TO FIND A FRIEND

By all means, you must find at least one loving, honest friend to ground you, which might even be the utterly accepting gaze of the Friend. -- Fr. Richard Rohr, "Daily Meditation," August 10, 2014

It seems to me the older I get the harder it is to make new friends...no, the harder it is for me to want to make new friends. From my eyebrows up, I want to, but putting in the effort...it's the risk isn't it? The risk of getting a ringer...a dud. A drain on my dwindling inner resources. Which, of course, is all ego, and, hard, hard, hard lesson a-learning: Just because we know it for ego, does not mean we can drop it by the wayside and continue on spiritually clean.

God and ego are both with us 24/7 (or 24/7 five days a week as a marvelous twit on "Frasier" once said), and it is our free-will choice which way we lean.

That's an excellent reason for having at least one loving, honest friend. Ego always appears to be the better choice...because, duh, it always legislates for self. The Lord doesn't legislate...the Lord just loves. You, me, them...equally and always. And only the Lord, through love, through the non-resistance of love, can bring about the perfect solution for all concerned.

The training, our discipline, is learning to look at our own life through the eyes of love...nonresistant, accepting, welcoming. With ego, just like a two-year-old, nattering in our ear, "No, no, and no" to any and all things that do not have a guaranteed "Looking Good" tag on it for us.

That's probably one reason why "getting old" has such a rotten rep. Nothing here is new,  it's simply harder to apply that inner knowledge we have gained...to stretch, to reach for the gold...when old Lucy is so right at hand. Nobody ever had to stretch to get their ego up and running, I'm betting.

Friends come and go with barely a ripple in our lives as we're growing up...but in old age, they enter a lot slower and leave a lot faster, and the ripple feels like a riptide.

Hey! Here's the good news...this, too, we can love.  At this age, my inner resistance to inviting new friends into my life is my daily stretching discipline! It requires courage that I haven't found it necessary to use for years...if ever. The courage to extend my acceptance...love...to an unknown other, and the willingness to stick with her/him. But, wait...there's more:  To accept, too...the courage to accept love from an unknown other.

Love...isn't that yet another form of the willingness to know and be known?

Thank you.