“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.”   
—Anais Nin.

“My friends are my estate.”
   —Emily Dickinson.

Friendship is a constantly shifting landscape.  As we strive to “make new friends, but keep the old,” it is a mixed experience.  Time and distance do affect our ability to keep in touch, to nurture each other, to remain on the same wavelength.  It doesn’t always work, even when friends have the best of intentions (in an ideal set of circumstances).

       But we surely are changed by our friends:  by a chance comment, a spontaneous hug, a recommended book, a phone message or email out of the blue—or the misty past.  How we respond to any of it is up to us.  New worlds are yet waiting to be born in us, in any time, at any age.

       Some of the closest soulmates in my life are fairly recent acquaintances—yet the depth is clearly there, based on what we have both experienced to this point in life, and our willingness to reveal ourselves to each other.  The future itself opens up as we walk down the path a bit further together—again, as we choose, and for as long as the gift of friendship between us is given and sustained.

       Last weekend I gave a workshop on friendship at Lorena’s Gifts with a Story (http://www.lorenasonline.com) in Monteagle, Tennessee.  Friendship is one of those topics you can talk about, while simultaneously experiencing it as the reason you are in this particular company.  (“The soul selects her own society,” wrote Emily Dickinson.) 

Friendship is the “glue” that isn’t often talked about because it is kind of like the air you breathe—what keeps you going.  But sometimes it IS good to talk about it, to think about it, to share what it means to us, now and down the line.

       In the new Preface to my book The Faces of Friendship (p. x) I speak of “seeking to find patterns and understand context, working and praying and questioning as we go.”  Unexamined friendship is certainly worth having—but some of the richest connections we will know are friendships undergirded by reflection and intelligence.  

       Francois Mauriac wrote:  “No love, no friendship, can cross the path of our destiny without leaving some mark on it forever.”  The consciousness of that truth is an important part of our journey as friends—through tears, as well as mutual delight. 

       To each of you who are a part of my world, as you read this blog (and as I thread these thoughts through your world)—

Thank you!

Isabel Anders

Everafter Cottage

Sewanee, Tennessee

My husband and I have recently returned from a visit to York, England, where our daughter is in graduate school. It has been a trip back in time, to a city that in Roman times was the principal military base in Britain. We were awed daily at the brickwork of its multilayered history, its narrow cobbled streets and imposing ruins that surrounded us in our modern touristy meanderings: going to lunch, to market, to tea. I can understand why she is reluctant to leave her life there when she gets her degree this fall.

Roads and byways are a great symbol of connectedness, of friendship—since we accompany each other while in the process of getting from one place to the next. And our memories and sensory perceptions form a part of that journey—cues and clues that others have walked it before—making our own experience all the richer (and often more confusing and difficult to sort out).

It helps to have a guide: a book or map or, failing that, a persistent sense of direction and a homing instinct. We were fortunate to be able to rely on my daughter’s familiarity with the locale, written and pictured helps and signs, and a growing orientation to the terrain during the week’s stay—though we did get somewhat lost while on our own one day!

Even the guidebooks admit that the York street names can be confusing: the historic stone gateways into the city are called “bars”; and the term “gate” in York street names actually means “street,” from the old Viking word “gata.” Just to mix things up further for us Americans: a “yard” is actually an alley, while a “court” is a yard.

We attended a morning Eucharist on Trinity Sunday at York Minster, the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. The 10:00 a.m. service happened to be an ordination at which the Archbishop of York ordained six men and four women to holy orders. More signs and wonders in a journey that we were privileged to participate in. The heart-stopping beauty and vast dimensions of space and architecture around us served to enclose our human endeavors with greater significance, forming a visual tribute to the dignity of our mutual journey.

But we are happy also to have survived through the purgatorial maze of airport security and rushing to far-flung terminal gates in order to have caught our airborne way home. Our own local cathedral on the University of the South campus, All Saints Chapel in its unique gothic setting, beckons us back. So do our friends and our animals. We have traversed many miles, inner and outer, to be here right now.

Somehow the wider world again seems more accessible (this is not our first trip abroad) … though now you must carry your liquid bottles in a plastic bag and take off your shoes (and even get frisked) at points along the way—just to get the chance to walk ancient streets where such a life as ours could not have been conceived or dreamed of by most of its past travelers!

Fleeting memories of the many faces that passed us by—especially in London and at train stations—remind us that it is a gift to be one, to be many, to be alive and still trekkin’.

Isabel Anders
Everafter Cottage
Sewanee, Tennessee