Bird Droppings November 16, 2025
Isn’t friendship a rather simple concept?

Recently, I had the mother of three former students tell me how much her sons and daughter thought of me while I was coming into my favorite store, Kroger. So here I am, sitting upstairs in my writing hovel, pondering in the stillness of early morning. We all need ego stroking at one time or another. I recalled the time I had those students in class and how difficult it was, yet so often when we pay attention to a student, we do not realize how much we are truly affecting that person. Many times, it is years later, as is the case with this parent commenting to me a few nights ago as I walked into the store.

“I reach down and touch the delicate leaf of a plant. My friend’s words rise in my heart. ‘Everything lives, everything dies, and everything leans to the light.’ If I only knew this, it would be enough.” Kent Nerburn, Small Graces

When we shine a bit of light on an individual, they turn just as the plant will slowly turn to face the light; in many ways, that person will as well. I recall a few years ago, one of my students requested to be in my resource class all day. I really did not want them all day, but he responded that how I did things made sense to him. Friendship so often is like sunlight. I started replacing my overhead lights a few years ago with grow lights. Actually, the color is so much easier to deal with, and the colors of things are more real than the sickening yellow of standard fluorescent bulbs. I never told anyone that, maybe that’s why they liked my room.

“Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.” St. Thomas Aquinas

How do we support students and friends by throwing sunlight their way, through simple things, quiet moments, a touch, a smile, or an email?

“Friendship is one of the most tangible things in a world which offers fewer and fewer supports.” Kenneth Branagh

“I value the friend who for me finds time on his calendar, but I cherish the friend who for me does not consult his calendar.” Robert Brault

Yesterday, I printed out several pictures, but two were of owls that were, in effect, clay turned jug owls made by a folk potter from north Georgia. I met Grace Nell Hewell, who was the matriarch of a family of potters in Gillsville, Georgia. She is a sixth-generation potter from a family that has been turning pots for a living at that location for generations. Many years ago I dropped them off in my friend’s room; there was no reason really, just because she’s a friend. She taught art and discussed pottery in her sculpture class; sometimes, we worked together on simple projects.

“Old friends pass away, new friends appear. It is just like the days. An old day passes, a new day arrives. The important thing is to make it meaningful: a meaningful friend — or a meaningful day.” Dalai Lama

“I do then with my friends as I do with my books. I would have them where I can find them, but I seldom use them.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

When I think of friends, I often say I really don’t have that many friends – one or two, and usually a name or two will come to mind. Yet when I am walking about in life, there are few whom I do not truly consider friends. I sit back in my chair upstairs, typing away at my computer, with a row of recently acquired books before me, when a friend of my son’s takes an interest in an area of thought I have been following for several years. Behind me, shelves of books, theology, education, psychology, literature, and poetry surround the walls, and directly in front of me, a quote.

“A very powerful axe in a master’s hand accomplishes much; that same in the hands of a child, nothing.” Edited by A.J. Russell, from Gods Calling

Emerson would have to be one of my heroes, and I always seem to have something from him at my fingertips, often paraphrased a bit. Friends are like books; you have them on a shelf, waiting for the need or specific instance when you will need them. I ran into a friend from school while shopping at the grocery store. She said she hates going grocery shopping and will try to go once a month. I visit my friends daily. I never know who I might meet through coincidences. Yesterday, I went to pick up a few items, and an absent student was there riding his skateboard. We talked. Another student was inside, and a friend whom I have known for years was also shopping. So often my wife warns me as I walk in, ‘Don’t stop and talk to all of your friends; you will be all day.’

“Give me work to do, Give me health, Give me joy in simple things, Give me an eye for beauty, A tongue for truth, A heart that loves, A mind that reasons, A sympathy that understands. Give me neither malice nor envy, but a true kindness and a noble common sense. At the close of each day, give me a book and a friend with whom I can be silent.” S. M. Frazier

How do we as friends support each other in the midst of the turmoil of life and the tribulations of simply walking the face of the earth? How do we support one another as we struggle to cross the stream with slippery, wet rocks?

“Friendship needs no words…” Dag Hammarskjold

“But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine.” Thomas Jefferson

A seldom heard phrase, a seldom whispered thought, and a seldom thought idea are only seldom responded to, so then do it, as NIKE says, or be a friend.

“The real test of friendship is: Can you literally do nothing with the other person? Can you enjoy those moments of life that are utterly simple together? They are the moments people look back on at the end of life and number as their most sacred experiences.” Eugene Kennedy

As I finish up this morning, and in the course of the last hour or so, thoughts of friends, not just one or two, that I would attest to, but ever so many that I see and talk to every day, each moment, and email. Some are in college, and I see them once a year or two; others I have not seen in several years, with whom I correspond daily via email. Still others share my home, and some I see each day as I walk the halls at school or sit in the hallway, observing and listening as people pass by. Friendship is a cement that builds a life on as we travel from here to there; friends are everywhere. Sitting back, that sounds like Dr. Seuss, so today justice to all and keep all in harm’s way on your mind and in your hearts, and always to give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,
Mitakuye Oyasin
(We are all related)
docbird