Invisible Friends

Dana and I finally got back to reading more of The Godbearing Life today. This is a book by Kenda Creasy Dean and Ron Foster; its subtitle is The Art of Soul Tending for Youth Ministry. We started reading it months ago (in August, I think) when we were really excited about the Christian Education position we were jointly interviewing for at a church in Virginia. (We had thought there was a possibility we would be hired to do youth and children's ministry as a team.) The interview turned out to be a difficult experience -- communication problems, the church in a big transition period and not very clear about what they wanted (beyond what we weren't). Maybe our disappointment over that door not opening is part of the reason we bogged down in the book this fall, although we really liked it from the start. Lots of good food for thought, and as pertinent as ever (if not more so) now that D. is working part-time as the youth minister for our church here again.

We were in chapter 7: "A Circle of Friends: Inviting Spiritual Friendship" for just about forever, I think, but we finally pushed on and read the rest of it together today. And the final part of the chapter turned out to be worth the wait. Dean and Foster talk about the different kinds of friends we need/cultivate/long for in our lives: companions (ordinary folk who share faith with us, and daily life and help); mentors (spiritual advisors who who pass their wisdom on to us, and help us discern where we're going); soul friends (or anmchara, deeply special friends who help us pay attention to what's going on in our souls); invisible friends (the saints who have gone before, and people who inspire us/nourish us from a distance, such as writers, former pastors/teachers, etc.); and finally, outsiders who are inside your circle (people from outside the Christian community who help us experience the diversity of God's world, and who keep us challenged to be faithful doers and sharers of the Word).

I think I need to keep reflecting on this list. What struck me as I read it is that I can claim a fair amount of general companions, invisible friends, and even outsiders on the inside. But I feel woefully deficient in mentors or soul-friends. It also really hit me that I've not been very good at mentoring others recently, and once upon a time that seemed to be a big part of my life and calling (especially mentoring younger Christian women). The past several years have had many seasons of loneliness; I used to pray with great longing for God to send a soul-friend my way here in Ambridge, but I've not prayed that way in a long time. Perhaps it's time to start again, and to add prayers for someone that I too can "mentor."

I do love reflecting on the notion of "invisible friends" -- in part because I've been teaching church history for the past couple of years, and I've come more and more to value the lives and witness of Christians who have walked before us. I also think with gratefulness of writers and poets (both ancient and contemporary) who have nourished me. It excites me to think that the great "cloud of witnesses" described in Scripture now includes C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien! I'm continuing my almost breakneck readthrough of Alan Jacobs' incredible biography of Lewis: The Narnian. I didn't mean to gulp it down, but some books just ask to be read that way and this is one of them. Very hard to put down. It deserves a post (or more than one post) of its own. I think I will finish it in the next few days...

Booper asked for the lovely picture book Hoot for bedtime story tonight. We've read it a lot lately. She's so delighted to have a "new Jane Hissey book" (as she says with great delight almost every time we pick it up). Thank the Lord for public libraries! Hoot is an owl who lives on top of the nursery cupboard in the same nursery that Old Bear and his friends live in. She's a very tidy owl -- likes to sort socks. Boop gets great satisfaction out of the end when Hoot leaves all the matched socks in pairs on the bedpost before she goes to bed (in the morning, because owls go to bed in the morning, of course). Yesterday when I went in to get her up from her nap, I saw that she had taken off her purple socks and hung them on the side of her bed just like in the book! Life imitating art once again.