Please Tell Me the Truth!
One of my friends recently made a statement that kind of floored me. First I thought, “Whaaat?” and then I felt kind of sad. Her statement was that she doesn’t get much feedback from friends—either positive or negative—about how they view or experience her. She has been in a feedback “void.” Nobody telling her she’s doing a bad job, but no one telling her she is doing a great job, either.
Be With Me
Have you ever heard the old Swedish proverb, “Shared joy is doubled joy; shared sorrow is halved sorrow?” Sharing what I feel with another person heightens my joys. And lessens my sorrows. In the context of friendship and connection, my feelings and my experiences are altered. Especially in the face of pain.
Rupture and Repair
Authentic, healthy friendships include times of disagreement. They just do. Ruptures to the relationship occur. Those times when a sharp word or thoughtless comment causes hurt. Or when one person betrays the other. Sometimes, there’s just an “oops” that occurs. Unintended, but hurtful, nonetheless.
Always and Forever: The Art of Friendship
It was the summer of 1971. A hot, sweaty summer as only the American South can boast. Our small window air conditioner feebly fought back against the heat and humidity while I lay there, too full of indolence to do much more than reach over and flip the switch on the radio. And, then a cool voice seeped into my sweltering room. That 23-year-old, brown-eyed, teen-crush James Taylor was singing Carole King’s “You’ve got a friend.”
More or Less…?
Years ago, I remember thinking that growing in spiritual maturity was like taking off coats. It seemed to me that my early years were spent doing the opposite—layering on coat after coat. “Oh, you don’t like this look? No worries, I have another.” And on another coat would go. Until so many coats covered me up, I lost the awareness of what lay beneath them. There were just too many coats.
Sacred-Sauntering
Nearly two decades ago, I was introduced to the concept of an “unhurried life” by a very wise spiritual director. The simple challenge to live in an unhurried way—actually, not theoretically—nearly melted my brain and stopped my neurons from firing. As a Strategic-Activator personality, unhurried seemed synonymous with unproductive. Lazy even.
