Coracle news
Two Halves of Life: On Friendship
Posted Wednesday 25 January 2012
Is friendship undervalued? If we were to reflect upon our relationships over our lifetime might they reveal something of our faith journey?
Presence and Fidelity
Considering The Gateway of Friendship, a chapter in Michael Paul Gallagher's book Dive Deeper: The human poetry of faith. Some quotes and handouts based on this and other writings...
- In the experience of human presence and relationship we glimpse the gateway into a mystery that surrounds us – that we live and move within another Presence and are invited into another Relationship.
- When (I was young) I thought of friendship in terms of mutual closeness and sharing, and of a certain excitement in being together. Now I feel things differently. That dimension of emotional intensity remains vital but is no longer at the centre. Perhaps the greatest gift we can offer one another is not intimacy but something subtler, less pressing: a certain quality of presence and fidelity through changes.
- There is a joy and a cost in our being present to one another. But our quality of life is measured by our skill in mastering those languages, by the ease and fluency or our being present – to ourselves, to others, and ultimately, to God. Handout: Reflective questions on friendship composed by Jane Edwards Handout: Picture and quotations