The Adventure of Friendship

There are many things I prize—but at the top of the list is the adventure and the sacrament of friendship—because this is rarer and more precious that all the rest. (hal)

Yesterday my friend Bill and I were able to visit again after many months.  I was reminded after he left of this blog which I wrote in 2015 after another visit Bill and I had back then.

Friendship is an adventure.  It is also a sacrament (an outward and visible sign of an inward invisible grace).  William Ferrar Renzulli and I have been friends since 1971.  We were young, handsome, thin, had hair, and were “full of piss and vinegar” (rowdy, boisterous full of youthful energy) back then.  The expression in quotes above was used by John Steinbeck in his novel, “In Dubious Battle” (1936) and it fits Bill and me as we were back then.  We were on the threshold of our vocations, he in medicine and I in ministry.  Our parents were still living then and we were young husbands and fathers, eager to be the best we could be in both those roles.  We were altruistic and naive.  We had no awareness at that time of how life could and would tumble in, or if we did have an inkling, we paid it no mind.  We had the world by its tail!

Forty-eight years have passed since first we met.  We are no longer young, our “good looks” have taken on the marks of maturity, our thinness then is no longer, and we still have a little hair (at least I do) on our heads.  Our parents are deceased, our children have grown up and have children of their own.  We are both grandfathers now.

I wish there were space to tell of the many exploits and adventures Bill and I have shared in friendship (and some I would not tell even if there were space to do so).  Bill fulfilled his calling in medicine and also his calling to be an artist.  I fulfilled my calling in ministry within the church, as an Air Force chaplain and developed some new forms of ministry through the Yokefellow Movement.  We have been successful, I suppose, in the eyes of the world.  But more importantly, we have through thick and thin, through turmoil and joy, in trouble and in peace, in rocky places and in smooth, walked together on the adventurous path of friendship.

There are many things I prize—but at the top of the list is the adventure and the sacrament of friendship—because this is rarer and more precious than all the rest.