by Layne Matthews Boles

Layne Matthews Boles holds an MFA from Seattle Pacific University in creative nonfiction, and is co-editor of Among Winter Cranes, the quarterly for the Christian Poetics Initiative (CPI) of the Rivendell Center for Theology and the Arts. Layne’s work can be found in Vita Poetica and Covenant, the online journal of The Living Church. She lives in Hamden, Connecticut.

Friendship involves not only giving, but receiving. Is this a selfish thought?

            For much of my life, I would’ve thought so. I was fortunate to receive a lifetime of formation anchored in scripture, encouraging me to count others as greater than myself. Of course, at times my self-centeredness leads me to prioritize my own needs, looking for what others can give me so as to stave off loneliness or gain acceptance. My eagerness to please pulls me in the opposite direction. I’m poised to offer myself to the yet-to-be-friend in front of me before that person has a chance to even utter their name. How do I value others before myself and at the same time openly receive their love? And can we ever give love, truly, to those we call our friends if we don’t also receive their love? 

            “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). According to the apostle, the act of loving is entirely impossible without having received love from the Giver of Love–its Source and Definition. 

            So, what does this mean for my, our, friendships with others? In his lifetime, author, priest, and spiritual counselor Henri Nouwen suffered from periods of psychological and spiritual torment resulting in intense loneliness. From this depth of sorrow, however, comes a wealth of wisdom and guidance. Nouwen’s book, The Inner Voice of Love, is a composition of Nouwen’s own personal reflections which a friend convinced him to publish years after it was written. It was during the darkest period of his life, between 1987 and 1988, that he wrote what he calls his “secret journal,” where, after meeting with counselors, he penned  “spiritual imperatives,” born from his own struggles to find his sense of being loved by God and by others, as well as purpose and meaning in his life. With years of distance from this period, he was able to finally see how his hardwon insights could help others. 

In one of Nouwen’s imperatives entitled, “Receive All the Love that Comes to You,” he acknowledges that while he may feel physically and even mentally strong, there is a place deep within himself that is in anguish, an undercurrent of sadness which he fears to face. However, it’s this place, Nouwen discovers, where he must go and where he must be loved by God and others. “You are not yet there… [But] trust,” he writes, “that one day love will have conquered enough of you that even the most fearful part will allow love to cast out all fear.” These words are Nouwen’s encouragement to himself, to see that it is only by letting others love him, and by living in a way in which he “can receive more and more,” that God will strengthen his innermost self and comfort and heal his haunting sadness. The idea of love conquering oneself, myself, is a surprising thought. It harkens to Christ who conquered death–the darkest of human conditions–not by might and physical fortitude, but by love. Love conquers us. And friendships with people who love openly, selflessly, without expecting anything in return, serve as vessels for Christ’s love, which is freely given and received. Nouwen is careful to point out that receiving is not the end goal by emphasizing what love actually looks like–love not for one’s own sake, but for the sake of another. In another imperative entitled “Allow Yourself to be Fully Received,” he says: “Every time you discover that you expect something in return for what you have given… you are being made aware that you yourself are not yet fully received.” I could have written these words to myself! He continues with a warning, “The danger is in pouring yourself out to others in the hope that they will fully receive you. You will soon feel as if others are walking away with parts of you.” Nouwen touches on the core of many of our fears in friendship–that we will love without being loved in return, that a hole will be left still empty by this person–who was never able to fill it. But, Nouwen makes clear, there is One who is able to fill the emptiness inside: “Giving without wanting anything in return is trusting that all your needs will be provided for by the One who loves you unconditionally.” So it’s only, and truly only when this first condition is met, that we can be true friends to others. It’s from this place of being filled by Love that we can give without expectation. Rather than being shackled to the ground by our fear of loss, we are free and “free to love.” 

I find an image that seems to capture this sense of freedom and relinquishment that Nouwen seeks, one that allows true friendship to blossom in Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop. It is a story of friendship forged over many years, of two French missionary priests embarking on a long and dangerous journey in order to share Christ with people living in the recently annexed territory of New Mexico. After twenty years of serving in the New World together, Fr. Latour, the Bishop of New Mexico, reflects on his friendship with his priest, Fr. Vaillant, who is leaving him to shepherd gold miners living in the harsh country of Colorado. After Fr. Vaillant's departure, the narrator tells how the Bishop “rode home to his solitude… and indulged in such reflections as any bachelor nearing fifty might have.” When the reader is meant to feel the loneliness of losing his friend, in a moment that is both quick and unexpected, they are surprised by a movement: “But when [Latour] entered his study, he seemed to come back to reality, to the sense of a Presence awaiting him… a sense of loss was replaced by a sense of restoration. It was just this solitariness of love in which a priest’s life could be like his Master’s.” For Fr. Latour, a sense of vocation is rediscovered, a call on his life that is not just duty, but comes from the well of love–what he goes on to name a solitude of “perpetual flowering.”

As death meets Latour at the end of the book, he leaves the world reflecting on this same friendship with Vaillant. In a letter Latour writes to Vaillant’s older sister, just months after Vaillant’s death and only a couple more until his own, Latour says, “‘I feel nearer to him than before. For many years Duty separated us, but death has brought us together. The time is not far distant when I shall join him.’” For both Latour and Vaillant, their friendship does not end when they no longer share space, nor even temporal time. In fact, it is Vaillant’s death that serves as Latour’s lifeline to his friend. The giving and receiving of love that marked their friendship has flowered beyond them–it has provided a well of purpose and meaning for Fr. Latour that carries him to his last days of ministry. As Nouwen himself sought, rather than empty and spent, he leaves earth full and overflowing. May we all seek this in our most intimate of friendships. 

Layne Matthews Boles

Co-editor, Among Winter Cranes
laynematt98@gmail.com