Why We Need Spiritual Friendship
On this stormy nor’easter evening, I keep thinking about our current Nautilus class and the classes that have come before. With memories of our inaugural retreat just a few weeks ago, I am struck again by how people who arrived as near strangers can, in a matter of two days, turn to embrace each other as if they’d journeyed together through life’s vicissitudes for years.
C.S. Lewis famously named four kinds of loves: affection, friendship, romantic love, and charity. Of the four, he believed friendship was the one modern people value least. It doesn’t seem necessary for survival, so these relationships tend to atrophy amid our busy lives. Yet Lewis rightly saw friendship as one of the great “goods” that give life its worth. Lewis gave the memorable picture of how lovers face each other, while friends stand side by side, looking together at something they both care about. Friendship arises the moment two people realize they see the same thing and delight in discovering that another sees it too.
The concept of Spiritual friendship takes Lewis’s picture one step further. In the opening lines of Spiritual Friendship, the twelfth-century monk Aelred of Rievaulx turns to his friend and says, “You and I are here, and I hope that Christ is between us as a third” (Spiritual Friendship 1.1). In a spiritual friendship, we stand side by side, and what we look at together is God. This is what makes spiritual friendships so unique, creating the kind of depth that people were created for.
Spiritual friendships seem rare because they require the kind of time and intentionality that so few of us seem to have, but when they develop, they open places within us we didn’t know others could access. The singular dynamic that makes these friendships so unique is an awareness of God’s presence and desire to open our eyes and ears to receive spiritual wisdom and communicate God’s love for the other. These friendships take seriously the reality of a loving God who is active in our world and in our lives. This conviction is at the forefront of how we listen and what we desire to share with the other. When Spiritual friends come together, they anticipate a third voice, and that voice can speak to the depth of our soul. While friends can listen and offer needed advice, not every friendship opens our ears to hear God’s deeper stirring. Friends can ask good questions that prompt a different perspective, but spiritual friends somehow slow us down so we can hear the voice that matters most.
I’ve been reading through one of my favorite bible passages in preparation for our first Nautilus Alumni Retreat. Two dejected friends walk home towards Emmaus, talking through their crushed hopes given the crucifixion they witnessed in Jerusalem. What’s intriguing about this passage is that they don’t recognize Jesus walking beside them. Interestingly, it wasn’t until they slowed down to share a meal that they recognized Jesus had been with them all along. With this realization, there’s a comical irony in the two disciples sharing their grief over the loss of the very person who was walking right next to them! What laughter and joy must have filled their hearts as they burned, realizing how present Jesus had been, not only on their journey, but in the entirety of Israel’s history.
There is so much happening in this story, but on one level it is about two people who become spiritual friends because their eyes have been opened to see Jesus in their midst, and it has utterly transformed them. Spiritual friendship starts with slowing down enough to realize that God has been in our midst the entire time. In this passage, Jesus doesn’t seem to rush to reveal Himself. This recognition doesn’t happen by accident. He seems to wait patiently for us and for the opportunity to make His loving presence known. Those who deliberately choose to still themselves are well positioned to recognize God’s voice (cf. Mary and Martha). When we behold Jesus and hear his voice, we see our world more clearly, allowing the confidence of God’s loving presence to shape our response to what lies in front of us.
We all need friends like this who can help us recognize that Jesus is indeed present in our lives, who help us slow down enough to know that God is God. And when people learn to attend together to the presence of God, a special bond is forged that offers a glimpse of the world to come. It’s in this hope that we learn not to give up meeting together, and to allow the storms of life to be weathered with friends willing to help us see that we are not alone in our journey.
Who are the friends who help you see and hear God?
Quotation from Aelred of Rievaulx, Spiritual Friendship, trans. Lawrence C. Braceland (Cistercian Publications, 2010)