Friend cleaving to friend

This from my beloved DiDi.

... in friendship are joined honor and charm, truth and joy, sweetness and goodwill, affection and action. And all these take their beginnings from Christ, advance through Christ and are perfected in Christ. ... And thus, friend cleaving to friend in the spirit of Christ, is made with Christ but one heart and one soul ...

--Aelred of Rievaulx

Aristotle on Friendship

Heard Peter Kreeft quoting Aristotle the other day... Not sure if I have the quote right, but here goes:

Friends are one soul in two bodies.

--Aristotle

The growth of the Father

I stole a few moments to think more about whether or not the Holy Spirit expands, and He jumped in to lead my thoughts.

In the post linked above, I thought about the love growing between my dearest of friends and I, and how the Spirit seems to be making Himself known more and more obviously to us through that friendship.

If the Spirit is (as Augustine claims) the love between the Father and the Son, can it also proceed from the love of us for God and for each other? Could He expand and increase through that love?

When conveying this question to my BP, he reminded me that the Spirit is also a person, and so I brought this into my pondering.

And it occured to me that persons grow.

Bodies grow, and Jesus has a body which grew (and is growing?). We are the body of Christ, and the body and it's members grow.

And love grows.

This all leads me to think that the Spirit Himself can and does grow, and one of the ways He does so is through our love of eachother and for the Father.

But then I wondered, if the Son and the Spirit both grow, does the Father as well?

This one was harder.

He must grow, because the Trinity is one nature. If one grows, all must grow.

And yet He is unchangeing. Immutable.

It is relatively easy to contemplate the Son's growth. And we understand the way that love grows, and can apply that to the Spirit. But how is the Father's growth manifested?

How is One who is unchangeable changing?

It stumped me for a minute, until He stepped in.

And then it occurred to me; perhaps the Father's growth is not in His essence but in His production.

Perhaps it is in the very expansion of the cosmos.

Perhaps the increase of our love feeds the very force of the Father's creative power, and out shoots matter and energy and liturgy and ritual and order and beauty and passion and endurance and hot, molten, burning, unconquerable love.

And so the stars and the planets dance, and the bees and the ants dance, and the church and its liturgy dance, and we dance.

We dance.

We dance.

Heaven itself

"Nothing but heaven itself is better than a friend who is really a friend."

--Plautus

Day 3: a gift of friendship

1/10 of the way in to this month-long voyage. Not that I'm counting.

Today He is speaking to me about friendship.

Friendship and I have been a bit estranged throughout adulthood. I'm guessing it has something to do with maternal bonding, for after all; if it's not one thing, it's your mother. In this case, my poor mum had about all she could do to hold herself together, so I was left flying solo from an early age. I think that at core I am wary of women which means that even when telling friends all sorts of life details, I remain at a distance. The personal disclosures masquerading as intimacy.

Friendship with men is a whole other story. With the opposite sex there is always some element of conquest in the mix, whether obvious or subtle. In my case it was probably exacerbated by my father's distance and infidelity. So I don't trust men either, but it is a different sort of mistrust. Their betrayal seems like a known quantity, whereas the daggers of females are cloaked and take you by surprise.

With this as my foundation, it's no shock that friendship is problematic for me. I essentially don't trust either sex. (OK, I haven't tested transgendered individuals, but something tells me the trust level there probably wouldn't outshine the other two.)

But back to what God is doing now.

Over the past few years He's been changing all that, and building up friendships for me with both men and women.

Real friendships.

Deep friendships.

Recently He sent me a lovely, lovely woman with whom to connect, and the bond has quickly grown thicker and stronger. The friendship is blossoming almost like a romance but without the danger; it has a sweetness and certainty that I've never experienced with a woman.

And the blossoming has come at just the right time, to cover me now when I feel vulnerable.

I never even knew that I wanted this gift, and yet He chose to give it.

I'm not sure how many times I have said that His generosity astonishes me, but I must say it again. My unworthiness of it is outrageous.

***

I am feeling sorry for you, beloved reader, in that you are trying to keep reading what may well devolve into humdrum banality as I proceed in documenting these daily reflections. I will try to punctuate them with stuff that has a bit more zest every few days, to keep the yawns down to a dull roar.

Becoming like Him

The steady discipline of intimate friendship with Jesus results in men becoming like Him.

-- H. E. Fosdick

Pooh wisdom (5)

"We'll be friends forever won't we , Pooh?" asked piglet
"Even longer" Pooh answered.

C.S. Lewis on Friendship

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: What! You too? I thought I was the only one."