Friendship colors the very air we breathe. It is everywhere around us. We can see it in the eyes of old women in the kitchens of the women they love. We can hear it in the voice of a young woman giggling to another over the phone. We can feel it beating in our own hearts on lonely rainy days in far away places when, most alone, we touch the memory of those who have walked through life with us, and walk with us still. Friendship binds past and present and makes bearable the uncertainty of the future.

What exactly is a friend? Is friendship really possible? Is friendship a necessary good or simply a social filler? Is friendship spiritual? Isn’t God alone enough? What, if anything, does friendship have to do with living life forever on the brink of becoming?

There is a long answer and a short one to the question of what friendship has to do with personal development and spiritual growth. The short answer is, “Everything,” — if, that is, we are to believe the thinkings of the philosophers, the findings of modern social scientists, as well as the witness of history. The long answer comes in the slowly dawning awareness that once we are loved, we have an obligation to live as best we can. Once we have discovered the love that doubles life but does not consume it, we must live so that the other, who walks by the light within us as well as the light within herself, may not proceed befuddled by our own failure to illuminate the way. The love of a friend comes always with a lantern in hand.

The desert monastics understood the role of spiritual friendship and considered it an essential part of the spiritual life even when they exalted apathaeia–passionlessness–and warned against the distractions of human attachments. The mandate of hospitality brought these women and men to attend to the physical as well as the spiritual needs of those whom they saw as their spiritual disciples.

Saint Ambrose saw human friendship as a necessary part of the outpouring of God’s friendship. “Because God is true,” Ambrose argued, “friends can be true … Because God offers friendship, we can be each other’s friends.”

Saint Augustine assumed community and human relationships as the ground of growth. “The more friends I shall have,” he wrote, “the more we can love wisdom in common.”

And Saint Benedict considered the manifestation of the self to another as a fundamental step on the path to full human development.

It may, in fact, be the friends we make who most accurately measure the depth of our own souls. For that we are each responsible.

“My friends are my estate,” wrote Emily Dickinson. Friends are, in other words, the only wealth I will have at the end. My friends will be the treasure I accrue in life. It is surely, then, of the highest spiritual order to celebrate the Sacrament of Friendship.

SUNDAY, MARCH 1: Of all the significant choices we make in life, choosing our friends is one of the earliest, one of the most important, one of the most impacting. They confirm us, challenge us, and commit a piece of their own lives to ours. The question is, For what?

MONDAY, MARCH 2: Friends are the people we go to when what we want to talk about, we don’t want to talk to everybody about.

TUESDAY, MARCH 3: Friends can be just like us–which means they enjoy what we enjoy and are interested in the same things we are. But the question then is, Are they really challenging enough to move us to what should be our next level in life?

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4: Friends can be totally unlike us–which means they bring things into our lives that we might never have experienced without them.

THURSDAY, MARCH 5: Friends have a great deal to do with who and what we ourselves become–not because they direct us but because they simply allow us to be ourselves when others want us to be someone else.

FRIDAY, MARCH 6: There are good-time friends–and then there are real friends whose presence in our lives makes life more possible than it could ever be without them. As Henry Nouwen says of friendship, “The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing, and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.”

SATURDAY, MARCH 7: Friends have a place in our lives that is more affirming than a sibling, more freeing than a parent, more understanding than a confessor, more unemotionally emotional about us than a spouse. There is simply no doing without a person who can allow us to be ourselves at all times, but at the same time, insist that we be everything we can be. “A friend,” Walter Winchell said, “is someone who walks in when everybody else walks out.”

SUNDAY, MARCH 8: Friends don’t nag us, or judge us, or condemn us. Most of all, they don’t try to stop us from trying other ways to be alive. Instead, they simply stand by while we grow. Robert Browning puts it this way: “Hand grasps at hand, eye lights eye in good friendship/and great hearts expand/And grow one in the sense of this world’s life.”

MONDAY, MARCH 9: We are a culture of colleagues and associates and acquaintances and connections. But friendship is so much more than that. Friendship is a cultivated taste. It requires that I find someone just like me—only better. As Romain Rolland says of it, “The friend who understands you creates you.”

TUESDAY, MARCH 10: When we confuse companionship with friendship, we run the risk of being willing to do anything that companionship demands in order to avoid loneliness. But what everyone really needs at some time in life is the willingness to be alone when character demands it.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11: Friendship is another kind of love, less demanding of attention than spouses, surer than the vagaries of change, more important than direction. Friendship simply is, exists, remains, when all other things pass away.

THURSDAY, MARCH 12: Friends lighten the daily irritations of life. They’re there when we need help, when it’s time to laugh, when we need someone to understand the pain of the day as well as the event that’s causing it, when we simply need someone to be patient enough to see us through. Or as Publilius Syrus writes, “A pleasant companion on a journey is as good as a carriage.”

FRIDAY, MARCH 13: To know that we are understood is the essence of new life. Those who understand us––and accept us regardless of what it is that we’re struggling with–give us a chance to begin again. They free us from our secret compulsions, take away the energy it takes to keep them secret and give us the support we need to grow beyond them.

SATURDAY, MARCH 14: The love of a good friend is the balm that frees us, supports us, makes possible for us the fullness of life.

SUNDAY, MARCH 15: The frozen moments of life melt at the appearance of a friend. As Tennessee Williams reminds us, “The violets in the mountains have broken the rocks.”

MONDAY, MARCH 16: Friends come unburdened by what burdens us; they come bringing the care that seeks nothing for itself. And then the world changes for those locked in loneliness.

TUESDAY, MARCH 17: Friends are the other side of our soul. They enable us to see what is not visible when our own spirit is lost in darkness.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 18: There is no one who does not need friends. There is no one who can really go it alone. There is no one who does not need to talk to someone they can trust to help them sift the truth from the dross. The reason is clear to those who have real friends. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is clear: “There is no hope of joy except in human relations.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 19: Friendship is one of the treasures of life that cannot be bought. It can only be cultivated. It must be earned. It must be tended. It is impossible to have a good friend without being one ourselves.

FRIDAY, MARCH 20: Friendship increases every joy and makes every sorrow bearable. It adds depth to the ephemeral and meaning to the superficial. It is a lifeline over a gorge without a net. It makes what is average about life outstanding. It is a telescope into the beauty of life. Conrad Aiken says of it, “Music I heard with you was more than music. And bread I broke with you was more than bread.”

SATURDAY, MARCH 21: With a friend there is nothing to fear in life. Without a friend there is little to trust.

SUNDAY, MARCH 22: “Connections” are not friends. They are people who are using us just as we are willing to use them for our own advancement. The loss of a friend can break the heart. The loss of a “connection” we never really notice–outside our contact list. As John Leonard says, “It takes a long time to grow an old friend.”

MONDAY, MARCH 23: Friendship is what’s left over when all the acquaintances of life have disappeared and the family is dispersed and we don’t recognize anybody at the class reunions anymore. Then there will be one or two left that have always been there. Those are your friends.

TUESDAY, MARCH 24: Count your friends one at a time. When the number gets past five, count again. You’ve gone too high.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 25: To be a friend I must commit to confidentiality, be devoted to honesty and be ready to settle down in the midst of hell with my friend, prepared to stay there til the sun comes up again.

THURSDAY, MARCH 26: Friends know the best in one another and understand the worst of one another, too. But the real test of the relationship is that they are neither jealous of the best in us nor unforgiving of the worst in us.

FRIDAY, MARCH 27: Beware the negativity of a friend who claims it is only humor. This person is trying to tell you something they will someday surely tell someone else.

SATURDAY, MARCH 28: Real friends tell us what we need to know about ourselves and then stay with us while we grow into our best selves.

SUNDAY, MARCH 29: “Friendship,” Coleridge writes, “is a sheltering tree.” It shades us in the sun, shelters us in the rain and protects us from the harsh winds of life. Our friends stand between us and the storms of life to give us the time and reflection we need to become our strongest selves.

MONDAY, MARCH 30: “Friend” is a very important, very significant word. Use it carefully, sparingly, for fear you might confuse yourself about who it might really be. “True friendship,” George Washington wrote, “is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation.”

TUESDAY, MARCH 31: “Well, those are all great ideas,” the guy said. “But how do you know if you’ve really made a good friend?”

“Well,” the wag said, “Try this. It really works! Put your dog and your new friend into the trunk of your car together for an hour. Now, ask yourself, When you open the trunk, which one was really glad to see you?”

LET'S SHARE OUR THOUGHTS
The following discussion questions, Scripture echo, journal prompts, and prayer are meant to help you reflect more deeply on The Monastic Way. Choose at least two suggestions and respond to them. You may do it as a personal practice or gather a group interested in sharing the spiritual journey.

Discussion Questions
1. Sister Joan offers a clear and specific explanation of what it means to be a friend, distinguishing it from being an acquaintance, a connection, or a family member or partner. Do you agree with her that friendship is a very rare and special kind of relationship? Or do you feel like you can and have had many real and significant friendships?

2. Which daily quote in The Monastic Way is most meaningful to you? Why? Do you agree with it? Disagree? Did it inspire you? Challenge you? Raise questions for you?

3. After reading The Monastic Way, what is one way that you can put Sister Joan’s teachings into practice in your own life?

4. Joan Chittister uses other literature to reinforce and expand her writing. Find another quote, poem, story, song, art piece, novel that echoes the theme of this month’s Monastic Way.

5. Make a list of two to three people who have been especially significant friends over the course of your life. Write them a note or a letter about the effect of your friendship and what it has meant to you.

Journal Prompts

Prompt 1: Here are a few statements from this month’s Monastic Way. Choose one that is most helpful to you and journal with it.

• With a friend there is nothing to fear in life. Without a friend there is little to trust.

• Friends can be totally unlike us–which means they bring things into our lives that we might never have experienced without them.

• There is simply no doing without a person who can allow us to be ourselves at all times, but at the same time, insist that we be everything we can be.

Prompt 2: Spend a few minutes with this photograph and journal about its relationship to this month’s Monastic Way. You can do that with prose or a poem or a song or....

Prayer

Keep us, O God, from all pettiness,
Let us be large in thought, in word, in deed.
Let us be done with fault-finding
and leave off all self-seeking.
May we put away all pretense
and meet each other face to face,
without self-pity and without prejudice.
May we never be hasty in judgment,
and always generous.
Let us always take time for all things,
And make us grow calm, serene and gentle.
Teach us to put into action our better impulses,
To be straightforward and unafraid.
Grant that we may realize
that it is the little things of life that create differences,
that in the big things of life we are as one.
And, O God, let us not forget to be kind.
–Queen Mary Stuart