Psalmist was in search of friendship when he wrote, “As a deer long for a stream of cool water, so I long for you, O God.” God has created us for this friendship because ‘God is love,’ but we need to find God’s presence in our relationships to transform and realise God is friendship. This is the realisation that St. Augustine had when he wrote: “O Lord thou hast formed us for thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee.” My own experience has taught me the need for a small circle of spiritual friends, through divine grace, who can help one another’s spiritual growth greatly, provided it is all centred on indwelling Christ and ‘selfless self.’ ‘Ego boundaries’ are obstacles that we ourselves create, but breaking them down is essential in continuing our spiritual journey. Spiritual friendships most commonly involve two people who encounter God’s grace in their lives; who makes an unselfish commitment to hold each other in the binding power of the divine love, and to share each other their experiences, doubts, thinking and prayer times as their spiritual journey unfold.

We encounter several types of friendships during our short life in this world: there will be friends of convenience, friends by association, and friends of the inner most being or heart. Friends out of convenience are friendships that we might have simply because two people are accessible to each other. These friendships are common in a work or academic or religious environment as people are united by place or profession alone. You might even term these friendships as 'associates' or acquaintances instead of friends, because you associate with one another because you feel that you have to. These types of friendships can easily disappear as quickly as they came or they can actually turn into more meaningful friendships as time moves on. Those friendships which are self-serving or entirely based on flattery or which do not seek the other’s greatest potential should be treated as friendship of convenience. Friendship can be both virtuous and vicious. Under certain circumstances, relationship may be manufactured and used for a certain purpose and then dumped on a waste heap. For a spiritual person losing friendship is very damaging and hence even in the face of stark betrayal such people continue to love and pray over lost friendships because they believe that love should remain even when the friendship is destroyed.

Then there are friendships through other friends, friendships that exist because of an association with another friend. We might acquire these forms of friendships because of our existing friends. These are often accidental and prone to accidents as well; we acquire our friend's circle of companions and make them our own. These associations can lack strong foundations and even knowledge of one another, but either way, we respect them as a part of the baggage of friend that facilitated the introduction. This type of friendship is very fragile because of the trust needed to keep confidences and seek the common good of all members of the circle; otherwise, the circle will be broken. Discussing one friend with another in the circle is always a problem; a certain level of God-given maturity is needed to nurture this type of friendship. Jealousy may creep into this, who met whom first, whom, when and what are important factors for fuelling jealousy and destroying friendships. Many kinds of demands are made on this friendship. A minor wound inflected by a friend is more damaging than a deeper cut from an enemy. A sustainable friendship under these circumstances is the one which is based on the meeting point of the coordinates of our vertical relationship with God and a horizontal relationship of our friend.

Then there are friendships that are few and far between, friends of the heart or friends of the spirit. We may find this form of friendship with, in addition to our spouses, children and immediate family, with very special people. This type of friendship is guided through a profound spiritual connection. They are very pronounced and spiritually ignited. This may even be providential. They can overcome distance. They can surpass cultural and language barriers. They can surpass age and even gender. It is often in silence they maintain their friendship and communicate with each other because much dialogue is a one-sided monologue; dialogue is much more than mere interchange of words.

They do not exist out of convenience or association, but any kind of friendship can transform and blossom into a friendship of the heart. These friendships exist out of respect and purpose. This unity of beings connects our hearts to our souls. They remind us and encourage us to share our weaknesses and empty ourselves to enrich ourselves with God’s grace; they contribute to our over all spiritual well-being. These friendships exist on the purest of levels. They have no hidden agenda, no masks, what you see is what you get. They do not even necessarily rely on the power of any frequency or type of contact. They exist on a level all of their own. These friendships do touch are our hearts. They leave precious imprints where they matter the most. These friendships are gifts unto themselves as they are aligned with our inner workings and details. They somehow give us comfort no matter what our state of mind and they seem to blanket our worries with little or no effort. They exist not out of force, but out of care, reverence and respect.

These spiritual friendships allow us to actually feel the presence of indwelling God in the other. They allow us that close of a connection that typically both people can feel the other's thoughts and emotions. We are attracted to them because we are intended to be. These friendships may baffle and surprise us as they can sneak up on us quickly, but they are friendships that need not go unnoticed and certainly not forgotten, for however long they are to stay. A friendship made through the grace of God will never die because behind the spiritual friendship of two people there is always the loving presence of Jesus. This is a simple practical wisdom, but many mirages of friendships are there for us to encounter in the desserts of life and most of us are still in search for a cool evening on a true oasis with a company of good friends. It is only living within the other you find this type of friendship.

Martin Buber expressed this amazing experience in the following way: “Only he who himself turns to other human being and opens himself to him receives the world in him. Only the being whose otherness, accepted by my being, lives and faces me in the whole compression of existence, brings the radiance of eternity to me. Only when two says to one another with all that they are, “It is Thou”, is the indwelling of the present Being between them.” Changampuzha, a Kerala poet, expressed the very same reality in another context in his immortal lines, “Eru mezhu annaenkylum nammal otta karal alley nee yentey Jeevan alleyah.” [Ccp sa¿msW¦nepw \½Ä HÁ Icftñ, \o Fsâ Poh³ Añtbm!] This can be interpreted the following way with a certain degree of poetical freedom, two friends may have two physical bodies, but they are in every other sense one in their emotions and life.” We will be the most blessed persons on earth when we find such a friend or friendship circle. May God bless us to find such relationships through the pages of ‘Light of Life.’