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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 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |
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