening our instinct  to hold back.

 

With disgraceful insinuations and petulant pronouncements

some strive to segregate or scapegoat—

so easy to conquer the so-well divided.

 

Others storm the bastion of righteousness

to poison youthful passion with hatred and horror

guised as honor or holiness.

 

As the bar of acceptable human behavior sinks,

insults and ideologies

spiral into violent idolatries.

 

Bluster builds to an acrimonious squall.

Hatred fuels a whirlwind of flapping flags,

fiery crosses, prideful parades of power…

 

And lodged deep, in grainy black and white,

a memory of dread-full times (not so long past)

stirs up a disorienting dose of déjà vu.

 

A great gale arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’ He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Peace! Be still!’ Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, ‘Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?’ Mark 4:37-40

 

What bridge can span

the canyon of bitter segregation,

amid a hailstorm of threats and taunts?

 

Who dares display

the necessary remorse

that gives way to mutual pardon?

 

No holding back tears now!

Only mercy’s unction can

unhinge the encrusted doorway to peace.

 

With courageous resolution

the reckless risk of love-over-control

gently uncaps a well of great-fullness.

 

Now,  generosity and gratitude

overflow at the bounty of blessings

received and given and shared.

 

Try saying this silently to everyone and everything you see for thirty days: “I wish you happiness now and whatever will bring happiness to you in the future.” If we said it to the sky, we would have to stop polluting; if we said it when we see ponds and lakes and streams, we would have to stop using them as garbage dumps and sewers; if we said it to small children, we would have to stop abusing them, even in the name of training; if we said it to people, we would have to stop stoking the fires of enmity around us. Beauty and human warmth would take root in us like a clear, hot June day. We would change.  Joan Chittister

 

Will you bare

a listening heart

to a torrent of tirades?

 

Will you uncover the font of forgiveness

and dwell in abundance

till fear itself dissolves?

 

joe

Re-Sourcing – A Lenten Practice

Photo by Joe Grant © 2016

A leper came to him begging him, and kneeling he said to him, ‘If you choose, you can make me clean.’ Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, ‘I do choose. Be made clean!’  -Mark 1:40-41

Seeker,

What if we’re responsible for the things and people we touch?

 

At this moment,

no matter where you find yourself,

for sure you’re touching something manufactured.

 

Most likely you’re handling plastic,

wreathed as we are

in all things synthetic.

 

Let your eyes rest on a multitude of objects,

surfaces, clothes, and containers,

made in places distant, by fingers unseen.

 

Such miraculous manipulations of oil,

Earth’s ancient ancestral legacy,

now made solid and see-through, pliable and nearly everlasting.

 

Replacing wood and stone, leather and bone,

clay, glass, and steel,

the blessing of petrochemical polymers has become a blight.

 

Now, unless we radically redirect

this working, wanting, wasting spree,

three decades more and plastic trash will outweigh all the fish in the sea.

 

The Earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.   -Pope Francis

 

Whatsoever we do

unto to God’s good Creation

that we do unto to God’s precious people.

 

This is disaster of our own doing,

billions of lives— without exception or exemption—

trapped in spirals of consuming and discarding.

 

How can goods be good for us

if they’re not good for all,

for plants, plankton, people, for creatures great and small?

 

And how to disentangle

practiced patterns and appetites

from the ruination of creation, throwing life and lives away?

 

They have made my land a desolation;
desolate, it mourns to me.
The whole land is made desolate,
but no one lays it to heart.   -Jeremiah 12: 11

 

Perhaps, like all things “soiled”,

imperceptibly it starts,

as sap in Springtime rises with the warming wind.

 

We become aware, we look around, we reach out

to whatever crosses our palms or graces our eyes—

coffee-cups, computer keys, handshakes, branches, and holy, sunlit leaves…

 

Touched thus by life, God-made and human-shaped,

we can wonder at creation,

contemplate components, count the costs and the casualties of things.

 

We might try to re-trace the stories

of the stuff that stuffs our days

back to each beginning, its very sacred Source.

 

The little yellow flowers that nobody notices on the edge of that road are saints looking up into the face of God.   -Thomas Merton

 

Whether wood or rock, paper, plastic, or person,

are we not, in some way responsible,

for whatever, whomsoever we touch?

 

To Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

might we also add this Lenten pair—

Reflect and Return gratitude to the Source of All, and all those in between?

 

So regularly may we re-Source our lives,

to be cleansed and healed of hurting and hoarding,

till graciously we release the good to us so freely given.

 

How will you follow the trails of blessing and burden that touch your life?

 

joe

Pursued by Mystery, Found in Forgiveness

Photo by Joe Grant © 2016

Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.  -Luke 15:6

 

Seeker,

Who looks out for you? Who are you looking after?

 

We need not

search too hard for

the Source of All Being,

 

for the Holy One

relentlessly

seeks us out.

 

This is the surprise of salvation—

that we are healed, held,

and brought back together,

 

by a persistent, ever-patient Presence,

unperturbed by waywardness,

who forever looks us up and tenaciously tracks us down.

 

Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence? -Psalm 139:7

 

 

For a time, we might cast our measured moments

into the chasm of mass distraction,

thinking we are untouchable.

 

For a while we might let our souls be held captive

by the shadow-play of plasma screens,

or gorge on sound-bite reactions to life’s tragic wonder.

 

But, in due time, even here,

joy can unseat us, mystery unsettle us

forgiveness up-end us.

 

The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.   -Abraham Heschel

 

Every seeker understands

what it means to be found and found out;

sought, caught and caught out by life.

 

Those on a quest

are content to be enticed into the dark

by penetrating questions.

 

And the lonely soul

finally finds home

by welcoming others.

 

Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.   -Matthew 10:40

 

When we allow ourselves to be found,

we become seeker;

a beacon in the densest night.

 

We cease pursuing that “Other”

when finally we are caught up

in the hurt or hope of a sister or brother.

 

All which I took from thee I did but take,

Not for thy harms, 

But just that thou might’st seek it in My arms.

–Francis Thompson

 

New-found by forgiveness,

the hungers of the sorely afflicted lead us out,

unshackled from spiritual self-seeking.

 

Now free to feel

with families horrified at murderous sons,

fevered by the sickness of war,

 

and free to follow those fearful in flight

risking desert and stormy sea-crossing

to escape disaster and death.

 

Forgiving brings us to our knees,

not to beg but to revere,

to stop and let ourselves be found, without the trace of shame or fear.

 

Holiness is no longer hidden, except in plainest sight.

Joy cries out to rouse us,

and hope hangs on every smile.

 

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts, where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are.  If only we could see each other that way all the time. – Thomas Merton

 

Where, with whom are you most likely to be found and found out?

joe

 

Click here to order:  Still In The Storm

Watching, Waiting, Wondering

Photo by Joe Grant © 2015

Be aware, keep alert,  for you do not know when the time will come… 

And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.  -Mark 13: 33, 37

Seeker,

As a new year unfolds in this blessed-broken world, what are you waiting for?

 

 

We call it longing

because it distends our sense of time,

and so much living is enlarged in the waiting.

 

Waiting…

 

for healing to happen,

anticipating a change to come,

expecting a loved one’s imminent return.

 

Waiting…

 

for loss to soften,

an ache to ease,

a void to shrink.

 

Waiting…

 

for tempers to cool,

a chafed heart to mend,

a conflict to ease, a bloody war’s end.

 

Waiting…

 

for a new day to break,

a tired old one to wane,

for the silence of night, or the chorus of dawn.

 

Waiting…

 

for a newborn’s cry,

or a loved one’s final breath,

we vigil before the mysteries of life and love, of birth and death.

 

Waiting…

 

for the torrent to abate,

eager for the drought’s release,

desperately we hold out for hunger and injustice finally to cease.

 

So many ways

and shapes of expectation,

every moment whetted by keen anticipation.

 

All the while, and all around,

so much secretly undeclared,

quietly waits to be noticed, savored and shared.

 

The meaning of awe is to realize that life takes place under wide horizons, horizons that range beyond the span of an individual life or even the life of a nation, a generation, or an era. Awe enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal.  -Abraham Heschel

 

Endlessly empty,

waiting to awaken feels

like drowsy, mid-afternoon dullness.

 

Routines called “ordinary”,

always assumed and taken for granted,

numb and stultify.

 

Immune to golden sunsets and icy mountain peaks,

milky ocean spray and  windswept wilderness,

we fail to notice grandeur and beauty that daily over-wash us.

 

Even crisis fails to stir those still deaf and blind

to famished children, ravaged lives,

littered roads, denuded hills, and rapacious mines.

 

Daily life presents challenges and lessons

that test the level of our attentive presence,

and measure our receptivity.

 

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.     -Mary Oliver

 

In every moment grace hides

in plainest sight

for those with presence of mind and will to penetrate.

 

When life, love, or loss

lift the veil,

eyes, hearts and horizons are transfigured.

 

In the clarity of astonishment,

there’s nothing

ordinary about existence.

 

Thus are born poets, artists, mystics,

God’s own children

poised for inspiration to crack hearts or mend them.

 

Attentiveness is

a heightened state of readiness—

waiting, watching, wondering.

 

Wakefulness sharpens connection,

disdains distraction, discards pretension,

unmasks torpid self-preoccupation.

 

Like a heron intent on a gravelly stream,

or a tail-twitching tabby transfixed in the grass,

electrically-charged anticipation sharpens senses with focus and purpose.

 

Now we enter a state of expectant attention—

engaged presence—

the opposite of terminal boredom.

 

Fine-tuning the present, attentive to the peripheries,

scanning signs on the horizon,

wakeful, watching, wondering disciples wait.

 

(God) did not wait till the world was ready,
till (all the) nations were at peace.
(God) came when the Heavens were unsteady,
and prisoners cried out for release.  –Madeleine L’Engle

 

Who knows how grace will

greet you this day, this new year.

Will she find YOU ready to receive?

 

joe

Click here to order:  Still In The Storm

Life on the Move

Photo by Joe Grant © 2015

…an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream and said,

“Get up, take the child and his mother, and flee to Egypt,

and remain there until I tell you…”  -Matthew 2:13

Seeker,

Where would you go if you had to find a safe haven for your family?

 

Ever-evolving,

always shifting,

LIFE is miracle in motion.

 

No static system does justice

to the elegance of energy

that emanates from an emancipated spirit.

 

Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world.  -Psalm 19:2-4

 

Blizzards of spiraling galaxies,

upheld in cosmic flow,

slow-dance to eternal music beyond what we can know.

 

Our swirling dust-mote planet,

caught in radiant eddy bright,

makes her endless circuit around our lonely light.

 

All on earth is mobile;

a river of relations,

cycles, tides, and seasons turning without destination.

 

Listen to God! See the Earth as a point compared with the vast circles it describes. Stand amazed that this circle itself is only a tiny point in relation to the course traced by the stars revolving in the firmament; that the whole visible world is no more than an imperceptible speck in the ample bosom of nature.  -Blaise Pascal

 

Consider mass migrations

that few of us will see,

of wildebeest and caribou, butterflies and bees.

 

On grassy plain and foaming fathom,

clouded sky and forest floor,

living things on epic journeys stream and teem and soar.

 

Have you glimpsed those fast formations

riding high on tides of air,

undulating skeins of cranes that flit from here to who knows where?

 

A blade of grass is commonplace on Earth; it would be a miracle on Mars… And if a blade of grass is priceless, what is the value of a human being?  -Carl Sagan

 

Our own dear sacred story

recalls a restless race,

shepherded by a holy ache to find its one true place.

 

After centuries of exploration, conquest and subjugation

empires forged, now lie fragmented,

into shards of shifting states.

 

Who would stem this human stream,

shut out the refugee in flight,

that hopes for hospitality, a shelter from the storms of night?

 

The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. -Leviticus 19: 34

 

No barbed-wire boundary

line or law can make us alienate

those who come as Christ disguised to stand before our gate.

 

Now as the door of mercy cracks,

may you do your very best

to make a space at least for one, and pray for all the rest!

 

“I was a stranger and you welcomed me…” -Matthew 25:35

 

joe

Slowing to the Pace of Peace

Photo by Joe Grant © 2015

By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  There is no law against such things.

-Galatians 5:22-23

 

Seeker,

What will it take to slow you down?

 

The continued acceleration of changes affecting humanity and the planet is coupled today with a more intensified pace of life and work which might be called “rapidification”…the speed with which human activity has developed contrasts with the naturally slow pace of biological evolution. -Pope Francis

 

When walking the woods,

nothing in Nature

ever urges me to move faster.

 

Should you walk into life,

lingering to let the soul catch up,

your stroll might become a pilgrimage.

 

And realizing your “pilgrim-hood”,

you might receive every sign

as a message from the “Wholly Present One”.

 

Where am I going? I’m going
out, out for a walk. I don’t
know where except outside.
Outside argument, out beyond
wallpapered walls, outside
wherever it is where nobody
ever imagines.     -Philip Booth

 

A homemade sign,

at a four-way stop proclaims:

“Slow down, children at play!”

 

What might it take I wonder,

for me, for you, for those who are dear,

to slow our pace for all children far and near?

 

How can we find peace, true peace, if we forget that we are not machines for making and spending money, but spiritual beings, sons and daughters of the most high God?    

-Thomas Merton

 

Deluged daily by inundations of information,

we are awash in a swell

of contrasting and comparing,

 

expecting, wanting,

needing more,

better, quicker, sooner.

 

There is around and in us all

a cult of consumption, a climate of competition,

and a craving for achievement.

 

But might we show

by spacious pace and living slow

that every creature merits our attentive care?

 

Amid whirling crises, fueled by fanatical fear,

could the way to peace, in the urgency of this age,

begin by slowing … every thing … down?

 

Slower and lower, and less not more:

could just be the pathway

that cuts through earth’s dark night?

 

Peace is not the product of terror or fear.
Peace is not the silence of cemeteries.
Peace is not the silent result of violent repression.
Peace is the generous, tranquil contribution of all
to the good of all.
Peace is dynamism. Peace is generosity.
It is right and it is duty.  -Oscar Romero

 

Imagine relationship

valued over achievement,

and caring holding sway over competing.

 

What if contemplating

overruled calculating,

and giving-in won over winning?

 

For surrender, not vindication, is the way to reconciliation,

and peace is the fruit of a willingness

to compassionately dissolve distance.

 

It is so easy to simply get too busy to grow. It is so easy to commit ourselves to this century’s demand for product and action until the product consumes us and the actions exhaust us and we can no longer even remember why we set out to do them in the first place. -Joan Chittister

 

Much more

than the halting of hostility

or the absence of aggression,

 

peace is surely cultivated

by the prevalence of pardon,

and ripened by courageous reconciling.

 

Will YOU walk slower, would YOU live lower,

to safeguard God’s children today,

who simply wish to wonder and hope to play?

 

Then let the leaves fall,

and as you watch them letting go,

may they slowly undo the doings of your day.

 

joe

 

 

Click here to order:  Still In The Storm for Advent!

Keeping in Touch

Photo by Joe Grant © 2015

I no longer call you slaves, because slaves do not know their master’s business; I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything…

-John 15:15

 

Seeker,

How has friendship shaped, broken, and mended you?

 

We are not natural solitaries.

We are gatherers,

the most relational of all mammals.

 

From first touch to last breath,

we reach for connection,

our lifelong longings knit into belonging.

 

In the vicinity of relationship—

family, friend, neighborhood, tribe—

we come to know who we are and how to be human.

 

For we are born

missing a piece,

never whole (or holy) till we are part of.

 

Enticed by intimacy,

we defy difference and distance

in order to be bonded.

 

More than our abilities and choices,

beyond our actions or omissions,

it is our friendships that most clearly define us.

 

Friendship, that sound vessel

which carries us over oceans of ideology and culture,

keeps us together through the storms of life.

 

You gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything.

-Thomas Merton

 

In a hyper-individualized world,

notions of friend, community, connection

have become plastic.

 

The twin burdens

of commitment and co-responsibility

have been lightened,

 

while commodity

gains ascendancy

and “like” usurps “love”.

 

The finger taps which let us

share pictures and messages,

remain a shallow substitute for really being in touch.

 

In times like these

there may be no more endangered species

than the true and lasting friend.

 

Friends live in the shelter of one another.

-Celtic Proverb

 

The real virtue and practice

of friendship involves being in touch:

walking, watching, waiting, wondering, weeping… together.

 

Such befriending is a spiritual discipline

that requires cultivation,

a lifetime of tending and mending.

 

For friends must cover the cost of caring

if relationships are to ripen,

and bring sweetness to life.

 

I acknowledge there is no sweetness
that doesn’t leave a stain,
no sweetness that’s ever sufficiently sweet.

-Stephen Dunn

 

From club to collective, from committee to community,

from solidarity to friendship,

this is our pathway to the beloved circle.

 

Real friendship rides

the relentless tides of time,

that shift the sands of shared memory.

 

Only by keeping in touch

can friends take their bearings,

lovingly looking upon life together.

 

The sense of ourselves delivered by friendship is unparalleled.

 It is absolutely the right thing for us struggling human beings.

-Eugene Kennedy

 

If Eucharist is community’s culmination,

bread and wine of magnanimity—

one body blessed and broken,

 

then friendship is its distillation,

eighth sacrament dripping golden unanimity—

one soul shared by many.

 

How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!

-Psalm 133:1

 

Lasting friendship, forged in trust,

is a virtue begging attention, demanding depth,

and transfiguring the substance of life.

 

As ever-rising waves of woe

break upon this world we love,

the firelight of friendship can help us banish despair.

 

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

-John 15:13

 

What might you lay down

for the sake

of such lasting love?

 

May you this day find your way

to touch those friendships, fine and few,

that have shaped and made you, you.

 

(For the sake of your soul,

the health of our family, and the love of our common home,

get in touch with a good friend today!)

joe

 

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