Grateful Heart
"Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, 'What! You, too! I thought I was the only one.'"
C. S. Lewis
Well, the art show was so much fun that I wonder now why I was in such a state before. My daddy used to call people like me, "high-wired," which means tightly wound and intense, so everything is amplified and exhausting. I run around with my hair on fire about almost everything, and what it's earned me is one great big pain in the belly. But the gathering on Sunday was a friends-palooza. It touched my heart---"bigly."
When I say I couldn't make it without friends, I mean that in the most profound way. Friends provide the infrastructure of life. If you don't have them--and I mean friends who have your back, who support you even when you aggravate the daylights out of them--the whole structure of life is fragile at best. A house of straw. Friends give life its cement and bricks.
Oscar Wilde said, "Ultimately, the bond of all companionship, whether in marriage or friendship, is conversation." He was so right. One of the best things about a gathering like the one on Sunday is getting to catch up with people you don't see everyday. Some members of my family--Susan and Mike--drove down from Gadsden. We've reached that life-stage where we only meet at the funerals of mutual family members, so to see them at a celebration of life was such a treat. When we come together with old friends, we talk and talk, as though we're trying to cram years worth of distance into an ice-cube-size moment in time. The great thing with friends is that there is no need to have the awkward warm-up period--you begin right where you left off, as though no time had elapsed in between. I talked to so many people I love but don't see often. Conversation is the glue that holds friendships together.
Friendships, like puppies, need to be nurtured. Fed with good conversation and frequent connection. They are reciprocal, they require give and take. But mostly, friendships are adventures of the heart--we are simply soul connected to some people without knowing why. Friendships are a reflection of the Great Mystery of love. Thank God for them.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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