One of my favorite authors and great minds of the world is CS Lewis. While going through some of his works I came across this quote:

Eros will have naked bodies; Friendship (Philia) naked personalities. – CS Lewis

It’s quite easy for me to think about the eros side of things – naked bodies, pretty easy for anyone to get the idea of nakedness and all that entails (I’m not trying to go down a sex, sex, sex road here), but Philia (friendship) doesn’t bring that same sort of image to mind, that image of nothing covering anything. Should it?

I say yes!  For a person to be a “friend” there is a requirement of intimacy and intimacy means, Masks Off!  If I can’t have a naked personality with my friends then I’m not sure they could be called my friends or rather, maybe I’m not able to take the risks required of friendship or choosing people who are able to take those risks either.  Letting down my guard and letting all the things that I try to hide:  weaknesses, the questions I have, not being up on the “cool” thing (sports, movies, etc), my inadequacies; is just what is required of both parties in a friendship.  Not that full disclouser is required from the get go, not at all.

It is a series of risks that both people take and are either releaved that they were supported (or still liked) or dissapointed that they were let down.  This process might be the norm for most people, but it’s a process I only really started to experience 4 or 5 years ago as I set out to share one of my most embarassing failings with a friend, finances.  I just knew he would laugh at my inability to manage my own house and send me on my way, but I had to talk to someone, I was desperate!

He didn’t laugh, he understood.  He didn’t send me on my way, he reached out his hand and pulled me up to a standing position.  It was a milestone in our friendship, one that has brought on many more risks from both sides.  Oh, and did I mentioned that we’ve both failed each other in those risks?  We have, but more than those failures we’ve come through for each other many more times.

I’ll let part of a letter I received from a friend end this post:

But searching for the real is worth it because we want folks to be in relationship with ourselves, not with our masks anyways. And honestly, the closest people in our lives deserve that kind of transparency and truth. And we owe it to ourselves as well.

[note:  blog post two for the National Blog Writing Month.  Now I'm back on track.]

As I look back and review the struggle and pain, I think there are many factors that contributed:

• Existing thought patterns were resistant to the new knowledge or insight
• Not taking the steps I was being prompted to make
• I wasn’t listening for his direction
• I paid more attention to the indicators I could see rather than trusting what He was telling me.
• some of the “realizations” were just plain wrong

Another factor in the pain were externals that were pushing me in areas I just was not ready or able to begin striding in.  It has often been difficult for me to think beyond the end of the day much less a year, or five years in some of these areas.  Yet, I was continually being asked to commit in these areas and didn’t have the tools necessary to respond.

We’ll spend the rest of the week exploring these factors further.

[note:  blog post one for the National Blog Writing Month.  Had it in my head Monday was the 1st - oops]