Friends for the Journey
by
	Madeleine L'Engle 	AND Luci Shaw


	SERVANT PUBLICATIONS

	ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN  

	C 1997 by Luci Shaw and Madeleine L'Engle

All rights reserved.  

	Vine Books is an imprint of Servant Publications especially designed to serve evangelical Christians.  

	The following poems that appear in this book are used by permission of their publisher.  "Madeleine's Candlesticks" by Luci Shaw.  Used by permission of 1ittix magazine, vol.23, No.4, 1995.  "Finding Myself," "Spring: St.  Martin's Chapel," and "Eating

the Whole Egg" from Wading the River; C 1994 by Luci Shaw.  Used by permission of

NavPress Publishing Group.  For copies call 180O3~7788.  

	"Common Ground," "Questions 1985," `The Risk of love," `The Partaking,"

"Salutation," "Gifts for My Girl," "Prothalamion," "Judas, Peter," "Spice," "The

Separation," and "At the Church of the Savior, Washington, D.C." are from i~llshing

the Peros Ston~ C 1990 by Luci Shaw.  Used by permission of Harold Shaw

Publishers, 388 Gundersen Drive, Wheaton, Illinois 60189.  

	"Possess Your Soul in Patience" by Luci Shaw, originally published in the Summer

1996 Issue of Man Hill Review (18()(~99(~MAS).  Used by permission of Man Hill  

	"A Time of Peril," "God's Beast," "Epiphany," To a long Loved Love," "Lovers

Apart" from The Weather of the Hean by Madeleine L'Engle, C 1978 by Crosswicks.  

Used by permission of Harold Shaw Publishers, 388 Gundersen Drive, Wheaton,

Illinois 60189.  

	Published by Servant Publications  

	P.O.  Box 8617  

	Ann Arbor, Michigan 48107  

	Published in association with the literttty agency of Alive Communications, 1465 Kelly

Johnson Blvd.,  Suite #320, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.  

	Cover design: PAZ Design Group, Salem, Oregon

Cover photo: Barbara Braver  

	97 98 99 00 01 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1  

	Printed in the United States of America

L'Engle, Madeleine.  

	Friends for the journey / Madeleine L'Engle and Luci Shaw.  

	p.  cm.  

	lSBN O~8928~98(A  

	1.  L'Engle, Madelein~Friends and associates.  2.  Women authors, American-  

	20th century-Biography.  I.  Shaw, Luci.  11.  Title.  

		PS3523.E55Z465	1997

	813'.54~ic21	 	97-2356

	[B]	 	CIP

To Bara, our editor  

	and the third person in our trinity of friendship  

	Contents  

	/9  

	1.  A Table for Two: Our own strnies  

	2.  Widening the Circle: The elements offiiendship

3, Facets of Friendship: A varie~ of gtfts  

	4.  The Family Tree: Thefliends you didn `t choose

5, Friends and Lovers: The landscape of intimay  

	6.  Feasts of Friendship: Love revealed  

	7.  Days of Fasting: Solitude and loneliness

& Hello and Then Cood-bye: The rhythm of presence

9.  Snakes in the Garden:  

	fraloust, ~rnnny, and other rishs  

	10.  Meeting Christ in One Another:  

	The earthly encounter  

	11.  Looking for Bread Crumbs: Glimpses of God  

	12.  Companions on the Way: A foretaste of heaven  

	/11  

	/29  

	/53  

	/77  

	/97  

	/ 115  

	/ 131  

	/ 143  

	/ 157  

	/167  

	/179  

	/ 195  

	Epilogue  

	/215  

	Preface  

	`4,  

	We're twenty-five years into knowing each other.  So, when we

were asked if we would consider collaborating on a book on

friendship, we immediately and instinctively said, Yes!  because

we felt that the idea of deep, true friendship is being diinin-

ished in lavor of an undifferentiated sea of "relationships," and

that the need for friendship should be seen anew, and revived,

and redeemed.  

	This book itself will tell many of our reasons for writing.  

Pediaps one of the most significant is that, close and warm as it

is, ow's bas never been an exclusive friendship.  It is based on

Hesed, the evocative Hebrew word that means loving-kindness,

l'eaching~ut compassion, grace.  Hesed is a reflection, an out-

gmw:h in our lives, of the mercy and compassion of the God

we both worship, whose love is inclusive rather than exclusive.  

	Hesed speaks not only of a disposition; it is borne out in

actions.  And it is out of this Hesed heart-attitude that the action

of this book is being offered to you.  

	We"-~Madeleine and Luci-have a friendship that is far

ftom perfect; our motives are oflen muddied, muddied, and

inixed.  Our theology is evolving.  That is where God comes m.  

God has challenged, encouraged, and warmed us through the

gift of each other, a gift which must not reach a dead end in us.  

	9  

	10 / Fnendsfor thejou~~  

	In fact, it has not.  In our neurotic and fragmented culture,

in which many values are being abandoned and not replaced,

and which badly needs healing, we offer our reflections as a

way of honoring friendship.  

	What we continue to learn of love and kinship is being

enriched by what we gain from, and what we give to many

other friends, chiefly, in the case of the present volume,

Barbara Braver, our friend and editor.  

	We've received the experience of each other as a gift.  Here's

to friendship!  And her~the gift of friendship given to you-

holy, happy, tough, tender, wild, wacky, a sacrifice and a sacra-

menL  

	Luci Shaw and Ma~tekine L'En~  

	Crosswicks Cottage  

	August, 1996  

	0'~  

	H  

	S~~wly, and slower, you have k'arned to let you~ves

grow strong while weaving through each other in

stoong.leth....  

	how rare itistobeable togrtinto that kind of

conversation with a friend that goes on for years

and years and just continues underneath eve~~

thing...  

	-Marg' i~er~  

	A timeofpe'il.  

	A crash and scream of metal, gloss  

	A time of near death, death's wings so close the cold wind brushed m)  

	face.  

	Then a s~w awakening light hurting pain stabbing  

	Loneliness.  

	A hospital bed.  L C.  U San Diego.  A continent awayjiom home.  

	Midsummer Eveyone away.  

	Loneliness.  

	A strange loudjanging Ijump infrar.  lhhat?  Oh~hephone.  

	Hard to reach.  Hurts.  "Helto?"  

	It is Luci.  Homefom abroad.  Home in San Francisco.  

	"Madeleine doyou want me to come?"  

	And then, even bejRxre I have time  

	to give the mandat~~~ polite, negative ansser  

	"Madeleine, I'm coming"  

	Frienlshp.  

	Yes.  Oh yes.  

	14  

	M~1eine  

	This is a real, deep, long friendship, Luci's and mine, built up

over a quarter of a century.  Built up over shared joys and

griels.  The deaths, one following upon the other, of our htfr

bands, in one year The growing of our trust in Cod's love.  

Sharing our children's joys and sorrows.  Cooking.  Lighting

candles.  Sitting around the table.  Talking about the events of

the day, in our own lives, in a world flill of hope and wonder,

grief and tragedy.  

	Today I am happy because Luci is coming.  Our friendship

~ed when we first met at Wheaton College.  I was there as

part of a conference on art and faith, and Luci had come to

participate.  Cur friendship began quickiy because I loved the

hook of poetry she gave me, Listen to the (>~ and she loved

my hook' A Cirde of ~ut.  There we were, spread Out on the

page for each other.  Immediately we knew that we shared  

	much: in our struggle to live what once upon a time was called

"a godly life"; in our attitude about our writing-which we

both saw as vocation rather than career; in our love for our

knilies and our feelings about marriage.  

	Cur backgrounds are superficially so different that there

was much each of us had to learn to understand.  Luci grew up

on .eyeral continents in the evangelical world of the Plymouth

~~n.  I grew up in metropolitan New York and Europe in

an Episcopal flirnily.  We both believe in a Cod of love, yet there

have been radical and unexpected differences.  We both

believed in the miracle of the cross and resurrection, yet Luci

t~iie~ (like most good Evangelicals) thatjesus had to die on

ibe cmss in order for Cod to forgive us.  I believe (like most  

	-opalians) that Cod was on the cross, in Jesus, because of

I~, not anger, love.  Amaiiiugly, this radical difference in inter-  

	15  

	pretation has been a source of conversation, learning, and

prayer, rather than acrimony.  

	We pray together.  We prayed our way into friendship.  We

prayed in anguish, mosfly on the phone, as first Luci's hu~

band, then mine, sickened with cancer and died.  Neither of us

believed that an angry Cod had deliberately afflicted these two

good men; that is not the nature of love.  We knew that Cod

could come into the tragedies we did not understand, that

Cod cared about us and what was happening.  We were willing

to share our hopes and fears, to pick up the phone simply

because we needed to hear the other's voice.  

	Even when we cried together, Luci and I have always been

ready to break into laughter at the next momenL We helped

each other move back into life after our husbands' deaths.  

We've rescued each other over and over again, not always dra-

matically, as when Luci came to me in San Diego, but some

times simply by not being shocked at the words or emotions of

the other.  

	Working together- on a book about friendship has been not

only an amazing challenge but a delighL We have spent time

thinking and talking together about the need to celebrate and

honor friendship in a culture of superficial relationships.  We

have rejoiced in each other in a new way.  We have rejoiced in

our ability to be vulnerable with one another, and our oppor-

tunity to be vulnerable as we share in these pages our lives, our

thoughts, and our sense of the grace and glory and absolute

necessi~ of friendship.  

	16  

	The Thb~ as kon  

	Luci  

	How often Madeleine and I have sat at table together.  The din-

ing room tabl~where I used to live in West Chicago, or at my

little house in Bellingham, or Madeleine's apartment in New

York, or at Crosswicks Cottag~has been the setting for so

many meals by candlelight, with linen and silver and flowers.  

As we sat there, either the two of us alone, or with other

friends of the heart, always we were glad for such occasions of

-joy and celebration.  

	Perhaps the table which is for me the truest icon of our

friendship is Madeleine's dining room table in New York City,

worn to a mellow beauty that borrows not only from the can-  

	- die flames and flowers but from the faces of all the friends who  

	-.  have gathered to partake of every meal there, served with

gaace and generosity (Madeleine is a superb cook), eaten with

~tude and gusto.  

	That table has also had another flinction.  Often, during a

day of editorial or proofreading work together, it has served as

~ur editorial desk, piled with books and papers, decorated

~th rubber bands and paper clips.  Even the cats are part of

Ibe creative clutter.  Their favorite resting places are invariably

the manuscripts we are working on rght now.  And if they're

-Zpt~napping on our brilliant ideas they're rolling pencils along

- t'e sur~~e, tapping them with delicately curled paws.  Tatiana,  

	- - 17  

	the all-white princess, reclines at one end in regal splendor.  

Kelly and Terrible, the black and white duo, are more aggre~

sive, arching their backs under our chins and curling their tails

seductively around our necks, distracting us until we pick them

up bodily from the table and lower them to the floor, firmly

informing them that that is their place.  Then, before dinner

we tidy up, set the table, and light the candles.  We hold hands,

singing the blessing before we begin to eat  

	We both remember the first time we met for a meal, at my

house near Wheaton, shorfly after we met at Wheaton College.  

The occasion was a Language and Literature conference, and

we were both participants.  The conversation we began there

has lasted a quarter of a century, and we both hope we have a

similar span of time ahead of us.  Our contact was never super-

ficial; it started out, as it has continued, with Cod talk and

book talk, the elements of the kind of friendship we both find

the most satisf~ring.  I gave Madeleine a copy of Listen to the

Green, my first book of poems.  She responded with A Circe of

~ie, and as I read it later I remember thinking-How much

we have in common!  We both Unie to ptay Bach, we both need the tran-

qttillit' of green space in woods, ~ streams, we both bitrn the peas

when our minds are on U)flier matters.  

	In correspondence I learned that Madeleine's book of poet-

ry, Lines Srnbbtedon an EnveLope, had just gone out of print, and

publisher that I was, I asked her if she'd like us to reprint it'

along with some of her more recent poems.  When she

responded with enthusiasm, our author/editor relationship

had begun!  Since then we have worked together on eight

more of her books, starting with Walking on Water, her reflec-

tions on faith and art, which has continued to be a best seller

in the world that we both inhabit, where faith and art are both  

	18  

	vital.  The universe is itself a work of art, with Cod as the first

Artist, the first Poet, and we both acknowledge our calling by

this Maker to be c~creators, with Cod, with each other.  

	But the relationship soon transcended the professional.  I

had had a classically Evangelical upbringing, Madeleine comes

from an equally classical Episcopalian background.  Our

instruction and training in the Christian falth have been dra-

matically different.  As we have both questioned, even doubted,

and disagreed-without acriinony though often with vigor-

and reached together for deeper and truer understandings of

God's ways with us, we have met in the middle, and nudged

each other to continue to grow.  

	When my innate sacramentalism moved me, with my hu~

hand Harold, to enter the Episcopal church, and Madeleine

and I began to share the holy food and drink at the Lord's

table, we found that kneeling together at the altar was a pr~

found and marvelous way of affirming love and friendship

with each other, and withour Cod.  

	Together we have shared the stresses and recompenses of

parenthood; the drawn~ut deaths by cancer of both our hifr

bands, Harold and Hugh, in the same year; the rocky path of

bereavement and grief which raised in both of us existential

questions about the meaning of life itseW, and of our lives.  

These uncertainties have always led us to prayer, and prayer

together, touching Cod, is, as Ecclesiastes tells us, a threefbld

cord which is not quickiy broken, a cord which thickens and

strengthens with the years.  

	As we have passed together through both tragedy and tri-

umph, through weakness and failure, we affirm that our

friendship has not only been significant but that it has, on

occa5ion, qwte literally saved us in times of desperate need.  

	19  

	This has required a degree of honesty with each other, which is

the basis of true intimacy in a world where intimacy is often

traded for superficiality.  

	Last year I wrote in myjournal,  

	On the eve ofdpartureftom New Ym* Ijust had time for my

now customa~ polishing of Madeleine's candlesticks.  Suddenly

I realize I'm dealing with more than tjust" candlesticks; I'm

coming to think of it as "polishing Madeleine." Then I notice

something I've missed before, her name (misspelled "Madeline')

inscnbed, faint but da~ on the base of two of the four silver

cand~hoble~, and the idea of the polishing of a friend, and a

friendship, turas even tnter li's a variation onthe theme of the

biblical proverb: "As iron shaipens inm, so the heart of friend

with friend.  

	Though we may need a kind of corrective shaipeningfrom

each otherftom time to time, polishing is a gentler art.  As write~s,

criticS, edit~s, wordsmiths, we polish each other's phrases and

ideas.  Yesterday I read Madeleine my new poem "Eucal~tus."

After I'd fallen silent at the end of the poem, she said, without pr~

amble, "Take off the last three lines.  "And she was absolutely right.  

Those lines were redundan4 part of the scaffolding of the poem

which needed to be peeled away to reveal the poem's central struc-

ture and integn~ & our roles of writer and editor revers~j'en,

easily, effortless4 And we continue to luster each other to a shine

in thej~ ofa~~hip blessed ~ God.  

	B~ond that, l'yond the written or spoken work we produce

are our very selves, our souls, the women we are in God.  For

twen~flve years we have polished each other like silver with soft  

	20  

	cloths, with loving attention.  Birthday gfls fly between us in

November and December We celebrate on the 29th of those two

months, ten years apart in chmnolo~ as we are.  Daily phone

calls punctuate times of stress or crisis, or to reassure and com-

fort.  Letters, photographs, poems, flow through the mails.  (I'm

now trying to convince Madeleine about the speed and conv~

nience of electronic mail!)  

	Vacations together open up new horizons for both of us.  

We've driven the Canadian Rockies and, together with our

close friend Barbara, been pilgrims to Ireland and lona and

Iiindisfarne.  We've shopped Fortnum and Mason's in London,

and boated across silver Like Windermere between the green

velvet hills of England's ~ke DistricL These tales of travel all

end up somewhere in ajournal, or a book, or a poem, or serve

as grist for reminiscence together.  

	And so the conversation continue~at the dining room

table, the editorial desk, the Table of Communion, and, when

we're in the mood for play, even the ping-pong table!  

	21  

	MadeThine `S Cand~ticks  

	Zabar's, a New York Saturday morning, I bought

a box of rosy pillar candles, stacked  

	like quadruplets in the womb, for her four  

	silver candlesticks which stand, flanking

the orange tulips at table center, tall

and elegant as Madeleine herseiœ flames  

	have danced their highlights on the

visiting faces around the oval table ever since

the sterling quartet was willed to her.  

	Every visit I search the kitchen for

the soft cotton rags and the clay<olored polish

(a f~~vor, her maid "doesn't do silver")  

	One afternoon, buffing away, I noticed her name,

misspelled "Madeline," etched dark and fitint

along one elliptical base.  I knew then I was polishing  

	notjust her treasures but my friend, burnishing

with the well-worn cloth of friendship her silver

self, lifting the light tarnish of time and wear.  

	Uke my shining her words into their

places in her books; like her lighting

blooms of fire in a thousand shadowed niinds.  

	Luci  

	22  

	Dear Madeleine,  

	It was wonderhil to be with you again, even for five days.  

This is my thank-you note for the warmth of your welcome.  It

wasagood time for both ofus, I think:We gota lot ofsolid

work done, because it was quiet and we didn't have a million

other commitments and distractions.  

	Maybe you and I hunger with even more intensity for such

quiet times and the pr~ate and honest friendship they nurture

becaiise so much of our work includes lecturing, teaching, and

somehow being "public" persons.  The risk is that often we are

put on a pedestal, and people who see us thus want to `1~now" us

in away that theyjust can't That pedestal looks mighty attractive

to those who aren't on it, and are unaware of the perils of pride

and the temptations to arrogance and superiority!  

	Those who look up to you m adoration want you to be Cod-

iik~all~vise, all-knowing, all-loving.  And no human being has

that capacity; the expectations are unreal, and a kind of idola-

try results.  Which is why, though I love you, I don't adore you.  I

know you too well!  

	And you know me well enough (and still love me) that I can

voice my most disturbing doubts and questions about Cod,  

	Nid life, and you won't be shocked or put out I know I won't

be~dr~~pped from your life like a hot potato.  And you, on your

par~~ can make radical theological statements with which I may

~gree, but again, because of our bond of love we accept

each other for who we are, flawed and fliilmg, but always truth-  

	~ seeking.  I've seen you angry and frustrated, even quixotic.  

	- ~U'Nt seen me depressed and badiy misguided or mistaken.  

bit we can talk through these personal glitches and forgive,  

	and come out stronger for the struggle.  We can move forward

together; we learn compassion for our friends' mistakes when

we've made a few ourselves.  

	The most humbling thing of all is to fall into the same liii'-

takes for which we've denounced others.  When I'm tempted

to be critical of my mother, I am brought up short by the real-

ization that I use many of her expressions, and exhibit some of

her attitudes, expressions, and idiosyncrasies.  When I feel criti-

cal of others, I usually come to the conclusion that it is because

I am guilty of the same inadequacies or irritating habits.  But

that's how we leam true compassion.  Thank you for letting me

learn this lesson along with you.  

	Cod bless you, my dear friend.  This note sent with much

love, and gratitude.  

	Lud  

	P~ase Listen In...  

	As we began to work together on this book we decided to

spend time whenever we could, often traveling across the

country to be together, or, when both of us were participating

at a writers' conference, simply talking about friendship.  Of

course, we began with conversations about our own friendship

but from this we widened the circle to include reflection about

others who are important in our lives.  

	We decided the easy way to go was to tape our conversations

as "grist for the mill." Our dialogues, rather than making us  

	24  

	feel seW~onscious about our friendship, helped the friendship

by making it even more intentional, a matter of choice and

purpose, rather than mere circumstance or coinciding sched-

ules.  

	We spent many hours this way, happily talking when

Madeleine was stuck in bed after knee surgery, or over dinner,

or simply at lunch, eating our tuna sandwiches.  In reading

over the transcriptions of our tapes we decided to share some

of them with you, just as they are, as a way of inviting you to

our table to share in our conversation.  We hope our discu~

sions will invite your own thoughts, and widen the circle of

friendship.  

	Luci:  

	Madeleine, a really important aspect of our rela-

tionshipreally where we began to get to know

each other-arose out of our work together, with

you as author, and me as editor, working on all

the books we've done together.  

	MADflœINE:  

	Nine books over twenty-five years.  And we've sur-

vived it!  We haven't always agreed.  I've sometimes

had to fight you over theology~..  

	Luci:  

	..And I've had to fight you!  We've had vigorous

discussions, and violent disagreements.  Often I've

tried to keep you from going too far out on a the-

ological limb.  You like to disturb-to jog people

out of their conventional thinking, but I didn't

want them to be so irritated and angry that they'd

stop listening to you.  I knew what you had to say

was important, even vital.  

	MADE~iNE:  

	I think what made Hugh's work as an editor for

me work so well has also worked for you and me.  

We, too, had our battles when he was editing my

books, but what made it okay was that the ground

under our feet was the same ground.  

	Luci:  

	I really love you, and you know it.  And you

respond with love.  Having the same ground

under our feet - our love for Cod, Cod's love

for us - is a wonderfiil basis for both our profe~

sional and our personal relationship.  

	M~~EiœiNE: There's mutuality and meaning in both.  

	Luci:  

	I love the way you probe and explore, both in our

conversations and in your writing.  As your friend

and editor I want your writing to come out in the

best possible way, so there's nothing of malice or

jealousy in my battles with you.  Any disagreement

is because of the desire on both our parts to

make each book the best and truest it can be, and

sometimes we see this in different ways.  But in the

process of the fights and the argumentative dfr

cussions, I think we've both learned a lot, about

each other, about our convictions, and about how

to work together.  

	~~`DEiœiNE:  

	Oh, I agree.  We each, in the thick of the moment,

are convinced that we're right and the other is

wrong.  But as we calm down, our minds expand

and we each begin to glimpse reality from the

other's point of view.  

	26  

	Luci:  

	That kind of discussion is productive because we

learn from ourselves, too.  We hear ourselves

thinking, wrestling through to reality.  And often,

after a time of thoughfful conflict, we end up

meeting in the middle.  

	MAD~~:  

	Or, I give in completely.  Or you do.  Sometimes

I'm right and sometimes you're right.  But again,

what's important is that we stand on the same

ground~n the same Rock-the Rock that is high-

er than ithe Rock of Christ, And that makes all

the difference.  I mean, I couldn't work with an

editor whose view of the universe was totally

inconsistent with mine.  

	Luci:  

	MADEIœINE:  

	I remember once when we'd worked hard for

hours and hours, and right in the middle of a

book we looked at each other, grinned, and said,

"We need a break.  Let's go to the movies."  

	And do you remember the day of our spon~

neous thanksgiving?  We were going through page

proots and after finishing three days of solid textu-

al work together we both stood up and sang the

Doxology?  It wasn't planned.  We hadn't said,

"Let's sing the Doxology~" We just stood up and

sang it And it really was a song ofpraise to Cod

that together we had done a good job, and in that

cooperative, creative work Cod was being glorified.  

	Luci, what do you say we go take a walk and come

back and have tea.  

		Luu:	Lovely.  

27  

	Wijening tile Cfrcle:  

	The elements  

	#ffiendship  

	We are all persons in the making

and in a real sense we are

making and r~making one another.  

But how often personal relationships

are marred by hasty, partial or

over-severe judgments.  

	We must help one another,

notjudge one another, and

we must leave the final judgment

to the Divine Patience.  

One of the greatest promises

in the New Testament is that

we are accepted in the Beloved.  

Let us try to be the ministers

of acceptance.  

	-Enc Symes Abbott  

	31  

	Some P~ona1 Re~~ctions  

	Majeleine  

	I love introducing my friends to each other.  As friends meet

friends and become friends the circles form a beautifully

linked chain.  The friendship that Luci and I have has enriched

both of us because of our sharing of friends, because of the

marvelous principle of the "transfer of affection."  

	Throughout my life, I have lived in many circles of friends,

each enriching me and widening my own vision.  These circles

of friends are sometimes interlocking, with a few seemingly is(~

lated.  But, the story isn't over yet and our understanding of

the connections is stIll growing.  

	From a rather friendless childhood I moved to wonderfiil

circles of friends in boarding school.  I then went on to Smith

College and the circle widened.  I made friends among the

people in my house, in my classes, and with those Interested in

theater.  I started a small writing group.  

	On my first Sunday at coliege I went to the Episcopal church.  

Not one person spoke to me.  As church had been mandatory

in both my English and American boarding schools, I decided I

was through with the church establishment.  I don't know

whether my friends had similar experiences, but not one of us

went to a church, 9f any denomination, to temple or syna-

gogue.  Perhaps we needed time out to do some thinking on

our own.  Mostly our religion had been taught to us by parents,

preachers, authorities.  This time of exploration was good foi  

	me.  I'm not sure how I would have flired had I been sent to a

"Christian" college.  

	The circle of friends I built up was ecumenical, to say the

least: Christian, Jew, and one Buddhist- Mostly we talked about

the play we were working on.  We did a truly excellent produc-

tion of Chekhov's Three Sisters.  We disessed the literary mag~~

zine and how much should be fiction and how much nonfic-

tion.  We were serious.  We cared about our education.  

	I had entered coliege in the autumn of 1937, still in the

Great Depression, and most of us looked down on the rich

girls because we felt they were lowering the standard of educa-

tion.  We were aware of what was going on in Europe and

frightened by it; I had listened to my father coughing his lungs

out from that earlier World War, and I was terrified of war, and

yet not quite a pacffist.  My more politically oriented friends

kept me informed about what was going on in the world, the

danger Ilitler was to all of us, the horror of his hatred of the

Jews.  All my little circles during college converged, and each

one changed me in some way and helped me to grow.  

	I learned there were people I couldn't trust, and that some

people were inherently gossips in ajudgmental and sometimes

vindictive way.  There were people who lied in order to demean

someone else.  It was probably late for me to learn this, but

learn it I did, and was staggered by it-  

	After college when I went home to New York to write, to

work in the theater, my circles changed and expanded.  I was

profoundly innocent in a world that had lost its innocence

long ago.  One small circle was an unexpected one: young men

who had barely spoken to me during school holidays in the

south (where I was the Yankee cousin) came through New

York on their ways to overseas assignments.  They were lonely,  

	33  

	Some Personal Rejiections  

	Majeleine  

	I love introducing my friends to each other.  As friends meet

friends and become friends the circles form a beautifully

linked chain.  The friendship that Luci and I have has enriched

both of us because of our sharing of friends, because of the

marvelous principle of the "transfer of affection."  

	Throughout my life, I have lived in many circles of friends,

each enriching me and widening my own vision.  These circles

of friends are sometimes interlocking, with a few seemingiy i&~

lated.  But, the story isn't over yet and our understanding of

the connections is still growing.  

	From a rather friendless childhood I moved to wonderfiil

circles of friends in boarding school.  I then went on to Smith

College and the circle widened.  I made friends among the

people in my house, in my classes, and with those interested in

theater.  I started a small writing group.  

	On my first Sunday at college I went to the Episcopal church.  

Not one person spoke to me.  As church had been mandatory

in both my English and American boarding schools, I decided I

was through with the church establishment.  I don't know

whether my friends had similar experiences, but not one of us

went to a church, of any denomination, to temple or syna-

gogue.  Perhaps we needed time out to do some thinking on

our own.  Mosty our reh~on bad been taugbt to us by parents,  

	me.  I'm not sure how I would have flired had I been sent to a

"Christian" college.  

	The circle of friends I built up was ecumenical, to say the

least: Christian,Jew, and one Buddhist- Mostly we talked about

the play we were working on.  We did a truly excellent produc-

tion of Chekhov's Three Sisters.  We discussed the literary m~

zine and how much should be fiction and how much nonfic-

tion.  We were serious.  We cared about our education.  

	I had entered college in the autumn of 1937, still in the

Great Depression, and most of us looked down on the rich

girls because we felt they were lowering the standard of educa

tion.  We were aware of what was going on in Europe and

frightened by it; I had listened to my iather coughing his lungs

out from that earlier World War, and I was terrified of war, and

yet not quite a pacffist- My more politically oriented friends

kept me informed about what was going on in the world, the

danger Hitler was to all of us, the horror of his hatred of the

Jews.  All my little circles during college converged, and each

one changed me in some way and helped me to grow.  

	I learned there were people I couldn't trust, and that some

people were inherently gossips in ajudgmental and sometimes

vindictive way.  There were people who lied in order to demean

someone else.  It was probably late for me to learn this, but

learn it I did, and was staggered by it-  

	Mter college when I went home to New York to write, to

work in the theater, my circles changed and expanded.  I was

profoundly innocent in a world that had lost its innocence

long ago.  One small circle was an unexpected one: young men

who had barely spoken to me during school holidays in the

south (where I was the Yankee cousin) came through New

York on their ways to overseas assignments.  They were lonely,  

	33  

	filled with bravado and fear, and I was someone they knew, a

real New Yorker!  They took me to the Rainbow Room, the St-

Regis Room; we met under the clock at the Biltmore.  They

belonged to a circle that was peripheral, if a circle can be

peripheral.  I enjoyed the elegance, the rather frenzied playing,

because nobody knew how long we were going to be able to

play.  I corresponded with a few of them when they went over-

seas, deeply with one who was also a cousin.  

	I shared an apartment in the Village with three other girls,

and worked on my first novel, which had been started in col-

lege.  My circle of friends was artistic, mostly made up of people

who worked in the theater.  Our love of theater was passionate

and idealistic.  We wanted to open windows for a spiritually

sluggish world.  What does it say that I looked for this in the

theater rather than the church?  Some of my theater friends

were quiet churchgoers.  I was not yet ready to return to the

institution.  I read theology.  I prayed.  I had never felt isolated

from God, only from the institution which seemed too often to

confuse itself with God.  The God of the institution seemed to

be more punitive than the nastiest of my nasty headmistresses.  

The God I prayed to was God who gave life and love in a world

full of death and hostility.  

	I had my first novel published, a novel largely about voca-

tion, a young pianist moving into her life's work.  In a play in

which I was the understudy, I met my husband, the young lead-

ing man.  My husband had had a strict Baptist upbringing,

where the arts were considered irrelevant if not outright sinful.  

In spite of Hugh's degree in theater from Northwestern, his

parents gulped and took it bravely when he moved to New

York and the theater.  They then graciously accepted the blow

of his choosing an Episcopalian for a wife, for I was still an  

	34  

	Episcopalian, even if a non~hurchgoing one.  A marriage

which did not include the magnificent language of the Book

of Common Prayer hardly seemed valid to me.  

	We married and had chlldren and our friends were largely

theater people, musicians, painters, and writers.  Then came a

totally different circle.  We left the theater and the city and

moved to a small dairy firm village in order to bring up our

children in a healthy atmosphere.  Through friends who had

already made this major move, we started going to the

Congregational church in the village, and for the nine years we

lived there this was our circle, the center of our lives.  I loved the

circle of friends we made, all of whom were deeply involved in

the Congregational church.  Both Hugh and I had grown

enough not to expect the impossible of our institutions.  We

believed that our love of God had to be expressed in a public

commitment- Our children grew up in a Christian community

in a village where most people were either Yankee Congre

gationalists or Polish Catholics.  There wasn't much chance for

anti-Semitism or racism in this republican little village.  I

learned a lot in this circle.  I still have friends among the people

who taught me the intricacies of freezing and canning, and of

keeping hous&---I had never lived in a real house before, only

apartments or dormitories.  

	After nine years, during which we built up a dead general

store into a reasonable business, we moved back to New York

and the theater.  By now church was part of our lives.  Our chil-

dren were given excellent scholarships in a small Episcopal

school, so we thought it was consistent to find and go to the

local Episcopal church.  But the local Episcopal church did not

welcome my husband at the altar; he had made the move from

the Baptist to the Congregational Church, and in 1960 many  

	35  

	Episcopal churches practiced "closed communion." This

struck me as outrageous!  The institution was making God's

choices again.  

	We discovered the Cathedral, less than a mile away from us,

where all seekers were welcome at Communion.  Our chil-

dren's school's Christmas pageant had outgrown the school's

fucllities and was going to be held at the Cathedral, and my

husband and I were asked to be the directors.  

	Our circles were many: the theater, the school, the Cathedral;

our friends were drawn from each.  The school and the

Cathedral were already integrated, before we had begun to

look at the ugly face of racism.  Our diversity enriched us: walk

down any street and you could hear a dozen languages and see

people who had come from all over the world.  

	By now I had half a dozen or more books published and I

began to be asked to speak at librarians' conventions, at

schools and colleges.  One day the phone rang and I was asked

by a pleasant~unding professor if I would speak at a confer-

ence on the arts at Wheaton College.  The only Wheaton

College I had ever heard of was in New England.  When the

letter came confirming my acceptance it turned out that this

Wheaton was in Illinois and was one of the best known of the

"Christian" colleges.  Someone explained to me that Wheaton

was Evangelical.  "What's that?" I asked.  

	Hard to believe, isn't it, that I was in my mid-forties and had

never heard of the Evangelical world, knew nothing of itsspe

cialized language or the exuberance of its fiiith.  When I was

young the Episcopal church was quietly devout; the Congre

gational church was firm and practical.  However, in a way our

village church had helped prepare me for Wheaton.  The

church had nb Book of Common Prayer to provide structure;  

	36  

	it was centered on the word, on the Bible, on preaching.  I grew

up in a biblically literate circle, so there was continuity for me,

but at Wheaton the public speaking about fiiith, which for me

had been intensely private, was new and startling.  My first visits

to Wheaton and other Evangelical colleges were revelations to

me.  

	Perhaps the most important widening of my circle came

from the immediacy of prayer, of laying on hands and praying

for whomever had need.  Not long ago at a conference, a

couple about to move to South America with their two young

children asked if I would pray with them.  Then and there.  And

I was able to do so, with joy, realizing that this ability to touch

and pray was not always mine.  Before my circles included the

Evangelical world I would have frozen up with shyness, inca-

pable of such an intimate act of spontaneous prayer.  There are

things about the Evangelical world I find questionable, but

even when I most passionately disagree with a theology that

includes a punitive and angry God, I am forced into thinking,

examining.  In an argument, both sides can find scriptural

proof for confiicting opinions, but that is a challenge.  I know

that God loves me, and that he loves whoever is disagreeing

with me, too.  

	Within these wider circles the smaller ones continue.  My

father died when I was seventeen; my mother lived to be

ninety.  I loved introducing her to my friends at college, several

of whom called her "Aunt Madeleine." Later she became

friends with many of my friends, and this sharing delighted

me.  When she was older, sometimes difficult and crotchety,

and would insist on a tray in her room rather than joining the

dinner guests, I would say, "Mother, I really need your help.  

I've got things I have to do in the kitchen, and I can'tjust leave  

	37  

	the guests alone in the living room.  Can't you please go in and

hold the fort for just a few minutes?" She would oblige, and

become the belle of the evening.  

	In New York I have the double circle of the great Cathedral

of St.  John the Divine and the smaller circle of my parish

church, where I go on Sunday.  I am at the Cathedral all week,

where I am volunteer librarian.  I usually go to the noon

Eucharist, where there is a circle within a circle, a group of pe~

ple who meet together daily to share bread and wine.  On

Sunday I go to a small parish church, All Angels, which is totally

different from the high grandeur of the Cathedral.  We don't

even meet in a church building (the great old church had to be

sold) but upstalrs in a room in what was once the parish house.  

It is a congregation small enough so that we can know each

other by name.  Probably threequarters of the worshipers have

come from Evangelical backgrounds and have fallen in love

with the liturgy.  There are a few of us "cradle Episcopalians"

and there is a wonderfiil sense of family.  We do a lot of singing.  

Some of us are "charismatic" and some not and it doesn't mat-

ter; we are still one.  Most of the congregation is young; we are a

wonderftilly mixed bag.  We are "low church" as it is called, and

I love "high church," but this church is alive, questioning,

enthusiastic.  It is a circle in which I am happy and that first visit

to Wheaton was part of what prepared me for this.  One circle

formed another.  

	On Sunday mornings I sometimes fix a pot of some kind of

stew, not knowing how many people will be coming home for

lunch.  It is a delight to introduce friends visiting New York to

friends from the parish.  It is another way of forging that beau-

tiflilly linked chain: circle to circle to circle.  We are linked

together and strengthen one another through the friendships

we make, and share.  

	38  

	Luci  

	My circle of friends was carefiiIW restricted by my parents until

my growth beyond adolescence allowed me to grow gradually

into the new identity and the separation from birth finily nec-

essary for maturity~ My early years nevertheless included some

memorable individuals whose influence in my life lasts to this

day.  One of these was Cathy Nicoll-"Nicky," to thousands of

campers in Canada.  She was more than a dynamic camp direc-

tor to me.  She had striking white hair, even in early middle

age, a strong, merry face, bright blue eyes, and a resilient spir-

it.  Music and humor burst from her continuously.  She taught

leadership skills by example as much as by precept, and many

of Nicky's girls are leaders today in their own churches and

communities across the continent.  

	She was the one who painted my name in Cothic script on

the blade of my first canoe paddle.  She shielded me from

parental wrath after I'd cut my bangs really short during my

first two weeks at camp.  She encouraged my diving and swim-

ming skills (I won first prize for my back dive one year) and

with her help I gained my Red Cross lifesaving medals.  She

nourished in me an enthusiasm for loving Cod, the Bible,

music, the outof<loors.  My abiding love for nature, tenting,

canoeing, adventure, were fostered at Pioneer Camp, under

her direction.  

	Nicky is alive today, still silver-haired and smiling, still resilient

in spirit well into her 90s.I visited her in Edmonton last winter,

while I was leading a journal retreat at a nearby campground,

and she affirmed and astounded me by her spoken wish that

were she fit to travel she could "sit under my ministry" and

leam from me, when I still feel that I have so much to leam

from her.  Never married, she recently received the Order of  

	39  

	Canada for her lifetime of work with young people.  

	The circle widened.  A young man with whom I went to

Bible College in Toronto introduced me to the symphony and

the glory of orchestral music.  Though I'd taken piano lessons

for years at home, I'd never been to a concert.  With him I

experienced great orchestras performing Brahms, Saint~ens,

Rimsky-Korsakov.  I can't hear some of their symphonies today

without fond memories of David.  

	Coing away to Wheaton College in the U.S.  further widened

my circle.  I met young people from other Christian back-

grounds, and realized how atypical my church and liinily life

had been.  For the first time I developed a wonderful circle of

friends, both men and women, of my own choosing.  And

teachers.  My greatest encourager was Dr.  Clyde Kilby, a teacher

whose name is still invoked by hundreds of his former stu-

dents, for opening up the windows of their imaginations.  After

trying out five different majors (to prepare for service as a m~

sionary, the role my parents had picked out for me as the pin-

nacle of achievement) I took a required English Lit.  course

with Dr.  Kilby, and I knew I was home at last.  I declared an

English major.  

	When my father heard of my decision to study English

rather than anthropology or Christian Education, he flew to

Wheaton and told Dr.  Kilby in no uncertain terms, "I don't

want you to disturb my daughter's nsissionary vision!" ~ietiy

Dr.  Kilby replied, "Dr.  Deck, I have a feeling it's your vision, not

Luci's!" Of course he was righ~  

	With fellow students I'd meet for honors seminars in the

Kilbys' home, and be fed Mrs.  Kilby's famous apple turnovers.  

I got involved as art editor of the literary magazine, as reporter

for the school paper and yearbook, and after three years grad-  

	40  

	uated with high honors in Literature, with a minor in New

Testament Greek.  I'm a writer today largely because of Dr.  

Kilby's influence; though not himself a poet, for years his valu-

able critiques influenced my poetry.  Later, after my fi~ther's

death, Clyde relished being known as the honorary grand-

father of our five children.  We named our youngest datighter

Kristin Kilby after him.  

	Like the waves created when pebbles are thrown into a

pond, the circles move out from their center.  In the late 1960s,

Harold left Moody Bible Institute, where he had been director

of the correspondence school, and later, manager of publica-

tions, including Moody Press, and we began our own publish-

ing firm which plunged me deeper into the worlds of writing

and publishing.  We started small, in our own home, with

Harold handling finances, sales promotion, and publidty~ I not

only edited the manuscripts, but got bids for typesetting and

printing, and supervised book production, working with gifted

book designers.  The first year we released three books.  I edited

manuscripts during the day, and typed up invoices in the

evenings, while Harold and the children packed books in our

basement warehouse, then filled mail sacks with cartons of

books which I took to the post office next morning in our

station wagon.  

	It was satisf~ing work.  Many of our authors became our dear

friends.  The growth of a book is almost like that of a baby.  A

gestation period of nine months to a year, then publication,

and introduction of this new work to a waiting world!  Every

year, we attended the Christian Booksellers Association con-

vention, an incongruous mix of commercialism and integrity~

like any business enterprise.  Harold and I decided early on

that the almighty dollar would not be our god, that we would  

	41  

	publish books to strengthen f~tith and open minds and chal-

lenge readers whether or not we achieved huge commercial

success.  We never wanted to build an empire.  We liked our

independence from denominational or organizational ties.  No

one was looking over our shoulder, telling us what, or what

not, to publish.  I started the Wheaton Literary Serie~books

of quality poetry, fiction, and biography by gifted writers whose

worldview was Cod<:entered-though the risk of failure for

such books was high in a subculture that had devalued poetry

and literary fiction by ignoring it or considering it peripheral.  

Shaw Publishers continues to be respected in the industry

today.  I'm still as involved as I want to be, and thankfiil to Steve

Board, the new president, for his leadership of the small enter-

prise Harold and I started nearly thirty years ago.  Seeing Shaw

Publishers succeed on its own is like sending your adolescent

out into the world, confident of its ability and potential.  

	During Harold's illness from lung cancer, we grew a new

circle-prayer friends who came regularly, week by week, to

ask for Cod's healing help.  Some of them had themselves been

healed from cancer through prayer.  The McDermotts, the

Boschs, the Mains, the Lobs, the Kuehn~all of them became

friends of the heart as we dug down together into the realities

of life and death, learning from each other as we prayed, feel-

ing the blessing of their sacriflcial giving of time and energy in

prayer.  Harold was nOt healed physically; he died in January of

1986.  But-his spirit was healed of all bitterness or regret, and

he was strengthened emotionally and spiritually through

prayer so that we both felt that he was not dying into death,

but dying into life.  

	Mter Harold's death I was invited to become Regent

College's writer in residence.  Regent is a graduate school of  

	42  

	biblical studies in Vancouver, Cana~ There I was welcomed

and valued, a healing experience in a time of emotional limbo

for me, when I was unsure of my future direction.  There I met

scores of highly motivated men and women, teachers and staff

and students, whose vision of strengthening the laity of the

church by theological training of professionals in other fields

included an emphasis on the humanities.  Regent still gives me

this sense of a healing, motivating community where I feel at

home.  

	Mter I met and married John Hoyte and moved to Cali-

fornia, a move which I could never have anticipated in my

wildest dreams, I left many long~tanding friendships behind in

the Midwes~ But, thanks be to Cod, over the past five years I

have found many new ones: in my church, Holy Trinity, Menlo

Park, with the women in my prayer group; with the friend in

Vancouver, a writer and teaching companion, in whose faxes to

me in Menlo Park and mine to her, essays and poems are cn-

tiqued and sharpened; in the journal classes I teach around

the Bay area (my students teach me much as they share their

lives and writings); in the members of the monthly discussion

group which John and I host.  The circle includes sailing

friends, camping friends, writer and artist friends, all of whom

have enriched and enlivened my California life.  And my circle

keeps widening.  As I travel to teach, lead retreats and work-

shops, attend board meetings, read poetry, encourage other

artists and writers in their callings, I find new friends, and am

enlarged and warmed in the process.  

	43  

	belongs to the Trinity, and is the

very essence of Cod.  

	~imone Weil  

	Fonns of the Impticit Love of God  

	Dear Luci,  

	Hello from the beautiful Pacific Northwest.  I'm sending this to

you at home in California where I think maybe you are.  We are

both much too peripatetic.  I have been thinking a lot about

Fnendsfor theJourn~~, which is, I guess, our latest title for the

book.  I'm still having trouble with some of the basic definitions

and we need to talk soon.  

	A story.  A few years ago our bishop went on a preaching mi~

sion to the part of India the apostle Thomas is said to have

Christianized.  He was wonderfully well received and at the end

of his time there he wanted to thank his enthusiastic audience

in their own language.  So, he turned to his interpreter and

asked him for the words for "thank you." The interpreter was

puzzled.  He went to another interpreter and they consulted.  

Then, he turned to the bishop and said: "In our language we

don't quite have a word for `thank you' in this way.  `Thank

you' is something you do."  

	I wonder, in our language do we really have an adequate

word for friendship?  Perhaps this is one of those things about

which you can say: "You'll know it when you see it"  

	I think maybe it is something that you do.  Well, at least it is

something that we do.  

	I love and miss you.  

	A flower is relatively small.  Everyone has many

associations with a flower-the idea of flowers.  

You put out your hand to touch the flower-

lean forward to smell it-maybe touch it with

your lips almost without thinking~r give it to

someone to please them.  Still-in a way-

nobody sees a flower-really-it is so small-

we haven't time.  To see takes time, like having

a friend takes time.  

	~orgia O'Keeffe  

	64'  

		Take	Make Time

MaJeleine  

	Friends take time in a world of shortcuts, instant coffee, fast

foods.  Yes, it takes time to make friendship, as it does to cook a

special meal for those we love.  We're surrounded by substitutes

and instant gratiflcation and we're offered chemical white stuff

to put into instant coffee, and the store shelves are filled with

instant cake mixes and instant mashed potatoes.  On television

we see instant love.  But friendship, like all fine things, needs

time for ripening.  We need to believe in it, knowing that we

are all human creatures who make mistakes, even with (or  

	46  

	perhaps especially with) those we love mos~ We need forbear-

ance and patience and love.  

	One day I took my mother-in-law's infallible recipe for moist

chocolate birthday cake and set about making a cake for the

birthday of one of my little grandsons.  While the cake was bak-

ing we hung balloons and brightly wrapped presents in the

apple trees.  Then it was time to frost the cake and I made the

mistake of using my own recipe for frosting, rather than my

mother-in-law's.  My recipe is wonderful: one stick of butter,

one box of dark brown sugar and one flill square of Baker's

chocolate.  Delicious, yes, but too heavy for the delicate cake,

which began to break apart like ice floes in the spring.  I sent

the older children scurrying to gather daisies, lots of daisies,

and tucked them here and there around the parts of cake,

thus holding it all together.  It looked a little unusual with its

flower face, a little lopsided, but it was delicious, and it certain-

ly had been a labor of love.  Like friendship, it took time and

patience.  It was worth it-and I am still teased about i~  

	64'  

	Eleiments #Thendsh~  

	Luci  

	There are all kinds of words that describe how people relate

~oday; "Relationship" is a catch-all word, so broad it is almost

~eaningless.  `I'm ready for a new relationship," blurts a lonely

~oung person looking for romance.  That says very little about  

	47  

	lasting commitment or trust "Networking" and "peer associa-

tions" and "connections" are three words often used in the pr~

fessional world of business.  To me they all seem cold and

empty, even calculating-words that tell of advantages I intend

to galn from you in order to speed my climb up the corporate

ladder, or references that would look good on my resume.  Self-

absorbed, myopic words, they seem blind to the idea of the

warm bonding of kindred spirits that comes with commitment

Such words reflect the fragmentation of humanity in self-

protective singleness that shuns the risk of relationship for fear

of betrayal or hurt The idea of giving yourself to someone else

in kindness, for the other's benefit, has almost evaporated in

the hot friction of our mobile society.  

	But God never meant us to be separate islands in a sea of

loneliness.  I think that's why Adam and Eve were given to each

other.  The animals, fascinating and diverse as they were, could-

n't provide the level of friendship that was needed by human

beings.  We were all created with the ability, the need to reach

out, to join ourselves with others, in love, to feel with and for

others.  The words ~m~athy (with-passion) and em~athy (in-

passion) both tell a story.  We are to stand alongside our

friends, entering into their passionate struggles and trials and

triumphs, feeling their pangs of pain and the brimming over

of their pleasure.  Mirror-ing back to them, sometimes, their

better selves, when they need our affirmation and encourage

ment Giving them permission to mirror back to us our less

attractive attributes, so that we can better "see ourselves as

others see us" and work on personal transformation, with

God's help.-  

	One of the joys of both my life and Madeleine's is that,

during writers' workshops or journal-writing workshops, the  

	48  

	members of our groups open up their personal lives to us and

to each other, often revealing their most intimate realities both

painful and joyful.  And when this is true, and we enter into

each other's emotions, the door is open for true friendships.  

Many ongoing writers's groups and journal circles spring from

those workshops where strangers become friends who want to

meet and share their lives and their writing on a regular basis.  

	Prayer is an important part of such groups.  When we enter

the new dimension of prayer together we gain deep insights

into each others' needs and strengths.  Conversely, when we

know each other, and are committed to friendship, our prayers

become profound and real.  They become a natural and valued

part of getting together.  And if prayer is natural in the ordi-

nary course of human events, think how vital it becomes in

crisis!  When we have together built a path of prayer to God in

time of tranquillity, it will be immediately available to us in life

anddeath situations.  

	Time together is another significant element.  Friendship

doesn't develop overnight, although we may immediately feel

the attraction and potential of a new acquaintance.  But it is

only after we've been lovingly together for a span of time, and

have lived some history to base our trust upon, that our friend-

ship puts down deep roots and becomes something we depend

on and invest in.  During his public ministry, Jesus had only

three years to fuffill his own human need for companionship

and to build the friendships that gave the fledgling church its

leadership.  But think of the consistency of those friendship~

of being togetherwithjesus, day in, day out, in all kinds of cir-

cumstances.  A kind of envy possesses me, as I think of the disci-

ples.  I know that by faith I have the help of God the Holy

Spirit, but to have hadjesus as my friend, with skin on, with his  

	49  

	voice tones and personal mannerisms and unique, memorable

lacial fean~es...  and then I remember that I do meet Jesus in

the flesh, as!  hear him speaking from the mouths of my

friends, as his love wraps me round in their hugs, their letters,

their phone calls, their laughter, their tears.  

	Such friends are easy to be with.  They bring out the best in

us, and in our conversations and joint efforts each sparks fresh

ideas which contribute to the strong bond, and we come away

from our times together refreshed, stimulated, affirmed, and

feeling happy about who we are.  Other friendships may taI~e

persistence to breach the old barriers of silence, shyness, or

fear, so that love may flow back and forth with freedom.  

	In tested friendships the words "faithfulness" and "loyalty"

assume their true dimensions, because even fast friends can

annoy, or irritate, or misunderstand each other; they can even

betray or deny each other, as did Judas, or Peter.  But where

there's loyalty enough to make the knot in a friendship worth

untangling, friends can be lovingly honest with each other to

the point of resolution and forgiveness.  Judas failed to reach

that point, but Peter, his heart breaking, confessing and reaf-

firming his love forjesus, was transformed from his immaturity

and cowardice to the boldness and power which was the rock

of the early church.  

	When I moved from Illinois to California to marry John

Hoyte and make a new life with him, I knew virtually no one in

my new setting.  But soon after I'd moved I was invited to join a

prayer group of four kindred spirits, women who had public

ministries as gifted church leaders or therapists, but who needed

peers, friends of the heart at the real and intimate level which

allows for deep prayer and total honesty.  We have been meet-

ing together now for five years, and I pray that our closeness  

	may continue into the unknown future.  Without such friends,

and the even longer closeness with friends like Madeleine, I

might have often lallen prey to depression and despain Here is

where the idea of covenant is fleshed out-in our commitment

to be to our friends what they need us to be, regardless of cir-

cumstances, and to know that they will return the compliment  

	When we go to the Lord's Table with a friend, to partake of

the eucharistic feast, the comm-union (together~n~ss) which

we find with each other and with God makes the friendship a

sacred trust which death will n0t erase or nu~.  

	True friendship means both giving and receMng~ving

without obligation, receiving without guilt This is a way we can

move out of self-absorption, which can become morbidly toxic,

int0 a profound, redemptive awareness of others.  How do I

know when a friendship is true and deep?  If it is close enough

that I can confidently call the friend at midnight or 3:00 A.M.,  

knowing I'll be listened to and responded to without a second

thought It's accepting responsibility for the friend's welfare.  

Which really means that in that friend we are also being

responsible toward God, and in the long run, to the universe.  I

consider it a profound compliment if Madeleine calls me at

night, like that It means that I'm considered her special, trust-

worthy friend.  And to be a part of such a friendship is an

honor.  

	Friendship means frequent phone calls, letters, facet~face

visits---staying in touch.  Because without that touch, that con-

tact, we'd feel isolated, and we'd be neglecting a person who is

precious to us.  We live in a world that for all its communi-

cations systems is woefully out of touch with its component

parts.  When I preached my son's wedding sermon last year I

talked about the power of love to heal this wounded world, to  

	form a web of affection and caring that draws us together

rather than rending us apart in suspicion or animosity.  (Our

word diabolical comes from the Greek word which means to

tear apart.)  True friends like each other, but they must also

really love each other.  "If you love me, show it by doing what

I've told you," says Jesus.  And `You are my friends, if you do the

things I command you." One of the things he commands us is

that we "love one another" the way he has loved us.  

	How did Jesus model true friendship?  By loving his friends

(and us) for who they were and as they wereflawed, for-

getful, naive, and often ungrateful.  He loved them in action as

well as emotion.  Though Jesus' feelings for his friends ran

deep and strong (think of his tears for Lazarus), though his

humanity allowed for sentiment, his friendship never de-

scended to sentimentality.  It was never cheapened by empty

platitudes.  As he said to them, and to us: "Love one another, as

I have loved you."  

	And we have tried, lord.  And we do try.  And we will con-

tinue, with your help, in your Spirit  

	52  

	Facet~ of Fn~enJsiiip:  

	A vafie~ ~gzfts  

	In Winnie the Pooh, Rabbit talks endlessly to

Piglet about the multitude of his "friends and

relations." One gets the sense of vast mob, of

crowd.  But true friendships happen one by

one.  Each relationship has its own particularity.  

Friendship is a multifaceted concept, and each

of the many ways of being friends has its own

joys, rewards, and responsibilities.  In these

next pages we explore some of the facets of

friendship.  

	55  

	Fflendly Word-Ptay  

	In my etymological dictionary I found that the

word for friendship is derived from the Middle

English "frend" which in turn is derived from the

Old English "freond"-the contraction for "fre~

gin," to love.  

	Luci: So friendship is a special kind of love.  

	MADEWNE:  

	But maybe we need a new word-something

halfay between "acquaintance" and "friend."  

	Luci:  

	With a real friend there's an assumption that the

friend has an appreciation of the inner you, not

just the outer you, the part that's accessible to just

about everyone.  

	red to somebody as my "close, deep friend," and I

said, "No!  That's not so!" That's an assumption

that people jump to fairly often if they have been

acquainted with each other for a while, or see

each other fiurly often in the line of work.  Such

contact doesn't automatically mean close, deep

friendship.  

	56  

	Iœc':  

	MADEWNE:  

	There are so many good people, fine people,

with whom one will remain an acquaintance for-

ever without ever achieving the intimacy which

signals real friendship, and which makes one vul-

nerable.  I~~ng-term connection doesn't guaan-

tee anything in terms of the heart connection we

mean when we refer to someone as a  

	That's why we need some new word~omething

between "acquaintance," which is casual, a mere

recognition of the outer person, and "friend," in

which we acknowledge and value and understand

the inner person.  Any suggestions?  

	Made~ne `S Journal Ent~y  

	Luci hasjust ~ and We had a maroe~usftw (tays to~he: talk-

ing cooking eating going to the noon Euchaiist at the CathedraL

Are we anyfiœflher on Friends for the Journey? We think so, and

this q~moon We had an exce~nt conversation alout integ'era-

tionalftindshtps.  We `~~ alout thefact that most of mypiends

in New Ya* are young~r than I am.  WeU, m~~fr the~~ is something

statistical in this.  Aren't most ~le younger than lam?  

	Lud has never heen to one of my traditional slumlerparties in

Lecemler, and I told her about them in someaeeail.  She thinks the

paflies are a wondeq~œl example of thej~s of intergenerational

fiw,~htps and I said I would WTite it outfor the book.  

	Tie tradition ~n early one Le~iber when Cana was reluc-

tantly turning seventy.  She's a beaut~l woman, a Southerner;

charming and quirly.  She hated the idea of bni~g seventy (though I

told herlhad done ityeais bfore and it s~,,ted safe to me) and she

berated herselNor lttting it sIp out.  So a group of us, fnnds who

had known each other for a long time, i~aliated ly giving her a

Slumber party.  

	Since it was Gloria's birthday party, she got the guest room.  

Marilyn, in her stxtie, got the sofa bed.  leslie, in herfiflies, had the

jR)ld<mt cot, and Carole, also in herfifties, got the tiny "maid's bed

ioom" in the Aick which hasn't held a maid in our tenure.  Sandy,

the youngest of us, in herforties, slept on the b~wup mattress.  We

had an absolutely wonde~~~l tirn~ and thefact that We r~resented

four decades didn `t make the slightest dtfference.  In fact, I think it

enriched the stern  

	~~~,~ Luci and I talked about this, she said the reason lam able

to have young fliends is becauseldon't hold on to thepast in a

restrictive, dogmatic way, announcing that eve~ything about the pr~

sent is terrible the way some people do, especially those of my age.  I

ceflainly hope I don't.  A lot about the present is terrible, but my

youngfiiends think so too.  

	There's been more change in this centuly than in all the centuries

preceding it, and while in some areas we've made a lot of progress,

we're also in a mess with racism and sexism, drug abuse and child

abuse, and so on and so on~hinge we ought to have grown up

enough to be better about.  I su~ose teerorism has always existed,

pirates on the sea and highwaymen, but the te~~o~ism of blowing up

a plane or gassing a subway seem~ more a~alling maybe because

it's more impersonal and affrds a laig~r number ofpeople  

	Thank God for younger fliends who don't think we arepasseor

outmoded or can `t understand the way people think today.  Thank

Godth~letusbewho we are.  

	58  

	And, th~~ ex~d me to be able to do eve~ything th~) can ~such

as wa~ thefifty llocksftom the apartment to Lincoln C~nter Iguess

that means th~ `re not thinking of me as an old dodrer even when

my knees gve way.  

	Luci told me that she wentfor a strenuous hike in Colorado with

herfiiends, the Ihilp Thnoey&, and she wouldn `t have attempted it  

	on her own because of her weak ankle.  She loved it!  Recently she

hiked with her prayer goup on a steep, roc~) path down a thousand

feet into the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona and then back up again.  

Th~ are (somewhat) younger and she said their ene~gy hpt her

going Of course, I hep remembering that Luci has gene bang~

jumping in New Zealand, so nothing su~p~ises me!  

	Though I reicice in my younger friends, it's also good to have

fiiedsi'~yownageAsyourbodybeginstotiiea~~5~~~~ger,

your joints creak a lillle and your skin develops age spots and gets

less elastic, you know you `re not the only one.  As someone once said,

the greatest aid to celibacy aflerfifty is nudity!  

	Luci `sJournalEntry  

	Waiting at the ai~ort for my plane yesterday I got into conversa-

tion with a most interesting woman.  She was writing in her jour-

nal, which immediately alerted me to her possibilities!  Then I

noticed on the - seat beside her the book I had just finished, and

loved, Snow Falling on Cedam.  She was younger than I, not con-

ventionally pretty, but with bright brown ~es and an inquiring tilt

to her head.  We talked for perhaps half an hour, beginning with the  

	59  

	book, and going on to discover many things in common, induding

our love of the Paafic Northwest and camping She told me she  

	su~orts herself ~ phot~ournalism but she writes poems on the

si~says that's the true window of her soul~nd she values her

husband and children as I do mine.  I didn `t learn a lot about her

spiritual foundations, though she mentioned her involvement in

the Methodist church, but just the way she tathed, and the way her

~es lit up with warm understanding once we got past the pleas-

antries, mode me think there was real potential for jiiendship.  

	Since she was taking a loterfflght than); we parted when I had

to board my plane.  And that was that.  There are probably a couple

ofdaeen people I'se met and connected with like that over the course

of my lift.I could call such casuaL unplanned touches between two

people fetaljiiesh~"~jull of potential as an unborn ba~y,

but never able to][knner into realfiiendship, miscanying because of

the circumstances of meeting or lack of time, or other pressures.  

Two lives glancing off each other, with sparks of warmth and

understanding Thy `re gjis, because thy reaffirm our faith in the

grace of the unplanned, the unexpected.  I think Cod has these kin-

dred spirits eve'ywhere, hidden, then momentarily revealed, even  

	in this Ife thy never get the chance to shine Irighter than the brief

jlame of a struck match that goes out when the wood has been con-

sumed.  

	W~ knows?  If we're meant to befflends, maybe our paths will

cmss again!  

	60  

	The Clink of Glasses  

	MADEIœINE:  

	and then there's what 1 call "cocktail party

friendships"...  

	Luci:  

	..the endless small talk, in a room shrill with

chatter...  

	MADELH~:  

	...that never really connects.  if you should ask any

of your cocktail party friends for help...  

	Luci:  

	Well, that's just not done.  You're trying so hard to

impress people with your competence and soph~

tication, you wouldn't ever admit your neediness!  

What the cocktail party kind of acquaintance

means is that you merely clink your bubble~

your plastic shell~as you pass in the crowd.  But

it's not the accepted thing to address your real

feelings.  in that kind of situation you can be sur-

rounded by artiiicially cheerful people, yet feel

intensely lonely.  

	MADEuEINE:  

	it's not even acceptable to express real needs and

feelings in some churches.  Hugh used to say that

at the coffee hour the person talking to you was

frequently looking over your shoulder to see if

there was someone more important he or she

would prefer to talk to.  

	61  

	Luci:  

	What an indictment!  Maybe that's why Alcoholics

Anonymous is so successftil; it fills a vacuum that

many churches never acknowledge.  

	MADEl œINE:  

	This is some churches mind you, certalnly not all.  1

know of a great many churches where being who

you are is actually seen as a gift!  

	Luci:  

	We are both fortunate that we are part of church

families that are places of warmth and outgoing

friendship and help.  Our friends in Christ in our

churches can address both spiritual and emotion-

al needs.  And body too: let us not forget the

casserole brigade!  

	Adventunng Together  

	Lud  

	One way Madeleine and 1 express friendship is by planning

and participating in adventures together, be it a trip around

the world or a short ride to the recycling center, where one of

usjust goes along to keep the other company.  

	1 really treasure the dimension of our friendship that has

developed in the past few years.  When 1 asked Madeleine what

she wanted for her 75th birthday, she immediately said, "Co on

a vacation with me!"  

	62  

	So we started to plan for the following spring.  We decided

not to follow her first impulse-to take a trip on the Orient

Express and the TransSiberian Railway-not just yet, anyway,

until we'd had some practice holidaying with each other.  That's

when we settled on the trip through the Canadian Rockies, and

made some hotel and plane reservations.  Madeleine flew out to

Seattle, and 1 picked her up there in a rented car.  After spend-

ing a few days together with two of my children, Kiis andjeff, at

my cabin in Sudden Valley, we drove through the pristine

wilderness of northern Washington, and up across the Cana-

dian border, through Kelowna, to Banff  

	We had a superb tiine!  Madeleine was still recovering from

her surgery for knee replacement, and yet she ventured on a

(slow) four-mile hike around Lake Louise, complete with cane.  

1 was impressed by her self<liscipline as she regularly did her

therapeutic knee exercises while sitting on park benches, or

standing by the car door as I loaded or unloaded the trunk-

anywhere and everywhere.  She was determined to become

fully active again, immediately!  

	Then there was the incident when I accidentally locked us

out of the car near Emerald lake, and we had to hitch a ride

with some other tourists so we could make a phone call to AAA

to come and unlock our car door.  It took hours, but she never

complained.  She was tired, but a good sport.  And we found

the greatest little giit shop at Emerald Lake, where she bought

rne that nifty Aussie hat.  And I got her some beads to go with

)ne of her long dresses.  But the best gift was the fun of being

:ogether, following our noses into new adventures, even mi~

~dventures!  

	63  

	One night, during a storm, the power went off all up and

down the valley, including the power at our hotel.  The malds

came to our hotel rooms like vestal virgins, with lighted

candles for each of us.  But they weren't bright enough to read

by, and next morning we both reported to each other that

we'd had a hard time settling down to sleep, without our usual

routine of reading and relaxing gradually into sleep.  

	We had mixed weather-snow, sleet, sunshine-but the

views were always magnificent, even seen through sheets of

precipitation.  We also had mixed accommodations.  We

splurged on a couple of great luxury resorts, and then, to

make up for the extravagance, we grunged in some noisy

motels without nonsmoking rooms.  But it was all fun because

of companionship.  

	The next year we went with our friend Bara to lona in

Scotland, as well as some other holy places in Ireland and

England, and then to London to see some plays together with

my son, Jeff, who has been living and working in London for

several years.  

	Of course Madeleine had her laptop computer along-as is

usual.  She's always in the middle of a new novel, or a new book

of reflections.  And when she goes silent in the middle of a con-

versation, we know she's suddenly transported by a new plot

twist, or an unexpected character, or idea, charging into the

action.  

	We enjoy each other enormously, and respect our mutual

need for mOments of quiet and privacy, which is why we all

have separate rooms in the hotel~we need alone-time as

much as together-time.  It's all part of the friendship package.  

Being together, alone.  Being alone, together.  

	The Healing Touch  

	Luci  

	My sister-in-law, Geila Bar-David, wrote her doctoral disserta-

tion on the profound and positive changes that occur in one

who is the caregiver of a chronically ill or terminally ill friend

or member of the fiimiiy~ Ceila ought to know; her mother had

AIzheimer's, and Ceila and her sisters were constantly pr~

sent-major players in their mother's final days.  

	Their own qualities of compassion and self~ving were chan-

neled, polished, and strengthened by even the most mundane

aspects of health<are and emotional support supplied to their

aged parenL They learned, not from how4o books or seminars,

but from each other and from their own hearts, how sacrificial

caregiving, rather than representing only frustration, fatigue, or

personal restriction, became a supreme gift to them.  

	An important and surprising result from this gift is the sense

of meaning and significance gained by the experience of these

years; there were few regrets or misgivings and a great sense of

gratitude for the new roles that have been played, and the wi~

dom gained in making such loving caregiving possible.  

	I experienced much of the same blessing during the sixteen

months that I lived with and nursed Harold through lung

cancer.  Never an easy tiine; our emotional weather fluctuated

wildly with dismal diagnoses or momentary reprieves, but I was

enriched with the deepening of my own grasp of lif~anddeath

realities.  

	65  

	During those months I grew in my soul and spirit more than

I would have thought possible.  In thankfulness: for all the

good days of our marriage, for the now of each golden

moment together.  In patience and forbearance: with a much-

loved spouse whose malaise after chemotherapy sometimes

made him respond with unaccustomed irritation.  With appre-

ciation: as he inducted me into the mysteries of our business

affalrs and investments, and the intricacies of car, or furnace,

or machine malntenance, with the goal that when he was no

longer with me to help me, I would not feel so helpless.  With

amazement: as I sensed my newfound decision-making ability

burgeoning.  With more thankfulness: for the supportive

friends and flimily who tempered my sense of aloneness in the

heavy responsibilities of keeping both home and business run-

ning smoothly.  

	When Harold went to heaven, and I was on my own for the

first time in many decades, I was well on the way to growing

upat age fifty-nine!  The sixteen months of his illness had

allowed me-urged me-to make the transition from depen-

dence to independence, from uncertainty to confidence.  

	My life was also enlarged in caring for others in crisis.  When

a young married friend asked me to be her coach in the deliv-

ery, at home, of her second child (now my goddaughter), I

agreed, and began to study the only book I had on hand,

about "emergency childbirth." Having been through five

births of my own, I felt I knew a good deal about what should

happen!  Aweek later she called me to come, on a frigid winter

night.  Her doctor, a specialist in home births, had not yet

arrived, having to travel sixty miles on snow-packed roads to

reach his patient: As her labor increased in intensity, and her

contractions came closer and closer together, we realized that  

	66  

	the doctor might not make it in time.  Finally she cried out,

`The baby's coming!,,  The moment of truth was upon us.  

Q~ickly the young tather and I prayed for God's help in this

most wonderfizi, yet critical, of events.  Minutes later, she deli'&

ered her baby daughter, squalling lustily, and I had the privilege

of guiding this new life into the world, catching the baby, cut-

ting her umbffical cord, and cleaning her up.  All the doctor had

to do, when he arrived a few minutes later, was weigh her!  He

told us, `You did it alIjust righL I couldn't have done it better!"  

	What a glow of excitedjoy sufftised us all.  We'd been part of

the miracle.  The euphoria was as great as I'd felt at the birth of

my own babies.  I wouldn't have missed it for anything.  

	One of the joys of my life has been to take Communion,

after church on Sundays, to an elderly woman friend-ninety-

six years old-and share with her not only the bread and wine,

which has such central meaning to us both, but something of

the day's sermon, as well as news of church doings and friends.  

She has my phone number so she can call me if she needs

other kinds of help or information.  Recenfly she slipped into a

place of semicoma and conflision and now needs r~~und~th~

clock care.  I still take Communion to her, though I doubt if she

recognizes me anymore, or understands what is going on.  

Nevertheless, Cod is still with us in her room, and his presence

and love is the deepest kind of coinfort  

	The giving and loving that happen when we care for some-

one close to us transforms us, deepens us, gives us a sense of

how Cod our Father must feel as he cares for us in our need,

for which we give him the gratitude of our hearts.  

	67  

	Majeleine  

	When Hugh's mother was dying, he and his sister, Cenevieve,

talked on the phone several times daily.  I appreciated the flict

that Hugh and Cenevieve had each other.  At that time my own

mother was well on in age and her health was fragile.  I knew

that when my mother was dying I would not have the comfort

of a sibling, the opportunity to consult with and make deci-

sions with a brother or sister.  I was the daughter, the only child.  

	Though the decisions were mine, I was not alone.  I had the

blessing of a husband and grown children to back me up, to

help with the caregiving.  During my mother's last summer we

had a full, four~eneration household.  It was exhausting, but

an mexpressible comfort I am grateful indeed that it was the

very size of the family, packed into our old farmhouse, that

enabled me to keep mother at home to die.  Also, my own work

can be done from home.  I have known women who have had

to juggle visits to the nursing home with Imnily orjob&  

	When my mother was a young woman, there were no nm~

ing homes.  Wage earners did not go f~ir from home to do their

various jobs.  It was natural, then, to grow up in one neighbor-

hood, marry~ have children, grow old, and die all in the same

town.  Caregiving could be, and was, shared by the community  

	It's different today.  Ceographical distances and small living

quarters, have changed things, and we're not going back to

the old ways.  Caregiving, even with those we love most, is

becoming more difficult, though no less important.  We are

not always given the choice of being the caregiver, or of being

able to be the caregiver.  When this responsibility does come, a

new expression in an old relationship has to be accepted.  At

this time we pray for the grace to make the change, and to be

aware of the unexpected richness it can bring to our lives.  

	68  

	The Peaceab~ Kingdom  

	M~1eine  

	My dog loves me the way Cod loves me.  Utterly and com-

pletely, no maller what I do.  If I accidentally trip over the dog,

I am immediately forgiven and loved.  If I am unhappy, if I cry,

my dog is there to comfort, to lick away tears.  If I am in anyway

threatened, my dog is ready to protect  

	I have had a number of canine friends, most living to ripe

old ages.  When the time comes we take t~ie ancient animal to

the vet who has known us and our creatures for many years,

and we stay withour dog, holding the old body for the few sec-

onds until the shot has had its painless and lethal effect  

	A cat's love is different, but we have always had cats and

dogs together in a peaceable kingdom.  My New York cat,

Tatiana, is a beautiful little white princess who came from the

Humane Society when she was seven months old but looked

no more than seven weeks.  It took her quite a while to discover

herself and her place.  At ftrst she shared the apartment with

Kelly and Terrible, who belonged to my granddaughter, and

raty was not at all displeased when those two rambunctious

Pelines moved on to other quarters.  

	Taty is my first praying cat I have a small Monday prayer

~oup which usually meets at my apartment When we gather

n a circle to pray, she comes from wherever she is and places

~rself right in the middle of us.  If we do not start to pray as

oon as she thinks proper, she comes and sits, looking at us

`xpectantiy and sternly.  

	69  

	A larger group of my church friends come once a month

with the rector and his wife for dinner, to discuss the problems,

joys, and hopes of our church fiumIy We end the meal and the

discussion with Eucharist around the table.  Taty knows tliis

routine and, as we near the end of the meal, in she comes,

ready and, if necessary, urging us to pray.  

	Animals, too, are part of God's kingdom.  My first dog,

Touche, crawled with her old and aching bones under the

rocking chair where, during the night, I was rocking and nw~

ing my baby boy, not willing to neglect what she felt to be her

duty~ though she died the next day.  

	Sarah Crewe, in Frances Hodgson Burnett's The Little

I4~ncess, is demoted to being a little slave living in a barren

attic, and there she makes friends with a rat she calls

Melchisedek, who comes to visit her every night  

	A little girl, fighting back tears, told me that her pet rabbit

had died, and she had been informed that the rabbit could

not go to heaven, because rabbits have no souls.  I said, `You

know what?  Only the human creatures were thrown out of the

Garden.  The animals weren't I don't think you need worry

about your rabbit"  

	Wasn't the parent or teacher who told the little girl her ral>

bit could not go to heaven playing Cod?  Cod made it all, sk'

and sea, water and land, green growing things and all birds

and animals, and called it good, very good.  

	Who are we more likely to meet in heaven: the person who

makes god-like decisions about who is or is not saved, or the

loving dog who rescues the baby from the burning house?  

	70  

	Winter nap  

	Winter afternoon.  

	A thick quilL

A meditating cat

sealing the crack of air

between bed and

body.  Under

the massage of paws

even the cold, cramped heart  

	relents, blessed by the prayer of purr.  

	Luci  

	71  

	least important of all animals, I am a beast

of burden.  I can carry heavy loads,

and I am more patient than a camel,

gentler of nature, though occasionally stubborn.  

I am not counted intelligent,  

	and my name is used as an insult  

	But when I see an angel in my path

I recognize a messenger of Cod.  

"stop!" the angel said to me, and I stopped,

obeying Cod rather than my master, Baaam,

who hit me and cursed me and did not see

the angel's brilliance barring our way.  

	later, I took the path to Bethlehem,

bearing Cod's bearer on my weary back,

and stood beside her in the stable, trying to share

her pain and loneliness, and then the joy.  

	I carried on my back the lord himself,

riding, triumphant, through Jerusalem,

But the blessings turned to curses,

Hosanna into Crucil~~ him!  Crucity him!  

	least important of all animals, beast of burden,

my heaviest burden is to turn the curse int0 a blessing,

to see the angel in my path,  

	to bear forever the blessing of my Lord.  

	Madeleine  

	72  

	Vive Ia Djfer~ence  

	Luci  

	I love my woman friends.  Because of our common gender,

even our female physiology and psychology, we have a basis for

knowing and understanding each other with compassion.  We

know what it's like to have monthly ups and downs; we may

have experienced childbirth, nursed our babies, and gone

through menopause with other women, and those experiences

all become shared bonds.  

	But I value my men friends equally, and for different rea-

sons.  I really like men, and not only for the humanity we have

in common; I find in them a complementarity which, as its

name implies, supplies me with an agreeable, surprising sense

of completeness.  And this applies not only to husbands (and

I've had two excellent husbands, Harold, whose death left me

alone in 1986, andjohn, whom I married in 1991).  The men

I've worked with professionally, as well as my male kindred

spirits, remind me of whatJesus, the Cod-man at the heart of

my life, might have been like.  In fact, I like to think of the way

several women in the Bible were close friends with Jesu~

Mary and her sister Martha were as dear to Jesus as their broth-

er lazarus, perhaps more so.  He was thoroughly at home in

their home.  I think it was ordained by God that Mary

Magdalen~a woman-was the first of his friends to see Jesus

after his resurrection.  Martha, and the unnamed woman at the

well in Samaria were, besides Peter, the only recorded individu-

~s who recognized and acknowledged Jesus' messiahship.  

~earlyJesus, a man, brought a vital dimension into their lives.  

	73  

	And I see Christ in many of my male friends.  

	Dorothy Sayers, in her wonderful little book Are Women

Human?  discusses the radical way-for his tim~that Jesus

related to women.  He neither patronized them, despised them,

nor ignored them, but he entered fully into their joys and sor-

rows as one human being with others.  And in return they gave

him the gift of their loyalty~ They weren't "camp followers," in

the usual negative sense, but there's evidence that they cared

forjesus' wefflire during the days of his public ministry.  

	I loved reading a biography of Dorothy Sayers, which told of

her friendship with Charles Williams.  A deep kinship grew

between them because he opened up to her a world of the spir-

itual imagination, which went beyond scholarship and resulted

in a flow of invigorating correspondence between them.  

	Men friends stir me, not sexually, though there's always a

gentle undertone of eroticism in any friendship between the

sexes.  Somehow, with a man, I'm challenged to excel myself to

be the best woman I can b~feminine but not weak or hel~

less, attractive without being vain or empty-headed, capable of

leaps of intuition, but also capable of logical thought I'm on a

number of boards, some of them with a ~eponderance of busi-

ness executives, corporatfrtype men of action.  Perhaps I was ini-

tially invited onto those boards to supply "the woman's touch,"

or even to be a "token woman." But I believe I've proved myself

of value, contributing as much of the "wealth, work, and wi~

dom" needed from board members, as my CEO friends.  I've

certainly learned, in board sessions, to listen carefully, but also

to be assertive, even confrontive, when necessary.  So I'm grat~

ful for those professional associations, and the men I work with,

who have become my friends.  

	I am refreshed, these days, by the freedom I now have which  

	74  

	was denied me in the church in which I grew up, and in which

many years of my married life were spent Women were to be

silent, wearing head coverings as signs of their submission.  

Though I was traveling and speaking around the continent to

other groups of Christian men and women, in my own place of

worship my voice was silenced, not allowed to be heard.  If I

wanted to contribute an idea, I had to whisper it to my hu~

band, who then had to express it on my behalf.  One of

Harold's greatest gifts to me was his decision to move to the

Episcopal church, where we could both be used in public min-

istr)~ and where g:Jte(Ine~~ was considered rather than ~r.  

	Some of my closest men friends I have come to know in the

Chrysostom Society-a group of writers who get together regu-

larly for mutual encouragement and stimulation related to our

work.  Roughly divided between men and women, we are all

there as individuals, not as couples, none of us gaining an

identity as the spouse of someone else.  

	I have grown into a deep spiritual friendship with my rector,

with whom I meet for prayer for ourselves and our parish on a

regular basis.  Another friend of the heart is the writer Harold

Fickett When I was asked by Richard Foster to come as a visit-

[ng scholar to Friends University in 1987, to write my book God

n theDait, I arrived in Wichita, Kansas in that bleak time when

[was still grieving for my husband.  Harold Fickett was himself

~ing through a bleak time.  We were both vulnerable and

oneiy~ He is twenty-five years younger than I.  We never had a

tomantic relationship.  But we did spend much time together.  

	When I first arrived he gave me the keys to his house and

uggested that on free evenings, rather than endure mournful

olitude in the little apartment that was mine for those

nonths, I might come over and do my studying or reading  

	75  

	while he corrected papers or prepared for the classes he was

teaching.  It was a salvific decision.  We contributed to each

other more than our physical presence.  We saved each other

from despair.  There was a good deal of prayer together, of

sharing wounds and losses, and celebrating gains.  We saw

many movies together, listened to music, cooked gourmet

meals for each other.  There was a lot of book talk and God

talk.  That was ten years ago, and though circumstances have

changed for both of us, he remains one of my closest friends

and has grown close to my husband, John, as well.  

	Of course, spiritual friendships between men and women

can be invaded by wrong motivations and become opportuni-

ties for the relationship to become compromised.  There ar~

sexual boundaries that should not be transcended, and we

need to safeguard our moral territory, with Cod's help.  

	Men and women?  Vive `a dzffer'ence.  But celebrate our corn

mon ground, our humanity.  

	76  

	T~e Faniiiy Tree:  

	The fnends  

	you didn `t choose  

	Roots and Branches  

	Macleleine  

	Is there any such thing as a happy family?  Tolstoy says not.  

I've met a few people who've pronounced their dislike of

any kind of family at all, particularly of blood relatives.  My

years have taught me that every family is a mixed bag and a

completely happy family would be totally abnormal.  I have

been greatly blessed in that I loved and respected my par-

ents, and I like my family, most of them, most of the time.  I

wanted children, and grandchildren, as did my husband, and

we both rejoiced in them.  Blessings all, not to be taken for

granted.  

	My birth family was small, but even with three people the

(lynamics were never dull.  Artistic parents.  An only child

~flving late in the marriage.  New York between two wars,

~e century already split in two.  

	My mother was a Southerner, gentle as a steel spring.  My

[~ither was a "damnyankee," volatile, charming, and slowly

iying from mustard~assed lungs, the result of his service in

he First World War.  For most of my growing-up life, his

~ealth was the focus of much of the family's attention.  

	My father's work as a newspaper correspondent took him

~ack and forth between the States and Europe, where we

ought out climates suitable for his health.  When I was

welve, we moved across the Atlantic.  He died, finally suc

umbing to his dreadful illness, when I was seventeen.  

	79  

	By this time, we had returned to the United States and

lived with my mother's mother in the town in North Florida

where my mother was born and grew up.  This meant for me

moving from the relative isolation (pun completely unin-

tended) of my childhood into a very large family of colorfiil

people, storytellers all.  Almost everybody was a cousin and I

never even tried to count them.  

	My father too had come from a large family.  He was the

one boy at the bottom of a long line of sisters.  Most of my

cousins on his side of the family were female, and old enough -~

to be my mother.  There were, among them, three sisters, and

if I could have hand-picked special cousins I'd have picked

them.  I didn't get to know them unffl after college when I was

living in New York, working on my first novel and living in the

world of the theater.  When things got too much for me I'd call -

them and say-not ask, really-"May I come down for a few

days?" They lived in a big old Victorian house outside

Philadelphia, and I wrote much of my first novel sitting on

their window seat with an old college notebook and a fountain

pen.  

	Inasmuch as it is possible, I "chose" my children.  That is,

Hugh and I wanted children.  When I didn't conceive in

three months, I thought I was going to be sterile for life.  

Wrong.  I know that many "surprise" children have been

great delights to their parents, but Josephine and Bion were

lovingly planned, lovingly conceived, and lovingly birthed.  

	Then, there was indeed a surprise.  Bion's birth nearly

killed me, and I had to face the fact that I was not going to

give birth to any more babies.  But God is full of surprises,

terrible and wonderful.  Through the unexpected and tragic  

	80  

	deaths of two of our close friends, their daughter Maria

came into our family as our second daughter.  I would have

liked half a dozen or so more, but three was probably the

right number.  Not 2.5, or whatever the correct statistic is,

but three, all different, all miracles.  

	And now there is the miracle of grandchildren, five (I'd

like half a dozen or so more of them, too), and nineteen

legal godchildren, and quite a few more informal ones.  I am

like most grandmothers, absurdly and totally in love with my

grandchildren, all of whom are unusually beautiful, intellec-

tual, brilliant, et cetera, and of course this is true.  

	They light my life, these great gifts of love, ranging in age

from nine years to the late twenties.  The two eldest, girls

fourteen months apart, lived with me during their college

years; Charlotte was with me for seven years and she and

Lena taught me more than any number of advanced

degrees.  They kept me from falling into any kind of rigid

pattern; in many ways they helped give birth to the new me

who had to be born when my marriage ended with my hu~

band's death.  Nothing can take away the forty years of our

love, but life changes radically after the death of a spouse.  

	My language is probably a little more colorful than it

might have been without these two young women.  Our di~

cussions about politics, the Trinity, recipes for cooking

Mghanistanian food, are delights.  There are times when we

do not agree, and some of it is (I believe) wisdom learned by

living through a great many more years than they have, but

the arguments are never bitter; we never try to wipe each

other out.  

	When we all get together, my children and their children,  

	81  

	and I look at this ~mily I didn't choose, the dear ones God

gave me, I think that if I could choose my family out of the

entire population of the universe, I couldn't choose better.  

	Lud  

	As we work together on this book about friendship I am real-

izing how much Madeleine and I have learned about the

positives from what might be considered the negatives.  From

our lonely (or at least rather solitary) childhoods-she was

an only child, I was one of two overprotected siblings~~e

learned the possibilities of family life well enough to enlarge

our spheres when it came time to bear our own children.  

From the experience of feeling shut off from social popu-

larity, we both probably learned how to be more attuned to

the needs of lonely or secluded people.  And we have come

to appreciate the soul friends whose criteria for friendship

are not social graces, money, influence, or power, but loving

honesty and integrity.  

	My mother was forty-six when I, her first child, was born,

and my father was sixty.  My brother came along nearly three

years later.  They were older parents even by our current

standard.  They were still in the Victorian age, class-

conscious, and very British.  Their values meant private

schools for us-schools which certainly provided us with

superb educational opportunities.  

	Their elitism went further than the social and education-

al.  Former missionaries, our parents forbade us, because of

their ultraconservative convictions about Christianity, to par-

ticipate in dances or parties.  Cardplaying was, of course,

frowned upon.  Sunday was more than a day of rest; it was a  

	day so severely restricted that even going for a drive in the

country, playing anything but hymn tunes on the piano,

reading anything but the Bible, even taking photographs, or

knitting, were not allowed.  It seemed as if my parents wanted

to emphasize our differences from others, and to separate us

in order to protect us from any influences that might adul-

terate our Britishness, our gentility, our legalistic religion,

anything that appeared to them "common or unclean." My

brother and I tried to question these standards as, perhaps,

[nconsistent with loving Christian values, but there was

~ways a dogmatic refusal to even discuss the issues.  

	Though we faithfully attended a small, local church, my

~rother and I didn't go to Sunday School there, with the

:hildren of "working class families." My parents established

n our home a Sunday School suited to their own ideals, and

nvited parents with similar rarefied standards to be the

eachers, and bring their children as students.  Once again,

bese were friends I didn't choose.  

	I was sent to a wonderful Christian camp in the summers,

)ut because my mother considered shorts immodest and

)ants only for boys, I wore only skirts for canoeing, hiking,

~nd other sports.  Once again, even among other Christians,

was made to feel different.  As a teenager I could wear no

nakeup.  (I felt daring and guilty when I secretly bought a

~ of Noxzema!)  I wasn't permitted to date until I went away

0 college.  Though I achieved academic honors in high

chool, and with them some grudging respect from teachers

nd peers, I always felt an alien, and often a moody or sullen

ne at that.  I was not a cheerful child.  My best friends, the

nes I felt akin to, even if they didn't come from pedigreed

~milies, got the~freeze treatment at home.  Uke Madeleine, I  

	83  

	found my happiest world in books and music, which

my imagination to new horizons.  

	Does this all sound very negative?  I know now that my par-

ents' convictions, conservative though they were, were a

sionately held reflection of their own upbringing.  

Overprotectiveness was their way of expressing their dev~

tion to us, the precious children of their old age.  

	Restrictive though my own upbringing was, there we~

rewards.  We traveled widely-from England, my birthplace,

to wild and wonderful places like Australia, and then

and forth between Sydney, and Toronto, Canada.  It was in

Australia that I was happiesL I had over seventy first

there (my Dad was one of twelve vigorously procreative &~

lings) with whom we went on picnics, spent days

at the glorious beaches, and took holidays in the

Mountains.  These gorgeous landscapes are still

on my imagination.  There my love of the wildness of

increased; there I felt true freedom and the joy of

accepted in a larger group.  

	But even in our travels we would be plucked out of school in

the middle of a term in one country, and dropped into a

ent educational system in another~herever our iather

there might be more scope for his conference speaking He

a restless man as well as a dynamic preacher, and his work

him away from home for weeks at a time.  Dad's blithe

tion was always: `You youngsters are bright; you'll catch up

And we did.  But the anxiety level, the stress of leaving

settings behind and starting over, and over again, of having

absentee~ther, was greater than Mother and Dad reallze&  

	I always knew that Dad was immensely proud of us, and

our small achievements.  He loved my early poems,  

	84  

	carried them with him to read to friends.  An enthusiastic,

warm, and demonstrative man, his children were the apples

of his eye.  We wanted to please him, and doing well in

school and living out their patterns of life and faith were

what pleased him and Mother most.  Pleasing others, to gain

approval and security, became a pattern of life for me, a pat-

tern which I am struggling even now to reverse, as I still find

myself attempting, from time to time, to please Mother,

eight years after her death at ninety-nine.  

	When I left Canada to attend Wheaton College in the

U.S.  and met young people from other Christian circles, I

was finally able to realize that the life I'd been living wasn't

exactly normal.  For the first time, I was free to make new

friends of my own choosing, some of whom are still close to

me today.  A wider world was opening.  

	Five days after college graduation, rather than becoming

an overseas missionary as my parents had planned, I mar-

ried Harold Shaw.  In the next six years we had four children.  

My kids ask me today how I managed-living on the meager

income Harold earned at Moody Bible Institute, with me

doing freelance editing, tutoring private pupils in New

Testament Greek, and correcting exams for Moody Corre

spondence School, while caring for my small babies and

toddlers.  My answer: I managed, but raggedly, juggling pri-

orities, with only minor cracks of time in which to write

poems.  That was when Dr.  Kilby, my college mentor, gave

me, for my 29th birthday, twenty-nine stamped, self-

addressed envelopes-his broad hint that he wanted me to

take my poetry seriously enough to circulate it more widely.  

	As years widened the distance between me and my child-

hood, I discovered, too, the freedoms of being Spirit-  

	85  

	directed rather than being ruled by human legalisms.  I saw

God through new eyes, not as a restrictive law~ver but the

kind of parent, tough but tender, that a child needs and

wants, deep down.  

	We parents do give our genes to our children, but we have

little control over their makeup, their personalities, and

gifts.  We may choose to have children, but even if we are bi~

logically capable of bearing them we have no way of kno~

ing, or choosing, how they'll turn out!  There's a lot of trial

and error involved, certainly with the first couple of off-

spring, on whose backs we learn parenting skills by necessity

and experimentation.  

	My children all were, and are, very distinct from each

other-Robin, Marian, John, Jeff, Kristin.  They are now, as

adults in their own right, my best friends, but they certainly

put Harold and me to the test as they wrestled their way

through childhood and adolescence, to independence!  We

are bound together by blood, by responsibility, by parental

and filial love, by those strong cords inbuilt to preserve the  

	integrityoffamilies.Wehavelittlechoiceaboutit;it'snot~  

	we bring up our children, but howliow we live out our

roles.  

	And now they are themselves the parents of a new genera-

tion-Lauren, Lindsay, Katherine, Michelle, Jack.  How

quickly the roles reverse!  We who were dependent children

become the ones depended on.  And I know-from the

experience of watching my father succumb to leukemia at

eighty4hree, and my mother grow old and blind, to die

opinionated as ever, and always dogmatically certain that she

was right, and that if we disagreed with her, we were wrong-

that dependence on others lies ahead of us.  It may not be  

	86  

	what we choose.  But we can at least try to learn from past

failures, and maintain our grace and dignity as we grow

toward heaven in company with friends we choose, and the

family we were given.  

	87  

	Eating the Wh,o~ Egg  

	for my great-great-grandfather  

	Oral history tells us you went through

three wives.  One story is that

every day you breakfasted with

your current spouse on toast

and a threeminute egg,

chipping off its white cap in the precise

British way, and in a grand gesture,

spooning to your wife that minor albumen,

watery, pale as her self.  That was her meal;

you feasted on yolk, rich and yellow

as a gold sovereign, and crushed the shells,

feeding them by gritty doses to

your offspring lined up along the tabl~

a supplement to stave off rickets and

accustom the family to patriarchy.  

Nourished thus on remnants and rigor,

your tribe multiplied to twenty-two.  

The legend astonishes me still.  And I

still bear, along with those woman

genes, a vestigial guilt

whenever I cook myself a breakfast egg

and then devour it, white, yolk,

protein, cholesterol, and all.  Like

seeing the sun after generations of moons.  

Like being the golden egg, and eating it too.  

	88  

	Luci  

	Majeleine  

	"Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they

have to take you in....  I should have called it something you

somehow haven't to deserve." So wrote Robert Frost.  lovew.  

But is it always true?  I hope that whenever anyone in my flimily

turns up, no matter how unexpectedly, or for whatever reason,

the welcome mat will always be ou~  

	That was certainly true for the prodigal son, although his

elder brother did not share in his heart the loving welcome of

the father.  What about people who talk about "heaven home"?  

Is everybody who comes knocking at the door welcome?  We've

all heard stories of the living room full of family photos, but

one is turned to the wall.  Whoever was in that picture has been

Lhrown ou~ Negated.  Unwelcome.  

	I know a woman who is a strict Baptist.  (She is a "fundalit,"

which is a word I created to describe fundamentalists who are

~iblical literalis~~ndamentalist/literalist~and believe, for

~ample, that God created the earth in six actual twenty-four

~our days, and that the actual age of the planet can be calcu-

ated from the genealogies in the gospels.  I don't want the

~ord "fundamentalist" to become a narrow description that

.`xcliides me, as I attend closely to the fundamentals of our

aith but am most assuredly not a "fundali&")  

	In any event, the woman received a phone call from her

~.  He had called to tell her that he had AIDS.  Without hesi-

ition, she said, "Come home." And she lovingly nursed him  

	89  

	 thrrnigh his long illness until his death.  Accord~ng to her pe~

sonal religion, that was the only thing to do, the Christial

thing to do.  It has, by the way, made a powerful impact on be

Baptist church.  

	But I've also heard of families who, when they've learne

that their child has AIDS, have closed the door, crying "sin

Statistically there is a horriiying number of people who h~

died of AIDS, alone, rejected by their families.  Also, accordil

to statistics, people with AIDS live in cities, but where did dii

come from?  Where was home?  It was hamlets, villages, s~

towns where there was no welcome.  We each can ask: H~

ready am I to offer such hospitality?  How ready is the conufli

nity I live in?  How prepared is my church community?  

	There are people who make it their life's work to care fc

people who, for myriad reasons, have been abandoned, turne

away, disowned.  Teenagers.  The very old and in.  Is home ti

place where, when you have to go there, they have to take yc

in?  

	The prodigal's father didn't have to take him in, but h

welcomed him with joy.  Jesus' message to me in this parable

that when we come to ourselves, see ourselves as we really an

and turn with true repentance to home, Cod is there, waitifl~

loving, and welcorning us home at lasL Would that we,  

	follow Jesus, would follow as well that loving example.  

	90  

	for my yaangest daughter; i~istin  

	At eleven, you need new shoes

often, and I would give you

other things to stand on

that are handsome and useful

and fit you well, that are not

all plastic, that are real,

and knowable, and leather-

hard, things that will move

with you, and breathe rain

or air, and wear well

in all weather.  

	For beauty, I would buy

a gem from the earth's

heart and a ring that is gold

clear through, and clothes the colors

of flowers.  I would cultivate in you

a gentle spirit, and curiosity,

and wonder in your eyes.  For use,

in your house I'd hang

doors that are solid wood

without hidden panels of air, set

in walls built of brick more

than one inch thick.  

	91  

	On your floors I'd stretch fleeces

from black sheep's backs

and for your sleep, sheets

spun from fibers that grew, once,

on the flanks of the fields.  

I'd mount for you one small,

clean mirror for a grinning

glimpse at yourself, and a whole

geometry of windows to the world,

with sashes that open hard, but

once lifted, let in a breath

of pure sun, the smell of a day,

a taste ofwild wind, an earful

of green music.  

	At eleven, and always,  

	you will need to be nourished.  

	For your mind-poems and plays, words

on the pages of a thousand books:

Deuteronomy, Dante and Donne,

Hosea and Hopkins, L'Engle and Lewis.  

For your spirit, mysteries and praise,

sureties and prayer.  For your teeth

and tongue, real bread the color

of grain at a feast, baked and broken

fresh each day, apricots and raisins,

cheese and olive oil and honey

that live bees have brought

from the orchard.  For drink

I'd pour you awine  

	1.  

	92  

	that remembers sun and shadow

on the hillside where it grew,

and spring water wet enough

to slake your forever thirst  

	At eleven, the air around you

is full of calls and strange

directions.  Choices pull at you

and a confusion of dream.  

And I would show you a true compass

and how to use it, and a sun steady

in its orbit and a way

through the woods by a path

that will not peter out  

	At eleven you know well

the sound oflove'svoice

and you have, already, hands

andaheartandamouth

that can answer.  And I

would learn with you

more of how love gives and receives,

both, with both palms open.  I

am standing here, far enough away

for you to stretch and breathe,

close enough to shield you from

some of the chill and to tell you

of a comfort that is

stronger, more real,

that will come closer still.  

	Luci  

	93  

	With three Johns in my lzfr-brother, husband, son-in a

momentofneed, allIhavetodoisc~y, `johnl" and three men

jun:ptohelpme!  

	Being with son John for two and a half~~~s gave me a won-

measure of the intellectual and spiritual companionship I  

	flounsh on.  We drove up from San Francisco to Bellingham,

camping both on the way there and the way ba~ taking read-

ingaloud, prayingdeply.  

	W~~ile we were in Bellingham we had a family reunion

(excpt for Jeff whom we missed greatly).  Marian and her

daughter Ka~ flew out flom Indianapolis to meet us, leaving

Karl, her husband, and the other children to fend for themselves.  

She had not visited Ieltingham before, nor seen Robin and Kas

in their "home place.  

	My children had such a wonde~~tl time together Sometimes

I can't believe t~ are the fruit of my womb, these five indepen-

dent adult pe~le.  Where did the time go?-and how many

times I've said that, written that here.  I note it again as a

theme of my journaling  

	I watched like a hen brooding over her chicks, delighting as

the kids found so much in common after a rather long time

apart, had Jun, played, told stories and jokes and also talked

seriously about what is important.  

	The fact that I am real to them, a reat person, with foibles

and ~fis, rather than some archeypal MOM creature, means  

	94  

	¬-  

	~thing to me.  And ther a~ nal to me as weu, not a re][Iection

of their parents, or some pafl of my vision of what children

should be.  Real and w~~l.  Thank you dear Lord forJohn,

J~ Maiian, Robin, Kas.  Bless them.  Kap them.  Love them.  

	Fn0enJ anJ Lover:  

	The ktndscape  

	of intima~  

	Come stand in my heart...  and a

whole river would cover your feet

and rsse higher and take your knees

in whirlpools, and draw you down to

itseW, your whole body, your heart

too.  

	-Eudora Welty  

	99  

	Love, as Seen from the Peanut Galt~ry  

	I think you're supposed to get shot with an arrow or

something, but the rest isn't supposed to be so painflil.  

	-Manuel, age 8  

	If falling in love is anything like learning to spell, I don't

want to do it.  It takes too long.  

	-Glenn, age 7  

	If you want to be loved by somebody who isn't in your

family, it doesn't hurt to be beautiflil.  

	-Anita, age 8  

	`00  

	Common Ground  

	New dug, rail braced, young ash blond

fence posts span the frozen slope

wedlocked in pairs repeating down

the road and out of sight

But there's an older couple

sharing the upper view across the river

(he's beech, she's thorny

bramble), whose tops feather today's

frost fog, whose ranging roots

lodge interlaced in the lean soil

that also anchors milkweed, ragweed,

thistle, sorrel, dock.  

	Time tangled the two (branch

and toe touched, leg locked)

season shift and shadow color them

alike, green, gold, or gray.  

Rain rinses them,

westerlies bare thefr brows,

snows sift soft over their stifftiess,

and a bleached, spring sun

speeds their slow sucking

from a common spring.  

	Luci  

	`01  

	My Lover, MyThend  

	Majeleine  

	When I grew up in the younger years of this century it was

expected that a young woman would marry and have chil-

dren.  That was her vocation.  Fortunately, things have

changed.  Marriage is no longer the "be all and end all" for

women.  We don't hear the words "old maid" used any more.  

It was never a pleasant description.  It meant failure as a

woman and the closing off of the usual option, and there

weren't a great many others.  A single woman could be a nurse

or a teacher.  Bright and determined women were challenged

to discover other destinies, and many did.  They ran schools or

hospitals, organized soup kitchens, became suffi~enes.  I am

grateful to live at a time and place where attention is not

restricted to Xinde~~ KLrche, and Ku~che, as important as all three

are to me.  

	I didn't really expect to get married, which was not a

matter of concern, as I was very serious about the vocation I

did have: for all of my conscious lffe I had known that I am a

writer.  Also, I was anything but a social success.  I was tall, near-

sighted, and shy.  Fortunately, I was also pleased with life as it

was.  I had good friends.  I earned my living by working in the

theater as an actress, happy to be general understudy or assi~

tant stage manager, and I wrote, at every opportunity, back-

stage.  

	At age 25, 1 met a handsome actor named Hugh Franklin.  

	102  

	We went out for a hamburger and a milkshake and we talked

nonstop for ten hours.  When I went home I said to myself, "I

have met the man I want to marry."  

	On a freezing cold January day while in Chicago for a run of

The Cherry Orchard, we joined our lives in marriage and

settled into living them together for what turned out to be the

next forty years.  I've written about these years in Two Part

Invention.  

	An actor and a writer.  It has only recently occurred to me

that this wasn't an ordinary liaison.  We were husband and wife,

father and mother, lovers, friends.  Sometimes we shouted.  

Sometimes we simply didn't communicate.  Sometimes we held

hands in complete intimacy We had made promises.  We made

them in church, promises to each other and to God, and some

times the promises were all that held us together.  But they were

~,ood glue.  

	Mter four years we took Josephine, our first child, and left

~ew York and the theater to have more children and to bring

ilem up in the country.  We took over and built up a rundown

~,eneral store, spending the next decade in northwest

3onnecticut.  These were difficult years for me and, in dif-

~ent ways, for Hugh.  

	I am not an instinctive housekeeper.  I struggled to keep

~ouse, raised the children as best I could, questioned Cod and

he divine purpose behind this universe and particularly this

~lanet.  I worked hard at the difficult job of a double

ocation~it never occurred to me to stop writing.  As hill and

ich as these years were, I was delighted to move back to New

(ork, the city of my birth, the place of music and painting and

heater and writing.  

	Sometimes at conferences or workshops I am asked about  

	103  

	those early years, usually by young wives, "How did you

manage?" With diiiiiculty.  With conflict.  With exhaustion.  But I

never regretted my choices, at least never for more than a few

nunutes.  

	In the later years of our marriage, after the children had

grown and left home for their own lives, my husband and I

had the time and space to rediscover each other.  The promises

still held.  They had become stronger.  We were friends and we

were lovers.  We often sat at the dinner table to eat by candie

light in a companionable silence.  We were still growing in-

teriofly, and we each gave the other room to grow.  

	My husband died in the fill of 1986, and not a day has passed

that I have not thought of him with love and missed him terribly.  

I miss his body, notjust in an erotic way, but his dear and known

created flesh.  I miss the touch of his hands as we reached out to

hold each other, casually, lovingly.  I miss the incredible blueness

of his eyes, which were an asset to him as an actor but which

were, for me, the symbol of his loving spirit  

	I miss shouting at him in frustration, laughing with him in

pleasure, hearing him whistle as he walked about the apart-

ment, waiting up for him when he was working in a play.  I miss

our being able to grow old together.  In a world where every-

body is called "gentlemen," he was one.  

	I do believe that, ultimately, we are not separated from those

we love, even in death.  Hugh is bound to me still by the cords

of memory.  But it is more than that In Cod's love, Hugh is~

and that is all I need to know.  

	I'm grateful that I had a faithful marriage in a day when

faithfulness is not taken as seriously as it once was.  Faithfulness

in marriage; faithfulness in friendship.  In a world of changes

and chances, fidelity is a gift and a grace.  It takes time and

commitment And it is worth it  

	104  

	Love~~ Apart  

	In what, love, does fidelity consist?  

I wiil be true to you, of course.  

My body's needs I can resist,

Come back to you without remorse;  

	And you, behind the footlight's lure,

Kissing an actress on the stage,

Will leave her presence there, I'm sure,

As I my people on the page.  

	And yet-I love you, darling, yet

I sat with someone at a table

And gloried in our minds that met

As sometimes strangers' minds are able  

	To leap the bounds of times and spaces

And find, in sharing wine and bread

And light in one another's ~ces

And in the words that each has said  

	An intercourse so intimate

It shook me deeply, to the core.  

I said good-night, for it was late;

We parted at my hotel door  

	105  

	And I went in, turned down the hed

And took my bath and thought of you

leaving the theatre with light tread

And going off, as you should do,  

	To rest, relax, and eat and talk-

And I lie there and wonder who

Will wander with you as you walk

And what you both will say and do...  

	We may not love in emptiness;

We married in a peopled place;

The vows we made enrich and bless

The smile on every stranger's face,  

	And all the years that we have spent

Give me the joy that makes me able

To love and laugh with sacrament

Across a strange and distant table.  

	No matter where I am, you are,

We two are one and bread is broken

And laughter shared both near and lar

Deepens the promises once spoken  

	And strengthens our fidelity

Although I cannot tell you how,

But I rejoice in mystery

And rest upon our marriage vow.  

	Madektne  

	106  

	Prothalamion  

	How like an arch our marriage!  Framed

in living stone, its gothic arrow aimed

at heaven, with Christ (its Capstone and

its Arrowhead) locking our coupled

weakness into one, the leaning

of two lives into a strength.  

	Thus he defines ourjoining's length

and width, its archetypal shape.  Its meaning

is another thing: a letting in of light,

an opening to a varied landscape, planned

but yet to he explored.  A paradox, for you

and I, who doubly flame this arch, may now step through

its entrance into the promised land.  

	Luci  

	107  

	find their fliture spouses, I hope a poem will rise to the top of

my mind, like cream, to celebrate my delight and contentment

with their marriages.  

	Possess your soul in patience  

	We(t(tingpoemforjohn and Chnsta  

	Cwn iL Hold your heart the way

you'd hold a live bird-your two hands

laced to latch it in, feeling

its feathery trembling, its fledgling

warmth, its faint anxieties

of protest, its heart stutter

against the palm of one hand, a fidget

in the pull of early light  

	Possess it, restless, in  

	the finger cage of patience.  Enfold

this promise with a blue sheen

on its neck, its wings a tremor

of small feathered bones

until morning widens like

a window, and God opens

your fingers and whispers, Fly!  

	Luci  

	109  

	A continuing conversation  

	MADEIœINE:  

	When I'm with you or my other married women

friends I sometimes feel a sense of partialness.  It

isn'tjust loneliness.  It's a lack of completion.  

	Luci:  

	You think a woman has to have a man?  

	MADELœINE:  

	No.  No, I think I'm too much of a feminist for

that I think it's that having had the flifflilment of

a lifetime commitment to someone with whom I

had many varieties of friendshi~ex, compan-

ionship, play, excitement, support-and knowing

how good it can be, I miss it, particularly when

I'm with a large group of people, many of whom

are couples.  

	Luci:  

	But there are marriages that don't supply those

elemen~that aren't very good.  

	MADEflINE:  

	That's another story.  Some marriages are obvi-

ously better than others.  Some need work and

can henefit from it, while others probably aren't

ever going to make it.  

	Luci:  

	"Work" is certainly the operative word here.  I

guess the two of us have some wisdom from our

combined years of marriage that would allow us  

	110  

	to say that marriage is a lot of work!  I know there

is a feeling out there, in the culture, that you are

supposed to feel happy and flilfilled in your mar-

riage automatically, almost as if that went with the

ring and the ceremony.  That is certainly not how

it is.  It leaves out the idea that you need to have

decided that this relationship is valuable and you

are going to invest time and energy in it, even

when that is very difficult  

	MADELEINE:  

	Yes, and don't we both know people who have

just said that they are not "happy" in their mar-

riage so they are going to end it, and look el~

where for "happiness," which can lead you on

quite a chase.  

	Luci:  

	Of course, happiness is a part of marriage,

although I think I might say that "contentment"

descrihes it better, especially as years wear on.  My

marriages have been filled with joy, and some

pain, and hard work.  There is nothing superficial

about all this!  

	MADELEINE:  

	I have also seen marriages that had to end, that

should end, where there is nothing creative any-

more, nothing that reflects health or love.  

	Luci:  

	Yes, and I have had friends who have struggled

with this, and then made the difficult decision to

end the marriage.  You can't really talk about this

in absolutes.  

	111  

	husband had died just hefore Hugh, and she said,

"The first year I'd have married anyone who

asked me.  Now I like living alone, and doing my

own thing, and the last thing in the world I want

is another husband."  

	Luci:  

	That's how I felt before I married John Hoyte.  

Really happy, fuffilled, enriched in myself with

God, all on my own.  But romance bloomed when

he showed up on our blind date!  A real surprise,

followed by a very impetuous engagement!  How

do you feel now, about remarriage?  

	I think I've reached an age where finding some

one I'd want to marry just isn't very likew.  Some

times I'll enjoy heing with someone, and then I'll

ask myself: "Would you like to have breakfast with

this person every single morning, before he's

shaved and had his shower?" And I haven't

answered yes to that one yeL But, you know me,

Luci.  Never say never.  

	112  

	spice  

	Sentimentalists, purists, and some

preachers, advocate marital absolute~

stability a clear hierarchy for

decision, a predictable union, unflawed,

bland as a blank page.  No wonder

it ends up flat A truer wedding's

grounded in paradox, answers the pull

of the particular, grapples a score

of rugged issues.  Like horned toads

in Eden, incongrulties add surprise

to a complacent landscape.  

	Thank heaven you're romantic and

irascible, I'm opinionated in my

impulsiveness.  Thank God we can

lean together inour failing-a rusty

trellis propping a thorned rose.  

	Luci  

	113  

	Feast~ of FnenJ~iiip:  

	Love revealed  

	The Mints t~ of Tomato Soup  

	Majeleine  

	Friends give nourishment of all kinds to one another.  We

sustain one another-provide sustenance.  In so many ways we

offer to one another the feasts of our friendship.  

	When Hugh and I and our children lived in the village

where the old colonial church was the center of our lives, my

special church friends and I brought food to our neighbors,

especially if someone was ffl and the household thereby out of

kilter.  We carried in soups, stews, or maybe a ham, and we

looked around the house and, if necessary, did some quick

cleaning, washed dishes, ironed a shirt that had been left on

the board.  Providing nourishment in this way was part of how

we understood Christian community  

	It has certainly been the custom in any community I have

ever been part of for friends and neighbors to bring in food in

vast quantities after a death.  This is both a comfort and an

affirmation of life despite the inevitability of death.  

	Often, after a funeral and the sharing of grief, Hugh and I

would go home, sit at our litfie table and enjoy a simple meal,

and then we would make love.  This was no dishonor to the

person who had just been buried, but an affirmation of life.  

Perhaps it harkens back to primordial times when the planet

was very sparsely populated.  Death and birth were very precari-

ously balanced and the mandate to "replenish the earth" made

sense; procreation meant the preservation of the species.  

	117  

	A shared meal brings a special comfort in times of sadness.  

The summer Hugh was dying we ate out on the terrace every

night, and Cod lald on the most incredible sunsets.  A feast for

the eyes.  There have been very few as splendid since.  We'd sit

there while the stars came out.  And there was something

unspokenly sacramental about it that was strengthening, and

still is, for me.  

	In my view, eating outdoors adds a festive air, whatever the

circumstances.  The Europeans have always understood this,

and we're catching on, with outdoor restaurants springing up

everywhere, even on the sidewalks of New York.  Sitting outside

together for a meal, watching people strolling by, couples hold-

ing hands, allows us to bask, not just in the sun, but in our

companionship, our camaraderie.  

	Companion.  Comrade.  Both good words.  A good comrade

gives comfort  

	When Luci and I talked about this, she added that a godd

comrade also gives you comfort food.  The night she and John

decided to get married, right after his proposal they made tea

and buttered toast with Marmite.  "Buttered toast is homey and

comforting," she said.  I nodded, adding "Cream of tomato

soup."  

	"Oh, yes," Luci said, "my favorite, too."  

	And isn't it wondrous: a simple bowl of tomato soup with

buttered toast can be a feast of friendship.  

	118  

	With Love in Every Stitch  

	Lud  

	In my childhood, our family often took a birthday picnic lunch

to the beach or the bush or a park in whatever country we ha~

pened to be living at the time-Engiand, Australia, or Canada.  

My mother planned lovely picnics.  There were always hard-

boiled eggs, and crisp lettuce leaves, and cold fried chicken,

and parsley-and-Marmite sandwiches, and cheese scones with

butter, and egg-and-bacon pie (we'd call it quiche today), and

pikelets-small New Zealand pancakes, served cold, with

butter and honey-and lemonade, and fruit salad.  And then

we'd all lie in the sun-bright grass and read some favorite book

aloud, and sing bynms.  

	Another birthday tradition passed down from my parents is

a family reading of Psalm 103, so richly full of Cod's promises

and blessings.  A birthday tradition I've developed with my own

children is the baking of my famous hot-milk sponge cake,

which is delicious without being too rich.  It has a festive design

made by sifting powdered sugar over a lace paper doily on the

cake's top layer, and then removing the doily.  The filling is

always a mix of whipped cream and crushed raspberries, or

strawberries, or peaches, according to the wishes of the birth-

day person.  

	Within the family, books were often the gilts of choice, and

still are.  I just sent my two sons boo~to Jeff in London and

John in South Africa; their natal days are only five days apart  

	119  

	Of course, when my children were in the start-up phase in

their independent lives, beginning to support themselves in

their first jobs, money gifts were always welcome, or some

household item-a toaster, a blanket, a set of giasse~for their

first apartment  

	I've often knitted sweaters as special gifts-birthday,

Christmas, or "just because I love you" gifts.  I've lost count of

the number of sweaters I've knitted, but the total's probably

close to four hundred.  Madeleine got one about fifteen years

ago, and when she began to pester me for another, I told her

I'd add her to my waiting list.  "But I want to be at the top of

the list" she complalned.  "Sorry, you'll have to walt your turn!  

Fairisfair."  

	Of course, sweaters as gifts require serious pre-planning

months before the birthday in question.  For many years I devel-

oped my own variations on an Aran Fisherman theme, intri-

cately patterned, using the wonderful, cream<:olored yarn

called "balnin" with the sheep's lanolin still in it, which makes

the garment naturally waterproof.  But lately I've branched out

to other styles and yarns.  On a visit to a knitting mill in Wales I

bought yarn from the Bargain Bin, woolen thread in discon-

tinued but charming shades, wound on the cone-shaped

spindles used on the knitting machines.  As I remember, they

were an incredible buy at thirty-five pence per spindle, and

each spindle held a sweater's worth of yarn, which translates to

less than two dollars a sweater.  I was enchanted by the subtle,

heathery shades of blues and greens lying higgledypiggledy in

the sale bin, and I loaded up for future knitting.  Now son John

has a crew-neck sweater in mossy green with all~ver chevrons to

lend him-warmth in the chilly South African winters.  And I'm

finally finishing Madeleine's garment-a tw~tone cardigan  

	120  

	with pewter buttons, knit in a slate-teal blue with- gray.  I've

promised this to her when our current writing project-the

book you hold in your hand-is finally completed.  Perhaps as

you read it, Madeleine will be wearing her sweater!  

	When my grandchildren began to arrive I got to work knit-

ting baby blankets, booties, sweaters for early birthday~ nice

change from the very utilitarian clothes I sewed when my own

babies came, when we were too poor for store-bought clothes.  

Birthday gifts in those days were mere tokens of love, and had

to be useful rather than beautiful.  

	I found a wonderful gift card in a gift shop.  It shows a

mother sheep at work with her knitting needles, fishioning a

Sweater from a strand of yarn drawn from the wool on her own

sheeply body (which leaves her looking a little naked).  I bought

enough copies of this card to last me for years of sweater giving

because I feel like that sheep: knitting means giving a part of

myselE And since creative knitting is one of the joys of my life

when I do it for people dear to me (I even knit in board meet-

ings; it helps me focus), I write on these gift cards, `Every stitch

is knit with love." And it's true.  

	121  

	Luci's Hot Mi1~ Sponge C~e  

	IN A MIXING BOWL:  

	Beat 4 eggs well, using electric mixer on high  

	speed.  

	Graduallybeatin2c.sugai~2Lv~ll~  

	Beat together until light  

	Set oven to 325 degrees.  

	IN~~~~ThBowL:  

	Combine2c.floui~2tbakingpowder, 1/2tsalt  

	Fold into egg mixture.  

	IN SMALL PAN:

Bringtoboillc.rllIkand2tbutterormaigrine.  

	Md milk mixture slowly to batter, stirr~g gently.  

	Pour into two wellgreased and floured 8" cake pans.  

	Bake 3(~35 minutes.  

	When cool, frost one layer with whipped cream and  

	jam (I use raspberry or strawberry) or crushed fresh  

	fruit and top with the second layer.  

	Lay a paper lace doily on top and sift powdered sugar  

	over the cake.  Remove doiiy~ Voita'!A cake for a festive  

	occasion.  

	Let Us Break Bread Together  

	Majeleine  

	The word "companion" has its derivation from the words

"bread" and "with." A companion is someone you break

bread with.  In my life the breaking of bread at the evening

meal can be the most important time of the day.  It is the time

to gather around the table, light the candie~in candlesticks

Luci so beautifully polishe~ask the blessing, and eat and

talk together.  Having friends for dinner is a great joy.  

Sometimes these dinners are planned ahead, often they occur

spontaneously, sometimes unexpectedly.  

	New York is a crossroads and a departure place for other d~

tinations.  The phone will ring and I'll hear an excited voice:

`I'm off to London (or Cairo, or Buenos Aires, or Cape Town)

and I'm here overnighL Any chance we can get together?"  

	`Wonderful!  Can you come for dinner?"  

	"Oh, I'd love to, but I have a couple of people with me-

you'd really like them.  Would it be too much trouble?  Could

we order in Chinese food or something?"  

	"Don't worry.  Just come.  It will be marvelous to see you.  

	My favorite "quick-and~asy-yet~legant" meal is leg of lamb.  

I call my wonderful butcher, get a large bag of new potatoes to

cook along with the lamb, and plan to make creamed spinach,

which is easy to do with low-fat cream cheese, garlic, and nut-

meg.  Preparing the lamb is simple.  I sliver large quantities of

garlic and poke it intO litfie slits made with a sharp knife all

over the lamb, then rub the lamb with rosemary and mustard.  

The new potatoes are placed in the roasting pan with the  

	123  

	lamb, and it goes into a 350 degree oven for two hours.  Dessen

will be fruit and cheese.  A wonderful dinner, with little effort  

	Setting the table takes about the same time as~preparing the

meal.  If Luci is with me she will insist on ironing the napkins!  I

fill the big silver pitcher with ice water.  It is rather ornate and

was given to my mother as a wedding present She didu't like

ornate things, so as soon as I was married she gave it to me,

and!  love it, anduse itall the time.  

	Ablessing of living in an old apartment, built in 1912, is thati

have an actual dining room, and an oval table which comfon-

ably seats eight, though we've squeezed in twelve.  There's a view

across the Hudson River to New Jersey, and we're on the route

of many planes.  They streak across the sky like stars.  

	Around the table we are one, though often we are a di~

parate group.  Paul grew up in Colombia, working in a Roman

Catholic hospital.  Patty is from a Baptist family in Ceorgia, and

her work has been with abused teenagers.  Somehow the circle

of grace at the table, the food shared, the ideas tossed out with

eagerness and hope, bridge the differences.  Our ideas for

healing may be strangely different, but the ultimate aim is the

same.  We try to listen.  

	We sit around the table and sing one of the graces we know,

an old round.  The candles are lit We break into a crusty loaf

of bread.  I pass the salad: mixed greens and nuts in a simple

dressing of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper, a tiny

amount of prepared dark mustard, and more garlic, with goat

cheese, lots of goat cheese, on top.  

	When I was a little girl in France, only the peasants ate goat

cheese.  That has changed, too, and it has implications beyond

what it is or is not fashionable to eat We live now in a wider

world.  We try new tastes.  We listen to new ideas.  We sometimes  

	124  

	feel threatened, but we try to be open and to discover whether

the threat comes from within ourselves, or is really something

from without  

	We talk and talk, catching up with what has gone on in our

lives, in the world around us.  There is always a crisis some-

where on the planet There's an ongoing crisis in the daily lives

of many of us.  Many of my friends worry about the state of the

church which we love and which we know is in danger of being

trapped in its institutional forms.  As life changes, so must our

understanding of what it means to be a human being loved by

and loving our Creator.  This is no time for separation, for

dividing into denominations and sects and us and the~ We

know that the planet, indeed, the whole universe, is a living

organism, and what happens to any part of it affects all.  

Nobody, nothing is left out The time for criticism and con-

demnation without mercy and compassion is over.  What are we

to do?  What is that Edwin Markham poem I learned in high

school?...  

	He drew a circe that shut me out-

Heretic, rebel, a thing toJ~ut.  

But Love andlhad the wit to win:

Wedrewa drce that took him in.  

	Around the table we sit, as the candles flicker and burn

down.  We share ideas.  We share food.  We share our sense of

calling, affirming aaain that we are here to do Cod's will and

praying we will be given the grace to discern what Cod's will is.  

	Love.  Inclusion.  Compassion.  Openness.  Willingness to

listen to new ideas, to change.  Lamb and potatoes.  Bread and

wine.  Enjoyed together, in the understanding that all of life is a

~acrament We are companions.  

	125  

	P~rini Bread  

	(J~om the k:tœ*en ofM~znan, Lud's seo:nd da~~~  

	MlxiNABOWL:  

	1/2 c.  white or yellow corn meal

1/3 c.  brown sugar  

	iT.  salt  

	SILM IN GRADUAILV:  

	2 c.  boiling water  

	Ann:  

	1/4 c.  oil, and cool to lukewarm.  

	DiSSOLVE:  

	2 packages ofdryyeast in 1/2 c.  warm water.  

Add yeast to corn meal mixture.  

	3/4 c.  +1/2 c.  whole wheat flour.  

	Turn onto lightly floured surface.  Knead until

smooth and elastic.  Place in greased bowl, turning

once to grease sm1~ice.  Cover and let rise unffl do~

bled.  

	Punch down.  Turn onto lightly floured surface

anddlvideinhalœ  

	Knead again for 3 minutes.  Shape into two loaves

and place in greased bread pans.  

	Cover, and let rise until double.  Bake at 375

degrees for 45 minutes.  

	126  

	Gadic and Other Delights  

	~6ieieine  

	~~e you ever OD'ed on ~lic?  It c&~ be a revelat~~ e~~~

nce.  Luci and I baked two whole buds of garlic, took a loaf of

rench bread, a bottle of white wine, and settled down to a  

	luiet evening of conversation.  We each ate our whole bud of

`,arlic, every clove, and half a loaf of bread and solved the

~oblems of the world and the church and most of our friends

Lnd went happily to bed.  

	In the morning I asked quIetly, `1~uci, did you have fierce

;as last night?fl  

	She nodded.  

	Itwasworth i&  

	A recipe less likely to blow you up came from my godson,

terry Moore, on Orcas Island.  In a little olive oil cook up some

~ions and garlic.  Then add black olives and green olives, arti-

hoke hearts, a cup or so of cherry tomatoes, depending on

tow many people are eating, and, at the last minute so they

etalat their freshness, put in circles of red, green and yellow

~ppers.  Serve over pasta.  You won't have much left~  

	After I'd had my first dish of this on Orcas, we went down to  

	~ beach, five of us, and read Evening Prayer and Compline

~the twilight, talang turns with the psalm verses, one, two,

~ree, four, five.  

	when Luci and Bara and I travel together we enjoy feasts  

	127  

	for soul and body.  On a wonderftil trip to Scotland we discow

ered, after a first tentative taste, that haggis is delicious.  We ate

full Scottish breakfasts, and skipped lunch.  We keep talking

about taking time occasionally to make a Scottish breakfast,

but the pace of New York has not allowed it, and this is not

good.  

	My habit in the winter is to made a big batch of Irish oat-

meal, add golden raisins and some flax seed, and put it in half

a dozen small dishes in the fridge.  Then, each morning I just

warm one bowlful a couple of minutes in the microwave,

splash some butterruilk on top, and begin my day happily forti-

fied.  

	Sometimes, if Bara and I are late at meetings, our dinner

will be a slice of pate', some cornichons, a mixed green salad

with goat cheese and a loaf of crusty bread.  Sometimes we

want comfort food-meat loaf and garlic-mashed potatoes and

creamed spinach.  My recipe for meatloaf comes from the oat-

meal box, with imaginative additions and substitutions.  Thus

fed, we prepare for Compline and give thanks for this feast,

and the feasts of life, and friendship.  

	128  

	OfBread and Bacon  

	Lud  

	when Madeleine, Bara' and I were traveling the British Isles,

sometimes we splurged a bit, staying in some elegant old

manor houses that had been turned into hotels, all of them

with extensive grounds and the most haute of haute cuisine.  But

whether we were lodged in splendor or housed in a homely

B & B, we relished the cooked breakfas~haggis, kippers,

fried tomatoes and eggs, and especially fried bread!  

	I remember how my mother, a superb cook, would make

fried bread with a mere scrape of bacon tat Yet it would come

to the breakfast table crisply brown and deliciously bacon-y,

without any excess greasiness.  American afry bread" doesn't

quite approximate it The making of proper fried bread is an

essentially British skill.  And my mother born in the 19th cen-

tury in New Zealand, was almost obsessively British.  

	129  

	&mp~ P1œasures  

	Majeleine  

	One of my happy memories from the days when our children

were little is summer evenings when family and friends gath-

ered for the sparkler parade.  Even the toddiers could hold a

sparkler with moderate safety~ and the grownups would watch

the children, led by the older ones, dance in and out of the

fruit trees in the orchard.  

	This past July we had our picnic with another generation of

children.  I had been sent a large box of sparkiers from Texas,

and the children, four little boys, waited for dark and then ran

around the field making great sweeping patterns with their

sparklers, and it was beautiful.  

	There was a special poignancy for me in watching the taces

of the parents who had, a couple of decades ago, been part of

the sparkler parade, now looking with love at their own chil-

dren making patterns of light  

	life is full of such small moments, simple pleasures.  Each

year I cultivate a greater appreciation of such simple feasts.  In

their own way, they are as satisf~ing as sumptuous banquets.  

	130  

	gsb~u.1,2~uo2 puv ~pn~?Joœ  

	:~ui~~P~ Jo ~p(I  

	A friend is that other person with whom

we can share our solitude, our silence,

and our praye~ A friend is that other per-

son with whom we can look at a tree and

say, "Isn't that beautiful," or sit on the

beach and silently watch the sun disa~

pear under the horizon.  With a friend we

don't have to say or do something special.  

With a friend we can be still and know

that God is there with both ofus.  

	Henri Nouwen

Breadj~r ti~eJou~  

	133  

	Majeleine  

	Solinide and loneliness---though outwardly they may look the

sam~ome from different kinds of fasting.  Solitude is the

chosen fast, while loneliness is the unbidden hunger.  Solitude

brings a deeper kind of living.  Loneliness brings a kind of

death.  

	One reason Emily of New Moon was my tavorite book when I

was a child was that Emily understood that the test of real

friendship is mutual solitude: being together, and yet being

able to be silent, with no need to chatter.  Some people need to

fill any silence with some kind of talk, and even their talking has

to be filled with what is called an articulated pause: you kno~t~ e;

urn, etc.  For forty years I had the blessing of a husband with

whom I could be silent; we enjoyed our mutual solitude.  

	It's an odd thing that the people with whom I can have the

most comfortable solitude can also cause the greatest loneliness

and anxiety.  I suppose that is because we are most sensitive to

the feelings of those we love most, and share in what they feeL  

	I love my chosen solitudes, time to relax, usually in silence,

occasionally with music.  when my children were young I some

times took a long subway ride downtown to a friend's apart-

ment.  We would play piano duets for an hour, and then I

would have a relatively peaceftil subway ride home, about ten

o'clock.  There was little time in those days for loneliness.  

	Now for me, as for many women who are alone, there

is more opportunity for solitude, but also more time for  

	134  

	loneliness.  when I am being solitary, I am comfortable with-

in myself, and not anxious.  when I am lonely I am often

anxious, worried.  

	I try to alleviate anxiety with prayer, because anxiety is

seldom helpfiil.  I try to pray quietly, to put whatever the ~ol>

lem is into God's loving hands.  But God never promised us

security, or that everything-in temporal terms-will be all

right There are accidents, mortal illnesses, and while I know

that in God's time, haims, all indeed will be all right, in chmnos,

in which we live, we have fears, losses.  Loneliness.  

	I try to turn the loneliness of occasional insomnia into sol-

itude, but I am not always successful, because my body needs

sleep, especially if I have a heavy schedule ahead of me.  These

middle of the night solitudes are not chosen, so they are not

always successful.  

	Silence isn't necessary for solitude, but it's a help.  Those of

us who live in cities-and there are more and more of us-

have very little real silence.  In New York, where I live for much

of the year, the only silent time is somewhere between two and

four in the morning.  when I am in the country, my bedroom

taces a sweep of field, woods, and a mountain, and there is

silence, real silence.  

	Sometimes when sleep eludes me and outside noises

intrude, I will turn on the light and read, and find my solitude

in a book.  I love being with the characters of a good novel, but

sometimes they are too engaging, so I pick up a book of thfr

ology or philosophy by an academic writer who uses an exce~

~e number of footnotes and a plethora of words and bore

~yself to sleep.  This is not solitude!  

	The three sons of one of my friends grew up all sleeping in

:he same room.  when the youngest found himself there alone,  

	135  

	with his older brothers off in college, he complained that he

could not sleep because he needed to hear people breathing.  I

understand that!  It was easier to be wakeful in the small hours

of the morning when I could hear my husband's peaceful

breathing beside me.  

	Touch can bring the sense of shared solitude in times of

grief or great stress.  Sitting and holding hands while waiting

for a telephone call, or outside a hospital room, can give us

relief.  Once as I waited in the waiting room while my mother

was having surgery, I found companionship with the parents of

a young girl, also in surgery.  Most of the time we simply sat in

silence together, sharing a solitude of concern and love.  It was

in most ways not a chosen solitude, until we were able to reach

out to each other, no longer strangers.  

	We can be lonely in strange and unexpected places.  I have

been lonely in church, surrounded by people I care about,

sharing in worship, and yet assailed by a great, cosmic loneW

ness.  This is part of the human predicament It is not helped

by coffee hour!  Garrulousness does not help.  It just covers up

a loneliness which needs to be taced.  what we usually need is a

caring person who has experienced this same loneliness and

understands.  

	In a strange way, moving through the fast of loneliness can

prepare us for the particular richness of solitude.  when we

have moved through the death of loneliness, we are ready for

the deeper life of solitude.  

	136  

	0  

	The Balancing Act  

	Lud  

	It often seems my life consists in balancing between two

extremes, and never qilite coming out even.  Being with lik~

minds is energizing.  For a while, it fills me with pinging

ration, but I reach a point when I know I'm running on adre~~

aline.  I admit I'm quite addicted to my own adrenaiine.  I

the stimulation of new thoughts, new experiences, and

challenge of charging into a strenuous task, completing it

cessflly, and feeling the warm pusse of gratification.  

	But after days or weeks of living at this pitch, I begin to feel

the rawness of over-worked emotions and I know that I an

about to crash.  I feel a physical hunger to be alone, to

time for me, to allow long nights of sleep to wash over

days of relaxation to slow my rhythms.  Most of all, because

times of great productivity and busy-ness my prayers tend

the brief arrow prayers that yell for help and strength, I know

need to be still enough to hear God's whispered voice in

inner heart again, and enter into a long, serene conversation.  

	The best medicine in this particular circumstance for

to get away, alone in my little car, and drive to the

or some coastal shore with a remote campground.  With

cozy dome tent and sleeping bag I can escape civilization

the babble of competing voices and demands, and pay

tion to the wild, wonderfid, universal messages of the

the clouds, as well as the textures and shades of the  

	138  

	Stones and waves and fronds of moss and ferns that swim into

my view.  All of them are voices from my Creator, and of the

Creation of which I am a part.  Much of the time I'll nap and

read, nap and read (old journals, or a good novel), and pray,

~d sing, unselfconscious, at the top of my voice.  I stretch my

legs with long walks and open my eyes wide to peer at the pat-

\erns of the wild through my camera.  

	Slowly my spiritual and emotional batteries recharge.  Time

rnd quiet do their healing work and I read the book of

~nir~as vital to me as my Bible and with the same truth-

elling author.  And as we converse, listening to each other in

he silence of solitude, my soul is led gently back to healing

`rid wholeness.  I am ready to pack up my tent, and return to

`riother life, another pace.  

	Meditation is the clarifier of a

beclouded mind.  

	«¬¬betandoctrine  

	139  

	The Biflh of Lave  

	To learn to love  

	is to be stripped ofall love  

	until you are wholly without love  

	because  

	until you have gone  

	naked and afraid  

	into this cold dark place  

	where all love is taken from you  

	youwill not know  

	that you are wholly within love.  

	Luci VouvnalEntiy  

	As I gow oleer I seem to ~ence more pmtcm~ periods of the

siIerLce of God.  ~ MatDonad tal~ about this pattern in The

Wise Woman.  It feels the winter in the heafl~ season when I

!`Y~~gfor the warmth and gowth of sp?ingimefor my soul but the

tT~ a~ ba~ s~ktons, and thefelis a~J~~tte~~ ~ heavy ice and

snow.  It's d~nvaiion, a starvation d~e~ as when friends a~ out of

touchor out of reach for masons ~ond my control  

	But this is whenefaith comes into pla~ hanging on to the

truth that thefliend is these, that God is there for me with~

whetkerornotUeel God's 4fegivingpresence.  Iknow that tfn~~  

	were routine~~~ sunfl~ and exdting :f my prayers always

i~ivel obvious and immeltate anssess, :f~ctatioos weee au~

`naticallyfitiflued, these woull be no needfor me to have faith.  I

haae oome to undedstandfaith as a henitmuscle that neis to be

eeercised diligent~~~ :f it is to gow stwng  

	Ibeleve God trusts me to continue to trust even when Idon't see

orfeel or hearfi~nn him.  I may wish for noostot) qflphanies, but

Go(t, in divine -~`~~~.,` gives mejust enouch sightings to hap me

gsingyear after year in the knowledge that he loves me and that

someday I'll befa~tofi~ce, ~t~e with him, knowing him as

complttelyashenowknowsme.  

	Faith in afliend's love is the anchor that gives me conjidence in

times of~arntion.  Faith in my God, and the oontinued hu~~g~r

~ him, is the m~g,~ that keeps puling meforwaid toward hea~

~ withaut giving up.  

	141  

	llelio anJ T~n GooJ-Bye:  

	The rhythm ofpresence  

	1;  

	~Ivein  

	cycles and move in circles.  We meet, and then part

rIIh:Oand good-bye.  That is the way of the world, or at least as  

	~ experienced it As we care about friendship, we need to

and mark these comings and goings, and nurture one  

	o,~ther through the temporary separations along the way to

~profoundly different separation that comes in death.  

	~With all of our absences from our friends, how we keep in

~~ch becomes a matter of great importance, a matter about

~i~h we must be intentional if we are to maintain and nurture

r friends and our friendships.  

	~~-,ears ago a friend said to me, "After forty it's maintenance,  

	!~intenance, maintenance." I'm approaching double that,

it's true.  The idea that one needs less sleep as one ages is  

	I need more.  My joints creak.  Has the original lubri-

SIC)'?  n just leaked away over the years?  Undoubtedly by now I

~ shrunk a little, but I'm still around 5'1O~.  One thing I will

~rbeisa littteoldlady.)  

	As,,, we do what we can to maintain our bodies, so we must do

our friendships.  How many deep friendships can one  

	ikitain?  This is different for different people, depending on

~penunent and many other f~ctors, inner and outer.  I think

each have some understanding about this, even if we

ien't given it a great deal of conscious thought Too many

`p friendships can put us on overload; friendship would  

	(and sometimes does) drift back into acquaintanceship, or

even fbrgetfulness.  Though I have no idea of the number, I am

amazed and awed by the people who are my friends, and who

care about maintaining our friendship.  

	Old friends are a particular treasure, especially as we grow

older and the friendships stretch over half a century.  I met

Cavada when we were beginning our teens; we were m boar~

ing school together for four years, then college, then several

years living near each other in Greenwich Village.  Then ge~

graphy, as so often happens, separated us.  Cavada lives in

Ii~ndon and sometimes we don't see each other for years, and

letters are sporadic.  Occasionally the phone will ring and I'll

answer it and hear that dear familiar voice that seems to have

changed little.  When I'm in London, which is once every few

years, we immediately get together, and it is as though no time

had passed, and we are as close as we were in school when our

rooms were just a few doors apart Somehow the fact that we

have known each other "forever" makes the friendship easier

to maintain.  It simply is.  

	I met Marilyn at that same conference in Wheaton where I

met Luci, and our conversation was immediately deep and

probing, reaching out to God's unequivocal love.  

	Througbout the years how often Marilyn has rescued me in

time of crisis, bringing me home from the hospital after

surgery, traveling with me when my speaking commitments

took me across the continent in a wheelchair, which she

learned to toss like a discus into her van.  Marilyn's loving and

competent care has been prayer in action, and when we have

been able t() be togetherjust for fun, it has been fun indeed.  

	Despite the shock of the bill each month, the telephone is a

blessing.  I met the retired archbishop, David Somerville, and  

	146  

	his wife, Fran, in Vancouver about ten years ago, and we are a

continent apart most of the year When I am offered a speaking

job anywhere near Vancouver I accept it!  But most of the time it

is the phone that keeps us together, and we a~ together because

of our common commitment to our friendship andour shared

interests.  We have the same passion for literatw~, music, theol~

gy.  We are awed, rather than distressed, by the discoveries about

our amazing universe which may, indeed, be one of many ufl~

verses.  How can God keep track of it all?  What kind of a God do

we believe in?  Conversations begun in person continue on the

phone, and it is important for me to know that, thanks to tele

phonic marvels, we can be in touch within seconds.  

	Telephone calls are also a lifeline to Pat, whom I have known

almost as long as I have known Cavada.  Pat lives in florida and

we manage to see each other at least once a year.  Between

times, our phone calls are as long as though we were still

teenagers.  There's always something to talk about our kids,

g~tndkids, the work it takes for a single woman to keep in the

midst of things in a society based on couples, her retirement

(~etirement!" I exclaim.  "What retirement?") She was a physi-

cian, the chief public health officer of a large city and is still on

a dozen boards.  

	She sends me articles from medical journals, and one by

lewis Thomas in The New E?~g1andJourna1 of Medicine radically

changed and undergirded one of my fantasies, books which

are based on post-Newtonian physics.  

	I credit Betty Anne for being forthright with me many

years ago about the demands of friendship.  When it became

apparent that our acqualntanceship was growing into a deep

friendship, she wrote me a long letter about the maintenance

of friendship, particularly when the friends are mostly apart  

	147  

	She lives in San Antonio, Texas, so we see each other only byl

special planning.  On her list she included frequent letters and

phone calls.  Keeping in touch.  Not letting too much time slide

by without checking up on each other.  We've worked at it, and I

am grateflil to her for her intentionality, as she is to me.  

	How long have Bara and I known each other?  A dozen

years.  It has been ajoy to watch our friendship deepen, ripen,

become vulnerable and intimate.  We were remarking today

that the more people we love the more vulnerable we are.  We

have shared in our blood and guts, our children's pains and

disappointments, and theirjoys, too.  Sometimes when we read

Compline together in the evening it will take us an hour or

more, because we will interrupt this ancient office with

thoughts it has awakened.  This shared vulnerability, turned

over to God, in itself strengthens our friendship.  And then, of

course, we do laugh a lo~ I don't think I could reveal my dee~

est self to anyone who wasn't able to laugh outrageously at

something that strikes us both as fimny.  

	In all of these friendships there is mutuality: a mutual kno't~

ing that the other is to be counted on, in spite of how often we

see one another, in spite of all of our hellos and good-byes.  

Our friendships have been tested over the years in a variety of

ways and the testing has made them stronger.  

	How often have I said that friendship, for me, keeps the

stars in their courses?  Not only that: could I keep on believing

in a loving Cod if I had no friends?  I am not sure.  My friends

are God-bearers for me, as I am called to be for them.  

	Good-bye is no longer spelled as I am spelling it here, using

the spelling that was still standard unffl a few years ago: ~e,

short for God be with you.  In the new spelling it is easy to forget

the original meaning.  God be with you is a prayer in parting and a  

	148  

	promise that we will remain in one another's prayers.  

	I'll be with you in spint!we say to our friends sometimes when

we can't be together.  letters, phone calls, visits, sharing and

laughing together, the "being there" for one another at times

when it really counts-all of these are vital to the maintenance

of our friendships.  However, at the heart of it all is ~the "spirit

connection" that comes with prayer.  When we pray for our

friends we join our lives with theirs in a way that is as profound

as it is mysterious.  May it always be so.  

	The separntion  

	No matter how intense our touching,

or how tender-fingers sure, or silken-

there are no contiguous nerves

to bridge our bodies' gaps, no

paths of words to join our souls.  

Though each images the other's pain or

pleasure, two remain two.  

	We have been seamed, not gfttfted.  

Though our steps interlock,

each dances his own dance.  

Do you read into this a strategy:

separation for survival's sake?  

See it rather as predicament-

our world's ache to bejoined,

to know or be known.  

	Luci  

	149  

	We lay aside letters never to read them

again, and at last destroy them out of

discretion, and so disappears the most

beautiful, the most immediate breath

of life, irrecoverably for ourselves and

for others.  

	~oethe  

	150  

	Adjustments and Accommodations  

	Luci  

	When John Hoyte married me, he thought he knew what he

was getting int~a wife who was booked two to three years

ahead with workshops, lectures, retreats, readings.  In actual

œact, I think John has had to get used to lots more hellos and

good-byes than he had bar~ained for.  I am blessed that he has

made this adjustment with great grace.  Fortunately, he's an

easygoing, energetic guy who is wnling to drop me off at air-

ports at ungodly hours in the morning and pick me up late at

nighL Even more important, he has never made me feel guilty

for being away so much.  

	And I have had my own adjustments to make to his sched-

ule.  He is an engineer and his company designs and manuf~tc-

tures analytical instruments to test air and water purity.  He also

travels widely, attending environmental conferences around

the continent and making new business contacts abroad.  I

thought I had a high energy level until I metjohn, who gets up

at 6:00 A.M.  and rarely falls asleep until midnight, moving

t~ter, the rest of the time, than the proverbial speeding bullet  

	If our experience is at all typical, a marriage of two traveling

spouses requires ongoing planning, juggling schedules and

logistics, and the reluctant acceptance of the times of being

apart Conversations begun in the morning continue on the

phone in the evening, or sometimes just dangle off.  Issues,

even important ones, get raised and then can too easily be put  

	151  

	on hold if you aren't careful.  Under these circumstances, the

relationship needs a tailor-made kind of nurturing, something

each couple must work out for themselves with great intention.  

In our case, it is important that we stay in daily touch while

we're on the road, with phone calls every night and now,

~mail.  Equally, we plan stretches of time together, for each

other, perhaps camping or traveling orjust at home.  

	John and I already anticipate days of greater leisure when we

can travel more to~her; as we did last year to New Zealand.  This

will mean, blessediy, more hellos to new places and fewer good-

byes to each other.  Until that day comes, we are committed to

giving the rhythm of our relationship the special attention it

needs, and deserves.  

	152  

	The Final Good-Bye-And Yet, Not  

	~aJe1eine  

	took my beloved aunt, well up in her eighties, to the hospital

0 die.  Oh g~od-~e, dear Aunt.  God be with you on this tczstjou~~.  

~ few years earlier I had said my final good-bye to my fi~ther as

ie put me on the train to go to boarding school, and I som~

iow knew that I would not see him alive again.  

	How do we keep in touch with those who have moved on to

he larger life?  Memory is good, but not enough.  We have lost

nuch of our native awareness of the spirit world, and our sense

~f the permanence of our spirits, our selves.  ThIs was formerly a

natter of great importance for the entire community.  I am not

peaking of contrived seances and trances, but rather a com-

nunal sense of the "blessed company of all faithful people,"

~nd of the "communion of saints." Through our prayer for

hose to whom we have said a final earthly good-bye, we

trengthen our connection with them and their world, which is

o be our own home when we end our earthly sojourn.  

	It seems to me that the church (of all denominations) has

omehow not put forward a valid theology of resurrection, and

lot really moved past medieval ideas of heaven and hell.  

~aven, for example, sounds excruciatingly dull, and I do not

~lieve Cod is ever dull.  

	The church does tend to make definitions, and then an-

~ounce them to believers.  We used to be told that Christians

ould not be cremated, because Cod is not capable of doing  

	153  

	anything with ashes.  What kind of a puny, ineffective -

that?  The church also put into literal terms the poetry of -

and resurrection and the last trump.  For centuries we

taught to believe that our very bodies, exactly as they -

when they were put mto the grave, would rise again at the

day.  It would not please my grandiather, who died when he

101 years old, to be resurrected in that ancient body.  

	We do not know what resurrection means, and when we - -

for simple definitions, we lose it: the glory slips away in in

quate explanations.  

	I do not know what the husband I lost to death is doing, or

where he is doing it And I don't need to know those det~

What I do know is that it is not in the nature of love to create~i

and then abandon or annihilate.  I also know, deep inside my

soul, that Cod is love and that the identity Cod has given us

will not be obliterated.  There is a connection between who we -

are now and who we will be after death.  

	In the funeral service in the Book of Common Prayer

these words are said: "Remember thy servant, [Hugh] 0

Lord, according to the favor which thou bearest unto thy

people, and grant that, increasing in knowledge and love of

thee, he may go from strength to strength, in the life of perfect

service.  

	I believe that.  Our identity, our self, our soul, goes on

growing to a deeper fullness in love of God, leading us

toward the kind of maturity God planned for us in the first

place.  For now, that is all I need to know.  

	154  

	Sonnet2  

	How long your closet held a whiff of you,

Long after hangers hung austere and bare.  

I would walk in and suddenly the true

Sharp sweet sweat scent controlled the air

And life was in that small still living breath.  

Where are you?  since so much of you is here,

Your unique odour quite iguoring death.  

My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dear

And vital in my longing empty arms.  

	But other clothes ftll up the space, your space,

And scent on scent send Out strange false alarms.  

Now of your odour there is not a trace.  

But something unexpected still breaks through

The goneness to the presentness of you.  

	Madel'ine  

	QLestions: 1985  

	Beside me, under the sheet, his shape

is blurred, his breath irregular, racing

or slowing to the stress/release

of dreams.  One lung-a wing of air-

has been already clipped.  The scans

show the dark shadows on his bones.  

	His house of cdl~blu~printed

by heredity, assembled season

by season, (the grayed wood

shrinking a litfie at the joins

under the wash of time and storm)-

will it collapes like a barn

settling into its field?  

	His spirit-iridescent as a pigeon-

will it escape before mine

through a break in the roof,

homing, homing through the sky?  

	Lud  

	156  

	It is not enemies who taunt me -

I could bear that;  

	it is not adversaries who deal

insolently with me -

I could hide from them.  

	But it is you, my equal,  

	my companion, my familiar friend,  

	with whom I kept pleasant company;

we walked in the house of God

with the throng....  

	My companion laid hands on a friend

and violated a covenant with me  

	with speech smoother than butter,

but with a heart set on war;  

	with words that were softer than oil,

but in fact were drawn swords.  

	To a Long Loved Love: 7  

	Because you're not what I would have you be

I blind myself to who, in truth, you are.  

Seeking mirage where desert blooms, I mar

Your you.  Aaah, I would like to see

Past all delusion to reality:  

	Then would I see God's image in your face,

His hand in yours, and in your eyes his grace.  

Because I'm not what I would have me be,

I idolize Two who are not any place,

Not you, not me, and so we never touch.  

Reality would burn.  I do not like it much.  

And yet in you, in me, I find a trace

Of love which struggles to break through

The hidden lovely truth of me, of you.  

	APersonaiStory  

	~aAe1eine  

	Without my friends, I think I would shrivel up and die.  Even

`o,it has not always been easy for me to have friends.  As a shy,

iiight[y lame, only child, I did not know how to reach out to

~ther people.  Perhaps my shyness seemed unfriendly.  I longed

~r friends, but I felt left out  

	One year when I was about ten, a new girl came to school in

the middle of the year and for some reason reached out to me.  

[cared for her immediately.  I thought she cared for me.  We

went to each other's apartments after school to do homework,

to play.  I was truly, deeply happy.  

	Then, one morning I went into school and saw her sur-

rounded by a group of other girls, by the "popular" girls.  I was

out It was as though our friendship had never existed.  I had

no idea what had happened.  I was not prepared.  It was like a

deep wound which provides its own temporary anesthesia.  

And then the pain came.  

	I wanted friends.  Real live friends.  I loved Eniily Starr and

Sar:ah Crewe and the little Prince.  I lived largely in a world of

imagination.  I did not yet write well enough to love my fictional

characters; they came out of wish fulfillment, though they

helped to some - extent Sometimes I was happily solitary, but

too often I was lonely.  I longed for friends.  What was wrong

`with me?  

	When I was fourteen, on our return from several years in  

	161  

	Europe, I was sent to a boarding school in Charleston, South

Carolina, and suddenly the pattern changed-.  My teachen

appreciated my work.  The other students didn't seem to mind

that I was a poor runner.  When partners were chosen I wasn't

the last one or the one left out With a sudden shock I realized

that I was liked!  Having experienced the disappointments and

hurts of being open to friendship, and being hurt and

rebuffed, I was beginning to experience the joys of friendship.  

	Coming into friendship is only a first step.  There are still

risks.  The day sometimes comes in a friendship when you

realize you are simply hanging in there while your friend is too

tangled in other concerns to be available.  The time apart can

be worth it, and you can learn from your absence from each

other.  However, sometimes the wait is in vain and you come to

realize your friend is no longer there for you.  Sometimes you

know why.  Perhaps people have been discovered who are more

important more interesting.  You might wonder then whether

your friendship had ever been mutual.  Or, sometimes your

paths have so diverged that you can't find a place to meet any-

more.  Sometimes you just don't know what has happened.  

And it hurts.  I know this from personal experience, and you

may well too.  

	But, for the m0st part there are friends who are forever part

of you and yourjourney.  Those you can cry with, sharing grie~

and faults.  Those you can laugh with, free and joyflil as small

children in uninhibited mirth.  Those who have proven time

and again that they can be counted on.  Those you can pray

with on the deepest level, exposing yourselves totally to Cod's

love.  I have been richly blessed by such friends, and for each of

them I daily give deep thanks.  

	Yes, friendship is risky.  But, the risk is worth it It is worth it  

	162  

	to strip off your protective coating.  To be vulnerable.  To be

known.  To risk being loved.  

	Thenskoflove  

	The risk of love  

	is that of being  

	unreturned.  

	For ff I love too deep,  

	too hard, too long,  

	and you love little,  

	or you love me  

	not at all,  

	then is my treasure given,  

	gone,  

	flown away loneiy~  

	But if you give me back

love for my love

and add your own

dark fire to light my heart

then love is perfect

warm, round, augmented,

whole, endless, infinite

and it is fear that flies.  

	Lud  

	163  

	Always tell the truth, but not all

ofit  

	-Marietta Tree  

	Luci `sjournal Entry  

	How many times I have been over this gaund, but seeing œ today

brought it all up again.  What is a trueffiend?  How can I tell a tnw

one from a false one?  Perhaps we only learn the dzfference ly con-

trasting the Ife patterns of the onewith the other (The pmof is in the

pudding') But we see them lived out in the actions ofPeter and Judas.  

	Pete; for all his false starts, his injudicious assumptions, his rash

words and actions, was wholehearted.  He wore his heart onhis sleeve.  

You knew where you stood with Peter And he learned ftom his m~

takes~bandonment ofjesus in an hour of need, frar of what people

would think~ame back from failure, and tried again.  

	Judas was more complicated, had a divided heart~art of it

devoted to Jesus (he conldn `t have been chosen ly Jesus, have lived

and worked with him for three years, without beingpmfoundly influ-

enced for good) but the other part was secretly reservedforjudas alone.  

Dissembling so that his small embezzlements were hidden from the

group, or rationalized ("Some of those shekels were given to the

poor!  `), the love of mon~ ate at his heart, comœpting him, and in the

end resulting in his subversion to greed, spurring him into the bera~

al offtsusfor afew chunks of dead silver He even betrayed his own  

	false self when his guilt shatte~~d him into suicule ~ hanging.  

	Even truefr~ends make mistakes, misjudging fm~~ting losing

touch.  Isitr'~doand have and Ike ly wilL But~heheartis~en,j~i~  

	-e~s and reconciliation wait to befound aiound the next wr~  

	My prayer: God, give me an undivided heart.  "Unite my heafl to

fear your name" (Psalm 86:11).  Untangle my mi~ motives.  Remove

the threads of selfinterest.  Help me to give and receive with ~en

hands, a Pete; maybe, but not a Judas.  

	Judas, Peter  

	because we are all betrayers, taking  

	silver and eating  

	body and blood and asking  

	(guilty) is it I and hearing  

	him sayyes  

	it would be simple for us all  

	to rush out  

	and hang ourselves  

	but if we find grace  

	to cry and wait  

	after the voice of morning  

	has crowed in our ears  

	clearly enough  

	to break our hearts  

	hewillbe there  

	to ask us each again  

	do you love me?  

	Luci  

	165  

		<rb

o rb  

	o  

	o  

		o	a

Meeh~ng Clirist in  

	One Anotlier:  

	The earthly encounter  

	Salutation  

	Framed in light,

Mary sings through the doorway.  

Elizabeth's six montlijoy

jumps, a palpable greeting,

a hidden first encounter

between son and Son.  

	And my heart turns over  

	when I meetjesus  

	in you.  

	Lud  

	Epiphany  

	Unclench your fists,  

	Hold out your hands.  

	Take mine.  

	let us hold each other.  

	ThusishisGiory  

	Manifes&  

	~~~reDoIMeet Chnst?  

	Majeleine  

	In the snow and ice of a brutal winter, I struggled with my cane

to climb over the frozen and slippery snow drttts that blocked

the street crossings.  Almost invariably, a hand would reach out

for me, an arm would go ahout my waist, and one of the street

people who rest on these street corner benches would help me

across.  

	ChnsL  

	Christ in clothing inadequate for the weather, smelling of

unwashed body and not enough food.  

	ChnsL  

	when the little Italian restaurant across the street closed down,

how I missed the warm greetings of the owners and waiters,

particularly Miguel.  When he was there I was greeted with a

kiss on each cheek, and Miguel saying: ~our garlic bread's on

me."  

	chnst.  

	Then there are friends, who know, love, who just ar~for

meChrists.  

	170  

	You are a distinct portion of the

essence of God; and contain part of

him in yourself.  Why, then, are you

ignorant of your noble birth?  Why do

you not consider whence you came?  

why do you not remember, when you

are eating, who you are who eat; and

whom you feed?  Do you not know that

it is the Divine you feed; the Divine you

exercise?  You carry a God about with

you, poor wretch, and know nothing of

it  

	-Epictetus, 50 A~D.  

	171  

	A continuing conv~ation  

	Luci:  

	Coming together before God, in prayer, is an

integral part of our friendshippart of our daily

pattern, when we're together-being together

and with a sense of God's presence with us.  

	Those prayers join our hearts and give us a way

to make something whole out of our days.  Early

in the day with Morning Prayer we can place

ourselves in God's presence as we begin our day.  

In the evening, at Compline, in God's loving

presence we can sort out all that has happened

during the day.  

	Luci:  

	whether or not we have the Prayer Book, our

friendship gives us the freedom to pray sponta-

neously, without inhibition, in conversation with

God and each other.  

	The flict that we can pray together doesn't nece~

sarily mean that our faith is always constant and

secure.  I think I reach out for other people's

prayers most when my own faith is most wobbly.  

	Luci:  

	There's an ease, too, in praying for each other

over the phone.  Even though my son John, and

his wife Christa, are far away in South Africa, I  

	172  

	can be joined in prayer with them over those

thousands of miles, can hear the voice tones of

love and concern, or relief and gratitude.  And I

know I can phone you, Madeleine, and say,

`Tonight I don't even feel like praying.  Wffl you

pray for me?  I'm feeling depressed."  

	not pray.  I was too sick to pray, except for the

Jesus Prayer.  But I knew I was being prayed for,

and that was enough.  It's like the Russian

Orthodox church services which are very, very

long, and it's understood that nobody is going to

be focused on what's going on all of the time.  It's

impossible.  But somebody there is always focused,

always praying, and so the focus is unbroken.  I

always know that when I can't pray, others can.  

And sometimes when they can't pray, I can.  So

the circle of prayer is not broken.  

	Luci:  

	Yes, and that's like what Thomas did in his time of

doubt about Jesus' resurrection.  He could hardly

bring himself to believe that Jesus was alive with

his friends again.  But because he was `~with the

company of believers," part of the body of disci-

ples who stayed together, he was there when Jesus

showed himself to them, and gave Thomas the

opportunity to test his physical reality  

	~ADEiœiNE: Yes.  We can be there for each other, carrying

each other along in times of need.  

	173  

	...  I find a seat in the circle of others.  

As our glances meet, Christ looks out from

the brown eyes, and the blue.  His presence presses

lightly on us all, each, the unseen hand

moving in blessing from head to head...  

	...  in a back row, a child makes a soft sound...  

	A cross unites the space, its arms embracing our

diversity; its shalt both pointing up and reaching

down.  As the Word comes incarnate in us each,

broken once again, love rises in a silent incense,

of silver sound, from all our hearts and throats.  

	from  

	"At the Church of the Savior,  

	174  

	Macleleine  

	Once on the holy island of lona, Luci, Bara and I read the

Night Prayers from A New Zeatand Prayer Book in the ruins of an

old convent.  The island was crowded with tourists, and we

needed to get away and be alone, and the old stones of the

convent were quiet and empty~  

	It is good to have prayer time with friends and the words of

the night office are beautiful.  There is plenty of space for

impromptu prayers, surrounded by the beauty of the words,

many from the earliest centuries of Christendom, so I was glad

to be saying them in lona, where Celtic Christianity flourished,

with its tender emphasis on the earthy, the particular.  

	We gave thanks for the nuns of long ago who had sung the

:laily office, and for their souls; they had been brutally mur-

~red for their faith, and their convent burned and vandal-

zed.  Even in those tumbled old stones we could feel ringing

lear from centuries past their praise of God.  United in space,

II God's love, and eternal time, we prayed.  

	175  

	The angels of God guard us through the

night,  

	and quieten the powers of darkness.  

	The Spirit of God be our guide

to lead us to peace and to gIory~  

	It is but lost labour that we haste to rise up

early, and so late take rest,

and eat the bread of anxiety.  

For those beloved of God are given gifts

even while they sleep.  

	~om A New Zealand Prayer Book  

	Church of the Anglican Province

of New Zealand  

	176  

	The Holiness oflona  

		"where two or three	aregat~...,,  

How our Celtic blood stirred as we

navigated along the single car track

across Mull, westward between the purplish hffls,

under the torn cloth of clouds, and then

over the final channel, its green~ray waves

chipping away at the hull of the ferry.  

The buffet of sea~vind felt rough

as the breath of God.  We could hardly wait

to settle in, to inhale  

	the holy island's scent of sanctity~  

	And it was all so lovelythe sea

between the rocks a clear bottle green over

white sand.  vivid cottage gardens

clustered beyond 4iejetty;

bordered with delphiniums, rank with

nasturtiums.  Scores of eager day-trippers

with their back-packs and bikes crowded

the black4opped path of the Abbey;

tourists laced the air with

syllables we struggled to recognize.  

The cr~ft shops, with their local pottery

and Cdfl~cjewelry The gift shops, even in

the Abbey-bookmarks, scarves

like butterflies, key-rings, post<ards.  

	177  

	We'd expected to find Columcille,  

	and Patrick-the ancient saints  

	blessing us with a benediction  

	of solitude, with a peace that drops  

	like fading light behind the rocks.  

	All we sensed was..  .an absence.  We all  

	missed something.  We all said that we missed it-  

	like the wild gold of the iris blooms  

	whose dark summer leaves hugged  

	the creases of the island, their spring boldness  

	faded to a single wilted rag here, there.  

	Later, a walk together across the

closecropped velvet and up

over the backbone of rock to a bay pebbly

as Galilee, a meal of fish

and soda-bread.  An evening prayer

in the guest room, small as a cell,

showed us where to look, how to see: Our

high anticipation had detoured us

away from holiness, and when we least

expected it, there it was, God's felt presence

in our human trinity of longing.  

	Luci  

	178  

	po9fi~ ~({`ut?19  

	And the Word became flesh and lived

among us, and we have seen his glory, the

glory as of a father's only son, full of

grace and truth....  From his fiillness we

have all received, grace upon grace.  

	JO~1:14, 16(NRSV)  

	Grace is everywhere.  We don't own it and

we cannot control iL We can only see it,

receive it, and respond to iL That means

to act gracefully ourselves, and the best

way to do that is to thank the "author of

grace" for all those who bear it, live it,

andgive iL And to try to go and do like-

wise.  That is prayer.  

	Hohn B.  Cobum

Grace in All Things  

	181  

	A continuing conve~sation  

	LUCI:  

	Luci:  

	I know that some people think I'm very odd to

believe in a God who is so loving.  So many of

them have not been taught to believe in a loving

God who seeks us out, but rather an angryjudge,

who comes around to dispense punishmenL  

	Thank God you're odd!  I like your kind of oddity;

I think I'm rather odd, too.  

	You're odd; you're definitely odd.  Thank God.  I

think all of our lives and our searches have led us

to allow the God of love to find us.  We don't find

the God of love; love finds us.  

	And he doesn't always appear to us automatically,

like turning on a God-fuucet; Often we have to

wait in patience for his timing.  

	It's tough love, too.  The answer is sometimes  

	Luci:  

	MADEWNE:  

	Sometimes the answer is simply silence; God

saying: "Leam in my absence.  I'm not really flir

away, but I'm waiting for you to learn something

youcanomylearninthedar~  

	I've also discovered that sometimes when I feel

f~irthestGod it is I who am distanced, not

God who is distant from me.  I do know that God

yearns for us.  Yearns for us to seek.  Yeams for us

to come close, to stay near.  

	182  

	Feeding on God's crumbs  

	Luci  

	In childhood many of us listened to the story of Hansel and

Gretel, the brother and sister lost in the forest, who found

their way home by following the trail of shining stones they

had dropped behind them, one by one.  In their next forest

excursion they forgot to bring stones.  All they had was their

lunch bread, so they scattered behind them crumbs broken off

from their loaf.  But when they turned homeward all the

crumbs had been devoured by birds, and they were hopelessly

lost At this point in the story I would always murmur, mentally,

"But at least the hungry birds got some lunch!"  

	Often I feel like one of those hungry birds, pecking bread

crumbs left by other people, even fragments I've dropped

myseif~ and forgotten.  I thank God for such provender, small

as it may seem, because it has been broken and crumbled from

Christ's own body, the eucharistic loaf of his provision, which is

made up of the coarse grain of ordinary life, and has been

baked by him into holy bread.  

	Perhaps that's why the symbols of bread and wine, Christ's

body and blood at the eucharistic feast, hold such profound

meaning for me.  It is a time-honored exchange.  At Com-

munion I come to the altar with all my flaws and f~tilings, my

bruises and my hungers, and that imperfect gift of myself is what

I offer to Christ-my hands open, lifed in fiont of me in reiir~

quishment When the priest places the broken bread on my

open palm I am receiving, in return, the gift of Christ himself-  

	183  

	his completeness for my inadequacy; his strength for my weak-

ness, his love for my lack of love.  When the chalice of wine is

offered to me I lift my thirsty; open mouth and gulp down the

symbol of Christ's life blood-a life-giving transfusion which

remvigorates my tired spiriL  

	Another way in which I find my way home, following the

clues of bread crumb~spedally fragments of myself broken

off in the past, and often forgotten, is to keep my private,

reflectivejournal, a chronological gathering of seed ideas, the-

ories worked through to a tentative conclusion, beginnings of

poems, conversations, prayers, plans, quotes, note~the stc-

ries that flow into my own life experience, recorded in the heat

of the moment, as they happen.  

	The journal is my collection jar, much like the jars we chil-

dren used to prepare to keep the lightuing bugs we caught on

the lawn in the twilight.  The words in my journal blink with

their own light, as I reread them.  Some significant entries I've

forgotten completely.  Bread crumbs.  Ughtuing bugs.  Seminal

insights from my own past life which feed my soul and shed

light in the present momenL And in which I can often hear

whispers of grace.  

	Sometimes I read a couple of journals straight through.  

A good time to do that-it takes a chunk of uninterrupted

reading and concentration-is when I go camping alone for a

week a couple of times each year, taking time out for my own

personal retreats.  That's when I can see caus~and~ffect rela-

tionships, and the large patterns of God at work in my life,

with greater clarity; In the pressures of daily living it's hard for

me to "see the forest for the trees." But reading though an old

journal is like taking a helicopter ride, high above the ground.  

From that elevation I can clearly see the contours of the hills  

	184  

	and rivers, the way the trees clump, then break into a dearing

of meadow grass.  The whole landscape is open to view.  And I

need that God'seye view of my life, not bogged down in the

undergrowth of details and trivialities.  I can see my own

swamps of despair rising into higher ground.  I can see over-

arching grace and mercy.  I can see how God has worked all the

details of the landscape together, for my good.  I can even see

the bread crumbs, strewn upon the path by a loving hand.  

	Spintual Direction, and  

	Sacramental Conftssion  

	Majeleine  

	I'm not sure when the words "spiritual director" came into my

vocabulary.  Certainly during school and college I was under

the "direction" of my teachers and professors, intuitively choo~

ing those I felt were closest to understanding me realistically,

and who expected the best of me.  When I was working in the

theater I looked up to serious theater people who understood

their work as a service.  

	During our years of living in the country I felt an occasional

unnamed loneliness.  No husband, however rich and flill the

relationship, should be expected to serve as "spiritual direc-

tor." I had many long and wonderfiil discussions with one of

our ministers, - who became one of my closest friends.  In the

1950s the term "spiritual director" was not used, as far as I

know, in the Congregational church-now the United Church  

	185  

	of Christ (U.C.C.)-we belonged to.  While Ray and I un-

abashedly shared our problems and concerns, we did not

understand ourselves to be spiritual director and directee.  He

was my very good and true friend, and when he left for anoth-

er church I missed him soreiy~  

	When Hugh and I and the children moved back to New

York, through the help of friends we found a small and ex-

cellent school close to home.  Then we looked for a church.  

	Unfortunately, in the 1960s many Episcopal churches still

practiced `closed communion." Since I was certainly not going

to any church that would not welcome Hugh at the altar rail,

we tried several Congregational churches, but found them nei-

ther welcoming nor exciting.  Then we discovered the

Cathedral of SL John the Divine, about a mile from our apart-

ment, in easy walking distance, and where any hungry searcher

was welcome at the altar.  

	At the Cathedral, I quickly discovered that the Episcopal

church in which I had grown up had experienced significant

liturgical changes.  During my early years of church~oing, the

service usually consisted in Morning Prayer and sermon, with

the Communion Service held only on the first Sunday of the

month.  Now, the Communion Service was central.  This imme-

diately changed my feelings from looking at the church as rea-

sonable, intellectual, and uninspiring, to a place of mystery

and the wonder of sacramenL  

	Often our children's school had services at the Cathedral,

and we got to know many of the nuns, and found them

delighffiil and inteffigenL Friends.  I still didn't hear about spir-

itual direction.  The nuns talked to me about confession.  

	Confession?  Wasn't -it only Roman Catholics who went to

confessors, and who stood or knelt in dark little confessional  

	186  

	boxes where they could barely see the priest, and then went

over a long list of sins?  As a cradle Episcopalian, I was truly sur-

prised to be given a pamphlet with the prayer before confe~

sion and then the long list of confessable sins.  It explained

that, after confessing, one was absolved by the priest and given

a penance, such as saying ten Hail Marys.  It didn't make sense

to me.  

	Isn't it so, however, that things have a way of converging?  

Evelyn Underhili has said that there is no such thing as coinci-

dence; it is God's universe in the act of rhyming.  At about this

time a producer friend of my husband's asked me to read a

French play about the 17th Century nun, Mariana Alcoforado,

to see if he might be interested in having it translated and put

into production.  I read it and felt that it was poorly written and

purely pornographic.  I sent in my report and the producer lost

interest I didn't I was intrigued by the possibilities of the story

and did a good bit of research.  Sister Marianawas not a fictional

character but an historical figure.  And, she had a confessor.  I

felt that if I wanted to try my hand at writing about Mariana, I

needed to know something about confession firsthand.  

	Also, at that point in my life I was at an impasse in human

relations; I needed to love someone I found myself unable to

love, and wiling myself to love was no help at all.  

	I knew there was weekly confession at a midtown church, so

I took myself there at the appointed time.  I had my list of

printed confessable sins, not one of which really touched on

my problem.  The session was not a success, for my own soul's

health, or for my understanding of Mariana.  

	Something, some mixed motives, made me stick at it.  A

month passed, with other failed attempts, before I found

myself sitting in St.  Martin's chapel in the Cathedral beside the  

	187  

	priest who was to become my beloved Canon Tallis, my lifelong

friend.  He was formidable and I was nervous, but I explained

that the list of sins did not work for me.  I needed to talk about

what was on my heart, what was causing pain to me and those I

loved and those I could not love.  

	He listened.  Truly listened.  He did not let me off the hook.  

Neither did he let me wallow in flilse guilt His silence forced

me to be real.  We met once a month for as long a session as

needed.  He waved no magic wands.  He was my spiritual friend

and my confessor.  And I always left him reminded again that I

was God's beloved child.  

	I think the concept of spiritual direction is often more

accepted than sacramental confession, even in churches such

as mine with a tradition of "the reconciliation of a penitent"

When sacramental absolution is given, our sins are not only

forgiven, they are washed away.  Gone.  Vanished.  We are not

meant to keep picking at them like an old scab but to let them

go completely.  

	Canon Tallis and I had the kind of friendship that grew

from two aspects of his priesfly ministry: being my confessor

and, as I later came to understand the term, my spiritual

director.  Together we looked for the signs of God, the

glimpses of grace.  Surely when someone walks with you along

the path, looking for breadcrumbs, it is a magufficent mani-

festation of a special kind of friendship: a Trinitarian friend-

ship, with God the apex of the triangle.  

	188  

	ness of God-not as a general truth or a

vague promise, but personally, immedi-

ately, in actual experience.  It can and

does take hold of them in a living way....  

	The heart of God has been yearning

all along for you to experience f6rgiv~

ness personally, and every stage of your

approach is marked by love.  

	-Martin L.  Smith, SSJE  

	Reconciliation  

	189  

	Dear Madeleine,  

	I'm sitting here at my desk,just ftlll of the sense of wonder and

joy that always comes when I suddenly realii:e that God is at

work behind the scenes, `~working things together for good"

for me.  

	You know some of the history of my searches and findings

of spiritual directors.  How Eugene Peterson suggested I go

about this process: "Pray, and see whose name or f~tce comes to

mind." Which is how I found my first director in Chicago-~the

wonderfiil cleric who introduced me to Ignatian spiritual disci-

plines.  But when I moved to California, the search and the

prayer began over again, after an abortive encounter with a

staff member at the local retreat center.  

	At a retreat for the women of my church, Holy Trinity

Menlo Park, my prayer was answered.  M.R.  was our retreat

leader, a young woman half my age whose quiet wisdom and

creative humor I found refreshing and spiritually invigorating.  

After the retreat was over I asked for her business card.  It read:

"Retreats and Spiritual Direction." When I phoned her later

and asked "Are you Open to taking on new directees?" she

replied, "Ie?s get together and talk abOut it"  

	I know from past experience how important it is to find "a

good fit" in one's spiritual director.  I'm not looking for a peer,

or a priest, though often the flinction is priestly.  Perhaps what

I'm looking for is more like an experienced companion on the

way.  And in the quiet of her home, with her young baby asleep  

	190  

	in another room, we introduced ourselves, each to the other,

talking and praying and exploring our spiritual "fit"  

	I told her some of my conservative Christian background,

and how some of those elements of f~iith are still very neces-

sary for me.  I have a hard time, for instance, calling God ~he,"

or "Her," or "Mother," because though I believe that God is

beyond gender, Jesus calls him Father, and having had a loving

and affirming father myself, God's Fatherhood is reinfbrce

ment for me.  I also believe what C.  S.  lewis said, that in the

presence of God the Creator, the Initiator, all of us, whether

men or women, are "eternally feminine."  

	I told M.R~ some of my past doubts and questions, my grie~

and spurts of growth, and how, beneath everything else, I am a

truth~eker She needed to know I'm not satisfied with easy

answers.  Platitudes make me nauseated.  I don't just want to be

reassured and comforted, but I need a spiritual guide who will

challenge me and hold me accountable for my choices and

the directions I'm finding.  

	When we next met, she'd provided a glass of cool water next

to my chair, and before talking together we sat quietly, collect-

ing ourselves, centering in to God in silent prayer, breathing

~ep~ to reoxygenate our bodies and our spirits.  I'm such a

;acramentalist This deep breathing speaks to me not just of

physical caiming, but of God's breath, his Spirit, being invited

nto my deepest being, a wind to scour out f~iL~ assumptions

ind guide me into truth.  

	M.R.  has degrees in theology and psychology; and she is

iware and informed at that intellectual level.  But what means

he most to me is her hstening heart.  She listens to me (and

`emembers, with amazing clarity; the personal details that she

iears from month to month) and she listens to what God is  

	191  

	speaking into our conversation.  Time and time again

her listening, then touching the precise knot which

bound, or putting together, and making sense out

diverse aspects of a spiritual conundrum.  She makes apt

metaphor, which endears her to me particularly.  And

write my fears or experiences into a poem, she responds

deepest truth without having to have it explained to

affirms what is healthftil in me and questions anything

spurious or superficial.  Our monthly sessions are always

lights for me.  I leave her with journal notes which

much food for thought and I also note in myjournal her

lenges and assignments for the coming month.  

	Because, of course, my journal is one of the best aids in

spiritual pilgrimage, I read her my passages of intimate

and decisions, of conflict or struggle, confident of her

dentiality~ So, you can tell something very good has com~

my life, a good person, one in whom I meet Jesus so

fillly.  Maybelcansumitupbysayingthatwhenlamwith

it is like being with Jesus, he is so powerfiilly present,

hear his voice in her voice, see his face in hers.  I write

knowing it will give youjoy too.  

	I'll call you soon, perhaps even before you read this.  

	192  

	Sometimes we conceal our relation with

Godinprayer because we are afraid that

others are closer than we are, that some

one may be fiuther ahead.  But once we

have turned and are actually seeking to

confront the Other, then we will almost

certainly find a need for someone to talk

with.  Real confrontation with love

demands sharing of this experience.  And

in the sharing we realize that all of us,

even the best, are babes in the woods.  

	-Morton T.  Kelsey

The other Suk of&~nce  

	193  

	Finding n~~sdf  

	lamleavingatrailof  

	crumbs  

	broken off from my body  

	to feed friends, or the birds.  

	Or so I have always felt  

	as I shoulder the branches  

	aside and strike deep  

	into the woods  

	where grass overgrows  

	the old tracks.  

	Ahead of me now, on  

	the dark ground,  

	abruptly shines a white thing;  

	itwicks like  

	a lamp.  And another.  

	I hear myself humming  

	an old song-a round -  

	as I stoop and finger  

	my own blaze of bread  

	turned hard as bone.  

	Companions on tile Way:  

	A foretaste of heaven  

	I will lift the cup of salvation

and call on the name ofthe lord.  

	~~dnis 116:13  

	197  

	MaJ~Ieine  

	Outside the windows of my apartment an icy sleet was fliling.  

Luci and I looked down at the street to see people struggling

with umbrellas.  One man slipped on the glazed sidewalk and

almost fell.  We looked at each other.  Our plan had been to

walk over to the Cathedral for the noon Eucharist  

	"Madeleine, this is absurd," Luci said.  "With my bad ankle

and your bad knee we can't walk over there in this weather.,'  

	Reluctantly I agreed.  I felt the need of the holy symbols.  If I

were younger I'd just have bundled up and sloshed over to the

cathedral.  But I'd recently had surgery.  If I fell on the ice I

could really be in trouble.  

	Luci said, `There's that really good tuna saiad in the fridge.  

let's have sandwiches and maybe a cup of soup and make our

lunch a kind of `sacramental meal.  

	That was a grace-filled suggestion for me.  All meals are

sacramental, but we could make this especially so.  We brought

our prayer books to the small table by the big window which

looked out on the increasing storm.  We read the Eucharistic

Prayer, and then we prayed the Prayer of Thanksgiving, and it

was all a beautiftil whole.  No one consecrated those elements

except Cod and us, but in the context of what we were doing

we felt that they were truly consecrated.  We felt no pride or

self~uffidency whatsoever, and it was deeply sacramental.  

	I could not have done this with somebody who did not feel

as Luci and I do about the holiness of Communion.  A very  

	198  

	deep affirmation of friendship is having eucharist together.  At

its most basic you could say that you can't eat Cod together

without being alfected in a profound way.  

	As we ate our tuna sandwiches we talked about how im-

portant eating together was in the Ilebrew Testament days,

and still is in the Middle East today.  It was understood that if

you ate with someone, you could not kill that person.  That was

why the shaking of hands between Yasir Arafat and Shimon

Peres at the peace treaty did not really assure me of peace,

because the two leaders had been invited to dine in the White

House and they did not accept the invitation.  They would not

eat together.  And my heart was sad.  

	Luci said, "The body and blood of Christ is the supreme

nourishment for the spirit.  Without it we are really im-

poverished.  Remember what Cerard Manley Hopkins said, `To

go to Communion worthily gives Cod great glory, but to take

food in thankfiilness and temperance gives him glory, too.'

There are so many Christian denominations that seldom

practice Communion, and maybe that's one of the reasons the

Christian church as a whole is deprived of this whole sacra-

mental view of life which you and I find so meaningftil."  

	I agree.  It binds us together in a way nothing else can.  I do

find a hunger for the sacramental in people who have had

little experience of it Several of my United Church of Christ

friends are now approaching the communion service in a

much more sacramental way than they used to.  Charlie Russ,

the retired minister who was so close to Hugh and me during

Hugh's illness, celebrated communion in our village church in

a way that was so humbly flill of the mystery of the Word made

flesh that I felt right at home.  

	There's often a double helix in the Protestant tradition, a  

	199  

	hunger for sacrament, and a need for explanation that

expresses itself in good work~necessary good works but with-

Out the mystery of knowing that our good works are not ours.  

	The next day was cold but clear, so after our morning's work

Luci and I headed for the Cathedral.  Our first stop was the

Libniry~ where I have my desk.  There was nobody in the library

at the moment We continued our conversation as we straight-

ened up a bit and shelved books, includihg a recent one on the

importance of grounding social action in a life of prayer.  A

prayer life prepares you for something flir beyond any notions

of simply being "right-minded," or "politically correct"  

	Luci said, "When Jesus was reprimanded for eating with his

politically incorrect friends, he reminded the religious leaders

that he had come for those who are sick, not those who are

well, and that what he wants is mercy, not sacrifice.  Mercy

stands for loving and self~ving.  Sacrifice stands for the politi-

cally correct system of ceremonial laws, prohibitions, and sacri-

ficial offerings."  

	We agreed that it is hilarious for Clrristians to be politically

correct when we follow a Man who was so politically incorrect

that he got crucffled for it We wondered if you can feel politi-

cally correct without having your heart in it You don't have to

hurt for the people you are simply being politically correct

about  

	"My son Jolin feels that the personal involvement, feeling

the hurt with hurting people, counts so much.  I was once put

to shame by him about that," Luci said.  "I met him briefly in

Washington, D.C.,  and suggested that I take him Out to dinner,

to some quiet place where we could talk and catch up.  He said

to me, `Mother, if I meet a needy person who asks me for

money, well, I won't give money but I will ask him or her out  

	200  

	for dinner.  Are you willing to go along with me on that?' I

knew that would really be a sacrifice to give up my time with

him but I respectedjohn's suggestion."  

	There was a long silence.  Luci andI do not always agree,

and this was one of those times.  I said "I'm having real trouble

with this.  John doesn't see you that often.  He sees panhandlers

every day.  I'm asked for money half a dozen times when I walk

down the street Sometimes I offer food from one of the many

little eateries in my block.  It is a hard call.  One friend of mine

who really struggles to make ends meet asks for the name of

the person and says she will pray for that person by name."  

	Luci continued, `John feels that you need to enter the life

of the person who is asking to experience a loving under-

standing.  It's much easier to give a dollar.  Taking a meal

together demands more."  

	I was still unhappy, still unconvinced.  Through a deep sigh I

said, `Luci, we cannot connect with everybody's need.  If I eat a

hamburger with a panhandler, how much connecting am I

really doing?  We'll probably never meet again.  I do try to con-

nect in prayer as much as possible.  But that one special

evening with you and John, well, I still feel that the important

thing was for you to have dinner with your son, for him to have

dinner with his mother."  

	Of course, all our conversation is not on this intense level.  

But we were constantly thinking about this book on friendship

we were struggling to write, and everything we talked about

seemed to touch on it  

	It was time for the Eucharist and we made our way across

the close to the Cathedral and St Martin's chapel.  We nodded

and smiled at several of the regular communicants as we went

to our seats.  It is a greeting quite different from the usual social  

	201  

	interchange.  We took our places and crossed ourselves ("Don't

be afraid of making the sign of the cross," an Anglican monk

once told me.  "All it means is: Cod be in my thoughts, in my

heart, in my left hand, in my right hand, all through this day.")

and prepared once again to share this holy meal together, to

rejoice in saying "thank you" to God for being with us in

Eucharist~hich in Greek means thank you.  

	Friendship with Cod used to mean friendship with the God

of one small planet Now, it means friendship with the God of

the galaxies, more galaxies than we can count, a Cod whose c~

ativity is so enormous it is beyond our comprehension.  Maybe

that's why the Lord's Table is so important to me.  It is Cod

reminding me that divine love is always personal and that Cod

shows us total intimacy in the incarnation and the Eucharist  

	The familiar prayers were said, the bread was broken and

given.  "The Body of Chns4 the bread of heaven.  The B~od of Chns4

the cup ofsalvation."  

	I don't think we can connect smgiehandedly with the needs

of everyone, but the body of Christ is not singlehanded, and

many can do what one cannot We do know this: Cod's Son was

sent for everyone, the whole broken and needy world.  The

bread is broken for all of us.  Our companionship in Christ

strengthens us to go out to the world, and to those who do not

come to the altar And, we go knowing that we will be strength-

ened to respond to Cod's people and shown the way.  

	Luci and I returned from the communion rail and took our

seats, fed and deeply grateful.  With our companions in the

chapel we said the f~~iliar words of the closing prayer.  

	202  

	Eternal God, heavenly Fathe': you have graciously ac~te:l us

as living memb~ of your San our Savior Jesus Ghrist, and you

havefrd us with spiritual food in the Sacrament of his Body

and Blood.  Saul us now into the world in peace, and grant us  

	strength and ooura~ to love and serve you with g~dness and

sin~ess ofheafl; through Christ our Lord.  Aneen.  

	We left and made our way home, carrying within us the

body of Christ  

	Spnng St.  Martin's Chapel  

	Both of us kneel, then wait  

	on the church chair~square, chocolate brown -

knowing that soon the black priest  

	will hurry in, wearing his lateness like

the wrong robe.  In the pregnant emptiness

before communion, that crack between worlds,  

	we listen inward, feet tight on the cold slate,

wanting to hear Christ tell us Feed on me.  

Our hearts shiver, hidden.  Nothing visible moves.  

	Outside a drizzle starts; drops spit on the sffl.  

The window bird flies motionless in

a cobalt sky of skiliflil glass.  

	But beyond the frame, plucking the eye

like a message from Outside, a minor shadow

tilts and swoops in light rain,  

	wings telling us to fly wide, loose  

	and nervy as pigeons who may peck crumbs from

any picnic table, or gnats right out of the aii~  

	Luci  

	204  

	A continuing conve~ation  

	Luci:  

	I can test my ideas with you.  I can argne with you,

and the dialogne helps me understand what I'm

feeling and whether or not it's valid.  

	MADEWNE:  

	Me, too, which is at the center of our understand-

ing of being together on this 4fejourney-follow~

ing Christ Sometimes I'm with people who are

"bibliolaters." They worship the Bible, but they

don't necessarily read it, at least not the tough

parts.  The Bible is full of paradoxes and contra-

dictions.  You can prove almost anything you want

from the Bible.  

	LUci:  

	Yes, when you take what you want out of context  

	word of Cod, with a little w, is true, but not nece~

sarily literally factual, and that upsets a lot of

people, the confusion of fi~ct and truth.  But you

know how I feel about that, having so recently

edited The Rock which is Righer; which expresses

my thoughts about story as truth.  

	Luci:  

	Oh yes, indeed I do.  It was fun, all of it We had

some good argnments, and some good resolu-

tiOns.  

	205  

	When a child says, "Tell me a story, tell me a

story!" what the child is asking for is truth and

affirmation: Yes, you matte;: Yes, lift is woTth living

The child knows that story is true, so children

love stories, stories telling the truth about Why am

I alive?  What is ife about?  What is my meaning?  Is

there a Cod?Does anybody care?  

	Luci:  

	~iestions like that go way beyond fact to truth.  

	terms of fact  

	Luci:  

	It's love in action.  It's true.  It's always been a sur-

prise to me that the true believers are very few

and fir between, the ones like David with a true

heart towards Cod, the faithful remnant  

	who consider themselves to be true believers...  

	Luci: ...  are often the most un~hristiike.  

	MAD~w~:  

	The most judgmental.  The most everything Jesus

told us not to be.  People with no doubts, who

repress doubts.  Andso the unknowable gets limit-

ed and squashed into the knowable.  

	Luci:  

	I've often wondered whether such Christians look

at the apostle Paul as their leader and example

rather than Jesus.  

	206  

	MADEWNE:  

	That was my mother's theory, that Paul did great

damage.  I get annoyed that sometimes Paul is so

marvelous and then he says something terrible!  A

lot of anti~mitism comes from Paul, despite his

own Jewishness.  

	Luci: But Paul was human, too.  

	looking for a new rector for their church, he

wouldn't have made it past the first interview.  

And I sometimes wonder: whose qualifications

are we looking for?  

	Luci:  

	(~iaIffications?  I suppose we have to outiine qual-

ifications, orjobs wouldn't be done right  

	butcher to take out my appendix, though he

might be better than my dentist It's a paradox,

because the scriptural protagonists were all

unqualified to do what they did.  It gives us heart

as we bumble along.  

	207  

	c%fts of Companionship  

	Majeleine  

	Perhaps Luci and I would talk less intensely, more light-

heartedly (and perhaps less pompously) if we saw each other

more often.  Though we are in close touch, it is not the same as

being together, every day, able to discuss not only what is going

on in our lives and in the world, but our struggle to express in

this book the meaning of friendship.  

	The phone has often been our prayer chain, as we've called

to ask for prayers for each other, our children, our friends.  

There is no such thing as a flill family life without crisis, and in

the past few weeks I'd had to call for prayers for the serious ill-

ness of my son, now recovering, and for the deep hurt given

one of my daughters.  Luci has called with some of her own

painflil requests, and the fact that we are able to do this, almost

without thinking, as a spontaneous reaction, is sacramental evi-

dence that we are companions together on the way.  

	And there is much about which to pray: we live in a brutal

world.  Luci reminded me that it was brutal in Jesus' time, and I

suppose it has always been brutal.  One story is that the great

flood was caused by God's tears; God was so grieved by the

pain and wickedness in this planet which was created with so

much love and joy that the Creator wept for forty days and

forty nights.  

	God had cause again to weep while his Son walked the

earth.  During his public ministry, even the disciples didn't  

	208  

	understand Jesus.  He told them the truth, called himself a

servant, talked about giving up power, and his disciples were

constantly seeking for power and more power, even at the Last

Supper.  Perhaps that was why Jesus had such close friendships

with Mary of Magdala, with Mary and Martha of Bethany,

because women in his day were powerless, and were therefore

more capable of understanding what he was talking about  

	Recently I read an excellent novel in which a scrap of

papyrus was found which was part of a letter written by Mary of

Magdala, indicating that she was one of the apostles.  The novel

was set around the turn of the eighteenth century, and the di~

closure of this potent scrap of paper would have turned the

church upside down.  The patriarchy which dominated the

Western world would have been far more scandalized than

they were by any of Darwin's discoveries.  A woman an apostle!  

Never!  

	We see it differently now, at least a lot of us do, and the idea

that the Mary who was the first person to whom Jesus revealed

himself after the Resurrection was also one of his apostles

seems quite possible, even likely.  Jesus relieved her of seven

demons, and surely she loved him with her whole heart True

love, pure love; not all love is genital.  And if Mary loved him in

all ways, that statement is hardly surprising or shocking.  

	Many ofjesus' parables, if we are willing not to take them lit-

erally, are telling the truth about ourselves that we really don't

want to hear.  They point Out our hardness of heart, our smug-

ness, our unwillingness to see ourselves as we truly are.  It's a lot

easier to take the parables literally than to understand that

Jesus was trying to tell us something important about our-

selves.  Are we ungenerously resenting the return of the prod-

igal son?  The payment of those who worked for an hour being  

	209  

	 the same as those who worked in the heat of the day?  Do we

want to be considered important, rather than know ourselves

unworthy, like the Levite at the temple?  

	One of the important things about friendship is that we

allow the friends of our heart to see us, not as we would like to

be (none of us is what we'd like to be), but as we really are,

with our weaknesses, our faults and flaws.  Our view of our

friends must be devoid of idolatry, which is a temptation.  I've

fallen into it often enough, wanting the other person to be all-

wise, all-healing, all-knowing-in other words, wanting the idol

to be God.  But idols are idols, and never God.  The human

Jesus had to fi~ce all these flilse expectations, people wanting

him to be nothing but divine, or perhaps not so much divine

as magic.  

	A gift we are given by our companions along the way is that

we can ask questions that some people might consider radical.  

We know that even if we may be considered momentarily

shocking, or off course, our friends won'tjudge us harshly.  

	My dictionary says: he~mdox: contraly to or d:fferentfrorn some

acknowtedg~d standaid, as the Bible, a creed, etc.  Does that make

me heterodox, then?  For instance, I believe that God created

the universe in divine time, not in human time, six days

Greenwich mean time or Eastern Daylight time.  Doesn't

Scripture remind us frequently that God's time and ours are

entirely different?  

	Do I believe that God sometimes reveals truth through

story, rather than fact?  It is more important to me to under-

stand that God is radically forgiving than that Jonah was in the

belly of an actual fish.  Jonah is a wonderftil story of our hard-

heartedness and God's loving forgiveness.  

	210  

	I don't think we should ever be ahaid to ask God our deej>

est questions because we're afraid of criticism or misunder-

standing.  If we can kneel at the communion rail and still ask

our question, then we can trust iL And, as we find friends with

whom we can share our fears, our inadequacies and struggles,

our questions and conflisions about our fi~th, then, then we

will know that we have found companions along the way.  

	211  

	from The Partaking  

	Often we taste the

granular body of wheat

(Think of the Grain that died!)  

and swallow together

the grape's warm, bitter blood

(Remember First Fruit!)  

knowing ourselves a part of you

as you took part of us,

flowed in our kind of veins,

quickened cells like ours into

a human subdividing.  

Now you are multiplied -

we are your fingers and your feet,

your tender heart,  

	we are your broken side.  

	Take now, and crumble small,  

	and cast us on the world's waters,  

	your contemporary shewbread.  

	Feed us  

	to more than five thousand  

	women and men  

	and in our daily flood of living  

	pour yourself out again.  

	Luci  

	Luci `S Journal Entry  

	As Made~ne and Bara and I have been wo'king on the finish-

ing touches of this book at Cmsswicks Gotta~ in Connecticu4

we have been surrounded ~ the green folas of the Litchfield

Hils. Beftveen sessions at the computer we've made excuisions to

buy at the local farm stand, or to go to the Congregational

church on Sunday, or simply to buy gmcesies, or take mail to the

post office, driving along the winding countiy Toads.  

	Very ofien our companion along the way, j~llnving the tun%s

in the mad as we drove, was a hand-buil4 low stone wall of the

kind common in New England, erected as much to get the stones

out of thefielas as to kep the calliefiom straying It struck me

today that a wall like this is a metaphor of fiiendship.  There's

some tint~onsuming skill involved in putting it together with-

out cement or mortar of any kind.  There's nothing art:ficial

binding the individual pieces of mck togethe'; thes stay in place

simply because thesfit, the convexi~ of one stone nestled in the

concavi~~ of its neighbor Even the grit~ texture of the granite

stones has value, preventing themfimn sl2poi~ng apart, keping

their sufaces in touch.  

	~~ well built, these wals last for gonerations.  Thes are not

only usefit4 thes are ornamentat, an integral part of the la~

scape.  Like the stones in the wall we see the skillfiœl hand of God

at work, using even our Tough, grit~y surfaces, fitting us together

in love, infiiendsht~-oompanions along the way.  

	213  

	realize that something else is beginning.  Doors close, and

doors open.  It is hello and good-bye, and good-byes are always

poignanL They are easiest when something permanent is left

behind.  We've come to such a good-bye.  We say good-bye to

this book in the middle of the beautiful stability of a long

friendship that has grown and developed over many years and

will, we believe, continue to do so.  

	Yesterday Bara came to the Cottage with the complete man-

uscript of Friends for tbeJounu~~, and we spent the day going

over i~ It was a glorious end~fsummer day, and we sat at the

table working, accompanied by the loud sounds of sawing and

hammering as the two young carpenters worked on the roof of

the screened porch.  The sounds of their work and laughter

were, somehow, part of our own work.  I looked at what Bara

had done in editing and shaping this book and I was awed and

delighted.  We were just about to call Luci when the telephone

rang and it was Luci, calling us, joining us in the Cotttge by

phone all the way from San Francisco.  

	Luci and I hadjust been together on this past weekend when

she and John flew across the continent to New York for my

granddaughter Charlotte's wedding in a Greek Orthodox

church.  Some of the marriage ceremony traditions I would love

to see in my own church, and the loveliest thing of all was the

absolute radiance in Charlotte's fi~ce.  After the ceremony there

was a dinner reception at the Episcopal Cathedral, with a Greek  

	215  

	band and Greek line dancing.  When I finally said good-bye to

Luci and John (and that evening was surely a prime example of

a hello and good-bye, an ending and a beginning) I said, "We'll

talk soon.  The book is almost done, isn't it?"  

	And I felt a certain wistiulness.  This project had ensured

many visits back and forth, and has deepened our intimacy;

which was already deep.  This deepening will continue as we

keep up the habit of frequent phone calls, of praying together,

gomg to the altar together, sharing our questions, our grie~,

ourjoys.  

	But the book is finished.  

	Last night Bara and I went out on the terrace to look at the

sky, which was crystal clear.  The moon was not yet up, so the

stars were brilliant, and we could see the great river of the

Milky Way as it streamed across the sky.  We were part of that

glory, as friendship is another expression of the wonder of crc

ation, of our tiny human part in it.  And yet we know that tiny

and great are the same in the eyes of the Creator, and that,

too, is the wonder of stability in the midst of all the changes of

life.  We may not always hear the galaxies singing as they dance

their great circular dance, but we echo their dance in our own

ways.  We echoed it in the line dancing at Charlotte and John's

wedding reception, and Bara and I echoed it again, as we

came into the house to read Compline and decided to sing the

psalms for the evening~<)ur own melodies.  

	Good-bye, little book.  You have blessed us.  May you give

your blessing to those who read what we have written.  

	Madeleine  

	Amen.  Amen.  

	Lud  

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