Today, like every other day, we wake up empty –

and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study –

and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. –

Let the beauty we love be what we do. –

There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. –

Would you like to have revealed to you –

the truth of the Friend? –

Leave the rind,

and descend into the pith.

Fold within fold, the beloved

drowns in his own being. This world

is drenched with that drowning.

I am so small I can barely be seen.

How can this great Love be inside me?

What does it mean to be a friend, to be kind to another Human being. In this culture being kind means not making another person feel bad.

We are conditioned to believe that it is virtuous to hide our strengths to save another from experiencing their weaknesses, to deny our blessings so that another avoids feeling their sorrows.

To put away your truth to save another from experiencing their own truth.

If this is true friendship, it is an odd one – true friendship that does not include the truth. Hiding the truth to keep a relationship going smooth.

When we choose smooth over truth, but we dishonor the very substance from which friendship is made.

Are we so afraid of suffering as to be willing to sacrifice even friendship in order to avoid it.

To be a true friend is not to pretend that we do not have different experiences in life, do not receive different blessings and challenges. It is not to pretend that life is fair.

What we need are true friends who can keep us company in the truth, and in the hard parts, where life is not okay or fair.

True friendship is about meeting in the place of truth, and loving and supporting each other there.