by Jacob Schepers

Jacob Schepers is an editor at ballast, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit literary journal, and the author of the poetry collections Ugly Ground Swell Moss (Carbonation Press, 2026) and A Bundle of Careful Compromises (Outriders Poetry Project, 2014). A CPI member, he received his PhD and MFA from the University of Notre Dame, where he is now the assistant director for outreach and research partnerships at the Franco Family Institute of Liberal Arts and the Public Good.

I think often these days about how we relate to one another. About how we form bonds. About how we forgive. About how we seek to understand each other despite–and because–of our differences. With the journal’s theme of “Friendship” this year, I felt drawn to share some of these musings with you in the spirit of, well, friendship.

The driving force behind this lasting fascination of mine has been the release of my latest book of poetry, Ugly Ground Swell Moss (Carbonation Press, 2026). The book is, at turns, an investigation into nonhuman relations in the natural world and, at others, easily readable as an allegory for deeply human interactions among those closest to us. In the afterword to the book, I readily confess that I’m no systematic philosopher and “much prefer the lateral thinking that poetic processes depend on and thrive within.” I go so far to underscore this preference for uncertainty and write how “I’m grateful for big questions and for the relief of not having to answer them definitively.”

I make these caveats to let you know that not only do I lack rigorous answers but also that I can, at times, be a lousy friend. Among my circles, I’m known for my distaste of group chats. I barely keep up with my fantasy football league obligations. I can go months without thinking to check in. I’ll own all of this even as I’m wincing at writing them out. But what I can promise is that I do think deeply about the necessary good of friendship writ large. So, too, do I dwell on the miracle it is to connect with other individuals in the first place, knowing that we may very well occupy different lots in life, run on distinct bandwidths for friendship, and even carry divergent or downright opposing perspectives when it comes to matters of doctrine, politics, what have you.

I come about these observations honestly and earnestly, marveling at that miracle of accepting and understanding one another even with our faults and failures and occasionally less-than-forthright dealings with each other. And it’s in this sense that I position Ugly Ground Swell Moss and its broader project. Scattered throughout the collection are tangential epigraphs and so-called “Taxonomies” that draw on the 18th-century work and ensuing controversial legacy of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus and the 20th-century’s Lithuanian-born, French philosopher of Jewish heritage Emmanuel Levinas. Just as Ugly Ground Swell Moss turns and turns on the shifting relations between its title characters, so too do I refer to Linnaeus and Levinas as representative figures for broader intellectual frameworks. Each of their names evokes a certain approach or recognizable valence: for Linnaeus, the world and its inhabitants can be identified and catalogued with pronounced fixity; for Levinas, the central ethics of relationality comes down to radical unknowability and inscrutability of one another.

What I’m getting at comes back to the miracle and the gift of minds trying to meet one another, see one another, exactly where they’re at. Ours is a transactional world in so many ways, but true friendship seems to me a counterpoint. We may grow together, push each other, challenge each other, but always–one hopes–for the good of the other and not for some selfish ulterior motive. In that, friendship becomes a kind of grace as well as a gesture to a God who does know us intimately, wholly, to claim us as his own. I bookend this short essay with two excerpts from Ugly Ground Swell Moss, but indulge me as I share one final sentiment not my own, an epigraph from Levinas that I include in the collection: “The Other as Other is not here an object that becomes ours or becomes us; to the contrary, it withdraws into its mystery.”1

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1 Emmanuel Levinas, Existence and Existants. Translated by Alphonso Lingis (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1978), 86.

Jacob Schepers

Assistant Director of Outreach and Research Partnership,
Franco Institute, University of Notre Dame
jscheper@nd.edu

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