Divine Friendship

Out of all the things that I miss from my old college/university days, it is the network of friends I had who were a regular part of my life. Since being married and moving back to NB, my social life more or less consists of my wife, her family, and a handful of people from our church. And since I’m the pastor, I often feel like I have to be measured and deliberate about cultivating friendships inside the church (whether that’s right or wrong, I’m not sure).

Whereas once I could call up friends at a moment’s notice to go out to a movie, now it seems to require a vast assembly of factors to come into play at the same time to make it work at all. The few friends I have around here also all have wives, kids, jobs, responsibilities, commitments, etc. So usually I simply don’t bother. It hardly seems worth the effort. And there never seems to be the opportunity. Time often works against me when it comes to this. So I complain about it instead, normally to my wife!

In thinking about this, I realize something else. It’s not really about going to a movie once in awhile. More is going on than a desire to get out on occasion for some fun social time—though I would definitely welcome more of that! On top of wanting to head to the theatre with a couple of friends on the odd evening, I feel something deeper: the lack of genuine friendships, that personal space where I can be totally myself, feel accepted and loved and, yes, enjoy myself, laugh, and just have fun.

Part of why I feel this lack, I think, is it can become a little too easy to see myself only in terms of the responsibilities I fulfill: father, husband, and pastor. Of course, I get the fact that being a father is not only about responsibilities I fulfill and that being a husband is not only about obligatory duties. This is, in the best of times, also true of being a pastor. Each of these aspects of my identity involves relationships; all personally engage me. Indeed, I consider my wife to be my best friend.

But—and I hope I am not alone in this—sometimes I just want to be me. I want to be free of that feeling that in this situation I have to be something and not only somebody, free of the need to be performing tasks and instead freed to enjoy the slow passing of time over a conversation about shared interests, hobbies, concerns or whatever. Friendship is the space within which that freedom is most often experienced. I miss being around people—around friends—who simply want to be around me because I am who I am, and because we both read the same kinds of books or listen to the same kind of music or watch the same kinds of TV shows and movies.

Already I mentioned to the fact that as a pastor I don’t feel the freedom others should feel in cultivating friendships with people in church. This isn’t to say people from church are excluded from my social life; rather, the degree to which I would be able to experience that sense of genuine friendship, of intimate disclosure and honesty, of personal closeness and openness is very limited when it comes to folks in my congregation. And this is precisely the kind of friendship I am really talking about. It may include going to the movies, but it isn’t limited to that.

And the thing is, I don’t believe that friendships are frivolous and peripheral to all other relationships. Though so many of us become too busy with family life and work to put any energy into potential or existing friendships (I’m looking in the mirror here!), I think that friendships help us to be more of ourselves, to fulfill our God-given identities, to help us see more clearly who we are and who we can be. Other people draw out of us more than we can draw out of ourselves.

When it comes to Christian friendships, their value is that they’re a form of spiritual encouragement and support, and one of God’s ways of meeting us himself. In all the evangelical talk of having a personal relationship with God, one thing is often missing: that we often experience our own relationship with God through the relationships we have with other believers; that is, our relationship with God is vertical, yes, but it is also horizontal. To some extent it is vertical only if it is also horizontal.

To put it more practically, only when I experience friends praying with me (and for me) can I sometimes understand how it is that God is personal—and that he is with me. Perhaps this is why I’ve occasionally felt a connection between the struggles I have in my prayer life and the lack of Christian friends with whom I can pray in the same room.

In my experience, the times when I’ve felt the presence of God most closely are rarely those times when I’ve been alone; instead, there are usually at least a couple of other people in the room. Those moments when I have been most aware of God’s friendship are those moments when I have been most aware that God has provided me with Christian friends. While not encompassing the full meaning of the title, I think, too, this is part of what it means to call God Emmanuel, “God with us.” And though it’s true that knowing this involves a whole lot more than going out with a friend to the movies, maybe it at least needs to begin there. Hmmm . . . maybe I need to make a phone call?

Ramblings about friendship inspired by late-night surfing . . .

For the last couple of weeks my allergies have been a daily annoyance, sometimes waking me up in the middle of the night and keeping me up for nearly an hour at a time until my allergy medication takes effect. One consequence of this is that I end up feeling completely drug out the next day. Mornings, typically my prime work time, find me wandering around zombie-like. Concentration is nearly non-existent. Last week especially felt like a complete loss. Though ironically it was on a night when I found myself awake at 3am that I finally realized what my Sunday sermon was supposed to be about. This was Friday night (technically Saturday morning). Once the idea was settled -- a message looking at 2 & 3 John -- the rest came quite quickly. It was what my mother-in-law would call a "God-thing." I agree with her.

On one of the many nights I found myself sniffing and sneezing unable to sleep I found myself on the computer surfing. In particular, I was looking up old friends, checking out their blogs, and seeing if I could find out what they were presently up to. I didn't have a whole lot of luck. But it got me thinking.

Since moving back to NB from Ontario and getting married and becoming a dad, my time has pretty much been divided between home and church, between family and ministry. My world has contracted. Most days, once my daughter is in bed all I usually want to do is relax, spend time with my wife, and precious little else. What this means is that I have largely lost touch with most friends. I rarely am in contact with anyone other than immediate family and church folk. My wife has long since given up exhorting me to call friends who live long distance. In my own defense, old friends have rarely shown initiative in keeping in touch with me. It can cut both ways. But this says something about how, once we're no longer in school and find ourselves married with children or busy with ministry or work, our priorities definitely change. How we use what time we have is usually predetermined by family and career. Other things often fall off the radar. It's not that we deliberately shut out old friends, but that anything which doesn't immediately relate to life right here and right now gets crowded out.

Being in my mid-30s also means that making new friends isn't easy. I'm not going anywhere most of the time where I am likely to meet new people who might become friends. I recall a Seinfeld joke that said that the friends you have once you're in your 30s are your friends -- you're not getting anymore! I don't think that's precisely true, but as a pastor in a small town it is hard to make friends. The members of your congregation can't usually be the sort of friends that you catch a movie with. I don't often think of this, but on those occasions when my wife and daughter are away for a day or two I do sometimes wish there was someone I could call and get together with, someone who shared my interests without also knowing me as a pastor.

I have a Facebook account. I never use it, and so I should just cancel it and close down my profile. Anyone I know who is on Facebook will browse my profile in vain for new information, updates, or recent pictures. I've never been motivated enough to maintain it. I once did close my profile but opened it again so I could find out if a friend's wife had their baby. But it does seem to me that Facebook has taken over from e-mail and other options as the preferred means of keeping in touch with friends, old and new. I almost feel guilty for not using it, as though somehow I've committed the sin of not-keeping-up-with-the-latest-in-communication-technology and as a result have demonstrated a complete lack of interest in keeping up with friends, especially old friends. I only know that the little experience I have with Facebook seems to bear out my feeling that it could easily become a major time drain. I guess I don't have any sound reasons for missing friends, not if I don't make the effort afforded by the technological options available.