Tag: friend

FRIENDLINESS

A Word Like Light: FRIENDLINESS

Saturday, March 11, 2023

         Last night, as I lying awake in bed and feeling a little frustrated because I hadn’t yet fallen asleep, for some reason the idea of the friendliness of everything came to mind. Strange – I was tossing and turning and getting increasingly upset because of my sleeplessness, and yet at the same time I was being visited by the beautiful sense of the neighborliness of the entire universe! In the midst of my temporary and annoying insomnia, I felt surrounded by the comradeship of absolutely everything. My wife and devoted companion, Delycia, was beside me, but I knew somehow that the air in the bedroom was also showing affection, as were the walls and windows and the easygoing, sociable darkness outside. I don’t know that I have ever felt such vast and saturating congeniality. Somehow, as I lay wide awake in bed, I was absolutely sure that the universe is a totally convivial and  sheltering place. I remember thinking of Delycia’s orchids in our living room, and how utterly companionable they always seem as I sit near them – how they lovingly welcome me no matter what I happen to be thinking or feeling. Even worries and sorrows – my lifelong ‘enemies’ – were, I somehow felt, actually full of friendliness and a willingness to assist me in rising up from fear into a sense of the togetherness of all of life. 

         Yes, I was temporarily sleepless as I lay there beside Delycia, but I was also – I knew – in the center of a completely cordial and comradely universe. I smiled a lot in my wakefulness, and even silently laughed a little. 

A BEST FRIEND

Monday, July 19, 2021

If we say a best friend is one who is always faithful, then, strange as it seems, the present moment is one of my best friends. Being always by my side – always, no matter how bad things get – the present moment is unswerving in its promise to me. In the sunshine of bliss or the darkness of sorrow, the present moment is right there with me, as new as a new day. It’s the most steadfast of friends, and, more importantly, the most perfect of friends, since it is always exactly what it has to be. Something is perfect if it is as good as it is possible for it to be, which means this present moment (and the next one, and the next) is, indeed, perfect. I can make the next moment be different, but this exact moment, right now, is superbly what it must be. What luck, to have a faithful and perfect friend with me, moment by moment! 

A LIFE

Sometimes he feels his life 
flutter like a butterfly. 
Other times, 
his life is a bush 
with so many blossoms 
he can't possibly count them. 
Sitting at home 
in the flash of afternoon sunshine, 
his life looks like something 
from a land of gold.