THE DEATH-HAUNTED ART OF FRIENDSHIP, PART II: At Catholic Lane. This time, sacrificial friendship in the Bible and in our everyday lives:

How often in Scripture we find violence mingled with love, like water mingled with wine: in the Song of Songs, the watchmen beating the lover as she searches the city for her beloved; in Genesis, Abram’s knife poised over Isaac’s breast. Yet it is friendship that features most prominently in this strange dynamic of love and violence. It is most explicitly and insistently linked to death and sacrifice.

more

FRIENDS IN NEED: At the pregnancy center, we see how certain norms which are destructive for everyone, but which may make some utilitarian sense from an upper-class perspective, have filtered down to poor women. The most obvious one is the idea that marriage is the final stamp of approval on a life well lived, the last item on the to-do list, to be checked off only once you've achieved economic stability. Marrying before economic stability has been achieved is actively stigmatized, because economic independence and stability are major markers of grown-up status, and the new model of marriage is that you complete the growing-up process first rather than letting your marriage form the bedrock of your adult identity.

You can see how this causes difficulties when economic stability is a far-off goal which may never be achieved. (And which becomes even harder to achieve once you start having kids out of wedlock.) Marriage is simultaneously an immensely longed-for honor and an endlessly-receding finish line.

What I didn't notice until more recently is that destructive upper-class norms of friendship may also be changing poor communities. This study basically argues (this is from memory, so I apologize if I misstate anything) that upper-class friendships are looser, based on common interests and personal compatibility, easier to shrug out of, and less tightly-tied to mutual aid, while working-class friendships are nosy, impose sometimes burdensome obligations, and are based mostly on proximity or similarity of life situation. Looser friendships offer independence, but are prone to atomization and alienation; tighter friendships foster generosity, but are prone to gossip and to resentment when perceived obligations aren't met.

I've been struck recently by how many of my clients are ashamed to go to their friends for help: both material or financial help, and emotional support, the love in time of distress which might be thought of as one of the key purposes of friendship. I've written before about my own struggle with the temptation to keep my troubles to myself and not seek help because I don't want to burden others, so I totally sympathize with this dilemma. But as I'm trying to teach myself, love in a time of need is what you have friends for. St. Aelred's emphasis on transparent honesty with one's friends may be considered an antidote to the shame we feel at exposing our own needs and weaknesses.

One of the biggest tasks at the center, at least for someone with my style of counseling, is to help the woman find the sources of love and support already available to her in her own life and community. I try to help her identify and strengthen those connections. And I've been startled by how often people will identify a friend as a possible source of desperately-needed strength, and then admit that they're ashamed to rely on that friend. "Well, if she were in need, wouldn't you want to know?" I ask, and that helps a bit. But the tight old relationships--not only friendship but the fictive kinship relations of godparenthood and godsisterhood, and maybe even the extended-family relationships of cousinhood--seem to be weakening. A renewal of friendship would be good for everybody, but maybe especially good for the poor.

"THE DEATH-HAUNTED ART OF FRIENDSHIP": Catholic Lane has been generous enough to let me do a whole series on this topic! The introductory installment is here. Please do let me know if there's something I should be sure to look at or something you'd especially like me to touch on.

ENVISIONING A POST-CAMPUS AMERICA.

"BONDS OF AFFECTION": I review Ethan J. Leib's Friend v. Friend: The Transformation of Friendship--And What the Law Has to Do With It, in the current issue of Commonweal. Link is subscribers-only, at least for now.

Then live, my strength, anchor of weary ships,
Safe shore and land at last, thou, for my wreck,
My honour, thou, and my abiding rest,
My city safe for a bewildered heart.
That though the plains and mountains and the sea
Between us are, that which no earth can hold
Still follows thee, and love’s own singing follows,
Longing that all things may be well with thee.
Christ who first gave thee for a friend to me,
Christ keep thee well, where’er thou art, for me.
Earth’s self shall go and the swift wheel of heaven
Perish and pass, before our love shall cease.
Do but remember me, as I do thee,
And God, who brought us on this earth together,
Bring us together to his house of heaven.
--Hrabanus Maurus (a Benedictine monk and archbishop), addressed to Abbot Grimold of St. Gall. From Mediaeval Latin Lyrics (pdf), tr. Helen Waddell, and via RB.

IT'S LIKE THEY KNOW ME.

I would say that those men are beasts rather than human beings who declare that a man ought to live in such a way as to be to no one a source of consolation, to no one a source even of grief or burden; to take no delight in the good fortune of another, or impart to others no bitterness because of their own misfortune, caring to cherish no one and to be cherished by no one.
--Aelred (the character) in St. Aelred, Spiritual Friendship. I have been thinking about the spiritual harm done when I am too proud to be a burden on others.

TWO ANONYREADER COMMENTS ON FORDHAM-RELATED THINGS: Anonyreader #1:

I just listened to the panel you were on at Fordham, and I wanted to note something regarding one of the questions you were asked -- namely, the one concerning "celibacy as a sanction."

The traditional teaching of the Catholic Church is actually that celibacy is the highest way of life. See Session 24, Canon X of the Council of Trent. (That link goes to http://history.hanover.edu/texts/trent/ct24.html, in case the link doesn't work.)

This has been lost in modern times with the dominance first of the notion of the nuclear family, and then of sexual politics, and the Church's responses to both of these things. However... there it is.

Also, semi-tangentially, I found this article when I was looking up a website to cite the above canon (that's http://www.ts.mu.edu/content/51/51.3/51.3.4.pdf). Food for thought.

and anonyreader #2:

If you want to get rid of priestly awe, trying having a kid brother who is a priest. My brother [Redacted] was ordained a couple of years ago, and he is still just as goofy as he was as a kid, and a little too firmly Republican for my taste. But he's still a good priest. This also probably pertains to folks who form close friendships with priests. It's inevitable that one sees one's friends as complete humans, otherwise you are not really their friend.

I think a lot of people avoid friendship with priests because of some of the issues you were talking about. They distance themselves from them out of a reverential awe. While I think it's a good idea to maintain a certain distance from your confessor, or perhaps even your pastor, it would be beneficial for most lay people if they had a decently close friendship with a priest. (If priests only have priest friends, they become an insulated echo chamber, just like any other credential based group.)

I had a small problem with this line from your post. "These are reasons that a layperson-to-priest attitude of empathy at best, wry distance at worst, will serve both parties much better than a surfeit of awe." This may be true, as I said, when dealing with your own confessor, but with priests generally? Doesn't this instrumentalize priests, rather than treat them as full and complete human beings? If the awe of the laity makes it too easy for priests to cover up sins, I think it's a good idea for there to be people who are ready and willing to tell a priest he's wrong.

I value my friends the most who will tell me when I'm being a jerk. I certainly don't hesitate to tell [Redacted] when I think he's wrong, and I decline to call him Father or show him any more respect than I ever have, and I think that will ultimately be to his benefit.

Just some thoughts.

Thank you!

You are not to imagine that my friendship is light enough to be blown away by the first cross blast, or that my regard or kindness hangs by so slender a hair, as to be broken off by the unfelt weight of a petty offence. I love you, and hope to love you long. You have hitherto done nothing to diminish my goodwill, and though you had done much more than you have supposed imputed to you my goodwill would not have been diminished.

I write thus largely on this suspicion which you have suffered to enter your mind, because in youth we are apt to be too rigorous in our expectations, and to suppose that the duties of life are to be performed with unfailing exactness and regularity, but in our progress through life we are forced to abate much of our demands, and to take friends such as we can find them, not as we would make them.
--letter of Samuel Johnson; more

THE FORGOTTEN LOVE: Chuck Colson on Bert and Ernie:

...And blogger Alyssa Rosenberg summed up the biggest objection. “I think it’s actively unhelpful,” she wrote, “to gay and straight men alike to perpetuate the idea that all same-sex roommates, be they puppet or human, must necessarily be a gay couple . . . Such assumptions narrow the aperture of what we understand as heterosexual masculinity in a really strange way.”

Strange indeed. It teaches the ridiculous and deeply destructive idea that same-sex friendships are necessarily sexual. And that’s the last thing we want to teach our children, because it will spell the end of friendship, particularly friendships between young men.

Yet that is precisely the message that’s communicated over and over. It’s the reason gay apologists want to eroticize Bert and Ernie, David and Jonathan, Jesus and the apostle John, and Achilles and Patroclus from Homer’s Iliad.

Some in our culture are apparently incapable of understanding close friendship without sex. And that flies right in the face of a Christian understanding of friendship.

more (and Mark Shea's second paragraph is also really poignant--I stole the title of this post from him)

SICUT CERVUS:

Author’s note: This was originally delivered as a talk at Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL on April 1, 2011, as part of a series of chapel service talks titled “Sexuality and Wholeness.” The theme for this third talk in the series was “Homosexuality.”

I’d like to frame what I have to say today with a story from the Gospel of Mark (10:23-31). In this story, Jesus’ disciples are afraid of being left on the outside of the circle of God’s saving grace. Having just seen a rich man depart with Jesus’ pronouncement, “How difficult it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!,” the disciples wonder about their own fate. If the rich—those who were supposed to be a sure bet as candidates for salvation—may miss the kingdom, then what hope is there for the rest of us?

In an effort to shore up his own chances, Peter blurts out to Jesus, “See, we have left everything and followed you.” He seems to be hoping for Jesus’ affirmation here: Yes, Peter, I can see that. You’re safe! Since you made such a great sacrifice on my behalf, I’ll guarantee you a spot at the heavenly banquet.

Interestingly, that’s not the response Jesus gives. Rather than buttress Peter’s confidence in his own heroic efforts, Jesus undercuts that sort of self-reliance. He says, “Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first.”

Notice, Jesus doesn’t condemn Peter’s choice to leave behind his fishing nets and follow Jesus. After all, Jesus is the one who had commanded him to do so (Mark 1:16-17)! Instead, Jesus shifts Peter’s perspective on that act of self-denial. Rather than view it as a badge of honor, or a kind of qualification ensuring him a place on heaven’s roster, Peter should understand his forsaking the life he’d always known as a venture in receiving from Jesus a life so staggeringly full of grace and glory that any sacrifice made to obtain it pales by comparison. If Peter has left behind his family, Jesus says, he receives a new family in his discipleship. If Peter has given up property, he inherits a choicer piece of real estate. If he forsakes a fine house, he gains a mansion. If he gives up his life, then—in Jesus’ favorite paradox—he gains it. Following me, Jesus seems to say, isn’t simply about relinquishing things. It is about receiving the abundance of eternal life. ...

In the years since I have begun to tell the story of my sexuality to my fellow Christians in the churches I have been a part of, I have found Jesus’ words to be true. Jesus has given me brothers and sisters and mothers and children. Knowing my celibate lifestyle, the Christians I’ve befriended have committed themselves, through the unity secured by the Holy Spirit rather than through biological ties, to being my family, whether or not I ever experience marriage myself. They have invited me into their homes, taken me on vacation with them, and encouraged me to consider myself an older sibling to their children.

more

SOMEDAY ALL THIS WILL BE PICTURESQUE RUINS: Final Mountain Goats post (for now).

First, some links from others. Light on Dark Water talks about the gallows humor of Tallahassee.

AM suggests that Goats fans check out Wovenhand, and offers this ferocious, Soviet-surrealism video as evidence. (He says it "would fit well with your 'so far from God so far from the United States' tag.") Well worth your time. I haven't read this interview yet.

And both CR and HEAR pointed me toward this video of Darnielle covering Ace of Base. Awesome. I love watching people love things.

And now some short notes on albums.

We Shall All Be Healed: This grew on me. (Like a fungus, yes, I know.) At first it's scraps and postcards and bad broken memories from a really unpleasant time of life, a friend handcuffed to a hospital bed; and then it sort of comes together into the getting-clean album, cotton balls in the top drawer. The persistent punishment of not being trusted. There's a lot of resignation to consequences ("You're gonna do what you want to do, no matter what I ask of you," which works both ways, from the addict to the cop or from the lover to the addict). Man, this guy really tries hard to hope in a hard-up world.

The Life of the World to Come: Another entry in the death-haunted art of friendship, with song titles from Scripture, sometimes comforting and sometimes... the other things that Scripture is. "And if my prayer go unanswered, that's okay" reminded me of the Weakerthans' "I want to call requests down heating vents/and hear them answered with a whispered 'no'," and in general I could just point you to my Weakerthans review piece instead of writing about this album.

The title of the last song pretty much says it all: "Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace."

All Eternals Deck: "Estate Sale Sign": Yeah, if you liked Everything Must Go you might check this one out too. Similar metaphor, similar meaning, similarly awesome, with the urgency acknowledged rather than denied as long as possible.

"The Autopsy Garland": "Deco cufflinks and cognac by the glass," REALLY nice use of hard consonants. "You don't want to see these guys without their masks on. Or their gloves."

I know the title of this song is the reason I had this thought, but it's still true: Fans of the MGs should read Kathy Shaidle's poetry.

I pose before a lined and numbered wall,
my head like shot-glassed whisky.

Given the findings in this study, it is tempting to idealize the working-class patterns of exchange and reciprocity in an overly individualistic society. But[] the flip side to the positive interdependence is conflict and resentment over whether someone owes someone else a favor. In addition, the concern over reputation and privacy among the working-class respondents was sometimes overwhelming. It is also tempting to idealize middle-class patterns of friendship if one is interested in self-development and the expression of individuality. But middle-class friendships sometimes left respondents feeling isolated and alone. For the middle class, times of trouble are times when friendship, whose focus is shared interests and leisure, may not survive.
--"'Always There for Me': Friendship Patterns and Expectations Among Middle- and Working-Class Men and Women," Karen Walker, Sociological Forum v 10 no 2 (Jun 1995) pp 273-296

As against a friend no shield is worn nor sword drawn in defense.
--a 1916 Iowa court opinion, quoted in Friend v. Friend

Friendship is fragile because one may more or less freely disavow a friend; but the bonds are special, in part, precisely because we may walk away at any time. The freedom we all have to draw our own circle of affection does something to help explain why our friends are so precious: they are the chosen ones.
--Ethan J.M. Leib, Friend v. Friend

As you know, Bob, I think this is a simplistic way of looking at chosen relationships--I think very often we seek (or should seek!) to transform what Maggie Gallagher once called "You're mine because I love you" relationships into "I love you because you're mine" ones. My actual experience of friendship very strongly suggests a need and desire for friendships to become, over time, understood as given. Viewing friendships as endlessly-renewed choices may satisfy the Nietzschean, with his suspicion of mere promising and obligation, but I don't think it can truly satisfy the friend. (I acknowledge that this insistence on submission to the friendship and self-sacrifice for the friend, while entirely in line with Catholic philosophy, to some extent undermines the classical emphasis on friendship as a realm where love and equality kiss each other.)

Leib's whole book, in fact, is motivated by the understanding that friendship incurs obligations and constricts choice. So I'm not quoting this bit--from a much longer and more interesting discussion of criteria which mark true friendship--in order to criticize him. I'm just pointing out a commonplace, unexamined assumption that freedom is always the more romantic and admirable state than constraint.

FASCINATING NEW BOOK FROM ETHAN LEIB!

Friendship is one of our most important social institutions. It is the not only the salve for personal loneliness and isolation; it is the glue that binds society together. Yet for a host of reasons--longer hours at work, the Internet, suburban sprawl--many have argued that friendship is on the decline in contemporary America. In social surveys, researchers have found that Americans on average have fewer friends today than in times past.

In Friend v. Friend, Ethan J. Leib takes stock of this most ancient of social institutions and its ongoing transformations, and contends that it could benefit from better and more sensitive public policies. Leib shows that the law has not kept up with changes in our society: it sanctifies traditional family structures but has no thoughtful approach to other aspects of our private lives. Leib contrasts our excessive legal sensitivity to marriage and families with the lack of legal attention to friendship, and shows why more legal attention to friendship could actually improve our public institutions and our civil society. He offers a number of practical proposals that can support new patterns of interpersonal affinity without making friendship an onerous legal burden.

An elegantly written and highly original account of the changing nature of friendship, Friend v. Friend upends the conventional wisdom that law and friendship are inimical, and shows how we can strengthen both by seeing them as mutually reinforcing.

oh how I'm ordering this as soon as I get my new debit card

Via JRB.

But families, even if only the married couple, are not just close friends. In the family, we feel we are near to the deepest mysteries of life and death.
--Putting Liberalism in Its Place

Eh, you guys already know what I'll say about these lines: Given how elegiac the literature of friendship actually is, I don't think Kahn's attempt to exclude friendship from the life-or-death domain of familial love really works.

LAN SAMANTHA CHANG'S CHOICE FOR "FIVE BEST NOVELS ABOUT FRIENDSHIP." I have never read any of these! A smorgasbord of recommendations!

Via MLY.

"GAY AND CATHOLIC: WHAT THE CHURCH GETS RIGHT AND WRONG ABOUT BEING GAY." In which I am a "guest voice" at the Washington Post's On Faith site. My basic spiel, in almost exactly 750 words, and with a specific pitch to DC readers!