Tag Archives: friendship

Somewhere across the years, however – sometime during that melancholic and hard and, I suppose, necessary process that we call growing up – most of us lose the ability to make friends with such rapidity and such ease. We became cautious, guarded, reserved.

That's the benefit of friendship. It blesses me, and leads me to sacrifice on behalf of the one who is my friend.

Every year I hear from a good friend at Christmas time. I see her two boys growing older in the photos. I hear of the events in her life over the past year.

In every local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, under the direction of the Relief Society president, each willing adult woman is paired with another woman and together they are given a list of three or four (or sometimes more) other women in the ward to visit, serve, and care for.  This program is called “visiting teaching” and it often includes a monthly visit to discuss a Gospel message, but can also manifest as friendly phone calls, swapping babysitting, meeting up for lunch, bringing over freezer meals after a birth or during an illness, or just having a familiar face to greet in the halls at church.

Meditation is a friend of mine. The level of friend is the real question.

I am sure we all have different levels of our friend tier.

The city bus gives them the space and time. A 20-minute ride to school among strangers, unknown to each other, they are silent with each other for a week.