Bird Droppings November 6, 2012

Is there really friendship?

 

It has been nearly six years since I was meeting with our builder and realtor doing a walk-through of our soon to be new house. We are heading back to the country and away from traffic and constant human encroachment at least for the time being. As I pulled away two red tailed hawks soared from a patch of pines over the field behind our house, a deer ran down through the pasture good omens my great great grandmother would have said, and a nice start for a new house. Since then I have reported numerous encounters with our neighbor hawks and more recently a kestrel who sits atop their old dead walnut tree later in the evenings when the big hawks are gone. With all of the housing issues we may be without neighbors for some time as building is at a standstill in our subdivision and county.

I often make a general statement that I have few friends and lead a semimonastic existence. I really have no one that I call up and say hey let’s see a movie or sit and talk. I am not saying I do not have friends for there are many I consider friends across the United States and around the world.

 

“A friend is one of the nicest things you can have, and one of the best things you can be.” Douglas Pagels

 

Sitting in a high school I see daily how easily we cast out the word as we walk through life, friend. This person and or that person, they are my friend. We live in a vacuum of self-made perceptions and seal it with those we deem necessary at the moment.

 

“A single rose can be my garden… a single friend, my world.” Leo Buscaglia

 

As I am looking at how and why we do what we do and say what we say I often wonder at that word or term. I am often looking for definitive rationale as to what is a friend. It is so easy to grasp sayings and thoughts of others each idea stronger than the next. As I read each concept and definition all seem to be good ones and each leading to others and more understanding. Yet still we question.

 

“The antidote for fifty enemies is one friend.” Aristotle

 

“When we honestly ask ourselves which person in our lives means the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.  The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.” Henri Nouwen

 

Even the idea of trust is a loose one, experience and learning play into the mix as well. What is and who is a friend?

 

“In everyone’s life, at some time, our inner fire goes out.  It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being.  We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” Albert Schweitzer

 

A friend should be a fire starter, that person who can bring spark back to our soul, so often without our knowing.

 

“The most I can do for my friend is simply be his friend.” Henry David Thoreau

 

Simplicity is a badge of friendship even the greats of old always indicate friendship is often just being a friend, there are no prerequisites no previous requirements.

 

“A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” Arnold Glasow

 

Several years ago at our last house back in one of the summer months, a pear tree in our yard snapped from the weight of the fruit. I wondered what if I had reinforced the timbers shoring up the branches or lessened the load perhaps I could have spared the tree another year or another day.

 

“The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart.” Elisabeth Foley

 

Back during the Katrina crisis watching and listening to folks I have not seen in thirty even nearly forty years pull together in efforts for fellow high school classmates who lost all in New Orleans is an interesting experience. Sitting at my table secreted away in a small town in central Georgia many miles from my old home in Pennsylvania watching emails drift by with information and thoughts and concerns.

 

“One’s friends are that part of the human race with which one can be human.” George Santayana

 

So many years ago I recall coining a word humanbeingism, for a youth retreat. That aspect of which makes us who we are is humanbeingism.

 

“A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.” Donna Roberts

 

In that same time period so many years ago I recall a song or two. It was G17 on the Jute box at the Dairy Queen just outside Macon Georgia in 1974 or so. It was that great song by folk singer Loudon Wainwright III, “The Dead Skunk Song”, and it was ever so briefly at number one.  Or perhaps the live version of Jessica by the Allman Brothers band at seventeen minutes a difficult piece to whistle or hum and hard to get the slide guitar parts humming.
”If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone.  A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.” Samuel Johnson

 

It has been a few years since my Kastinger hiking boots disappeared and we had shared many a mile of trail in the Appalachian Mountains. They were resoled so many times and chewed on by my Newfoundland puppy those many years ago. I was thinking friendship is akin to my Kastinger boots. The first weekend after buying them I went hiking. It was early on in that hike I learned they blister your feet while you are breaking them in. Later after that worn till soles wear through and patched and resoled anew time after time. It was many the roads and trail ahead yet always there was a solid footing.

 

“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art…. It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” C.S. Lewis

 

Lewis wrote so much in his time. But this simple statement is a powerful one. We do not need friendship to survive but it gives value to surviving. A monastic life of solitude is fine but how much more can be spun out of life with friends.
”The language of friendship is not words but meanings.” Henry David Thoreau

 

Henry David I read as a disciple and friend of my hero Ralph Waldo Emerson. It is meaning that adds credence to friendship not simply the words we mouth and utter in passing. As I end this beautiful day even though it is cloudy and a bit chilly a thought from Poet Emily Bronte.
Love is like the wild-rose briar;
Friendship is like the holly-tree.
The holly is dark when the rose briar blooms,
But which will bloom most constantly?
Emily Brontë

 

So another day ended and a new one begins and another process of determining friendship and or not. My dear friends please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts and always give thanks namaste.

 

Wa de (Skee)

bird