Today’s post is from Secular Mornings’ guest author, Jack Kelly.
Today’s text is an excerpt from the book The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran
And a youth said, Speak to us of Friendship.
And he answered, saying:
Your friend is your needs answered.
He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.
And he is your board and your fireside.
For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the “nay” in your own mind, nor do you withhold the “ay.”
And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;
For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not;
For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.
And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.
For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend.
If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.
For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?
Seek him always with hours to live.
For it is his to fill your need but not your emptiness.
And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.
For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
(Pages 55-56)
Our culture relegates friendship to playing second fiddle to romantic love and family. While it’s understandable that the family unit and finding a life partner are the primary focus of our relational attention, it seems a tragedy that friendship gets such short thrift.
Our culture has a deficit of friendships, with 12% of Americans reporting having no friends. Plenty of ink has been spilled about the modern literal epidemic of loneliness and its causes. From the internet and smartphones, to our culture of working long hours, to patterns of internal migration disconnecting people from their community, many reasons make the U.S. a particularly lonely country. I don’t think those reasons are going to be easily changed anytime soon, but I do think we can reframe the way we talk and think about friendship to better understand its role in our lives.
I think friendship is often an area of life that is neglected because it is considered a luxury, something to do when you have time to kill. I like the framing of friendship being something that is more intentional, a practice where you spend time to live, not just out of wanting to escape loneliness but to create a connection. Not being attached because the nature of friendships are to wax and wane and sometimes end entirely.
What would bringing more intentionality to your friendships look like? Is it an area of your life that consistently only gets the time that is leftover after everything else, is that what you want?
 | A guest post by
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Reminds me of a quote I saw on Twitter this week, from C.S. Lewis:
“Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I should say, 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.”