ON FRIENDSHIP

I have been around the sun almost 66 times a few days from now, and have been doing a bit of thinking about my life lately, making it this far. Of course, today, 66 is now considered to be mid age. I must admit I’m living my dream. It took, at least, two- thirds of my life working to get here, and help from my incredible wife of 27 years, and two great kids. Coming from the big city, my dream was always to live in nature, to live in the woods…well, my house sits in the middle of a 50-acre property of a thick woods in Central Maine. I see, nor hear no neighbors when I walk out the door in the morning to feed the animals, and at night, it feels as though the sky belongs all to me. It is beautiful to live here and sense the glory of solitude and commune with all the nature as the Seasons run their course. But as I dwell on this, I know it is not the highest value of my life, what really remains the most significant value of my entire life is the fact that I have and have had wonderful friends along the way, sharing all the flavors that this living experience offers us. Making my life so much more than it could ever be. I can say this, that if you are not working on friendship each day, your personhood and maturity will be stunted, and you will be less of the person that you were meant to be. Of all the people that have been friends with me in this time and have passed on, I owe a great debt for their encouragement of my own growth and potential. Some were teachers, spiritual mentors and just kind, everyday people sharing their wisdom and experience with me when I was growing up. Some were mean, cantankerous, and maybe deceiving..but we must learn from everyone. I have spent many an hour dialoguing, one of my favorite activities now, as I have aged, face to face with another and being in some kind of different space. Martin Buber, one of the great theologians of the 20th century said there are two relationships that we have with the other, one is the I- IT and the I –THOU. The former is treating the other as an object, using them for one’s purpose, it is egoistic, the latter is treating the other as being sacred, kinda of like seeing another face of God in our midst, it is soul to soul. I love to hear people tell their stories and be transparent. It’s in that genuine dialogue I do sense the sacred presence. There lies the opportunity to open ourselves up and truly free ourselves from being alone. All these people I have encountered in my life have left an indelible soulprint in my mind and have helped to make me who I am. Some more than others but all have offered something.
Like a finger print, the soul print is the unique essence that we all leave behind to those that follow us. You are leaving your soulprint right now in the way you open yourself up to the other. Be free then, judge no one, be genuine and dialogue whenever you get the chance. I have built a large treasury of these along the way, they remain my riches that no one can rob me of. I love the diversity of the human race and I hope to go on meeting others, even on blogstream.