Dan J. Brennan

Thirsting For Friendship: Jean Vanier Reflecting on Henri Nouwen

via www.altervideomagazine.com

I so loved this clip of Jean Vanier reflecting on his dear friend, Henri Nouwen. Vanier says that Nouwen "thirsted for friendship." I have a few simple thoughts on thirsting for friendship. Nothing profound. I stand in the presence of two great giants who have embodied beauty and friendship. 

Reclaiming Beauty from Our Sexualized Culture

Her.menuetics from Christianity Today has posted a blog from Enuma Okoro on "We're Just Friends. No, Really."  I was so enouraged by Enuma. With great courage, she claimed the language of beauty for her cross-gender friendship with Andrew: " I believe my friendship with Andrew...is also beautiful for its own sake, without thought of its broader utility." 

Beauty of course, has been ransacked by Hollywood, by romantic comedies, by our hypersexualized culture.  

I am so grateful to meet fellow Christians not held captive to our sexualized culture. We may be small in number in the evangelical community, but beauty between men and women is far deeper and broader than what we've seen on comedy movies. 

With great courage, Enuma steps into the evangelical mainstream and declares her non-romantic friendship with a man to be "beautiful." Why should romance and sex have all the beauty between men and women? 

She is a boundary-shifting friend. 

 

The Wild Beauty of Boundary-Shifting Friendships

"Oh Dan - your affection and your care blesses me so much - thank you for loving me so well and lavishly....I love you deeply"

Those are not the words of my wife, Sheila, toward me (although she too expresses passionate, heartfelt, deep language of love to me!). They are words from one of my cross-gender single friends.

Those words of love, wild beauty arising spontaneously from the heart from Sheila toward me would be considered appropriate, beautiful, and deeply affectionate spousal love. Evangelicals would welcome and applaud such language of beauty expressed between husband and wife. 

But the words of wild beauty arising from a single woman and toward a married man who are "just friends?" Can we talk about exploring wild beauty in boundary-shifting friendships?  Although I specifically started out focusing on deep beauty between a single woman and a married man, I am going to broaden this out to human friendship, too. 

3 Cross-Gender Friends and a Wedding

"Those who witness a wedding ceremony are privileged to draw near to a concrete, loving union of two Christians--a community of disciples--that gives a taste of the spiritual communion among all Christians united in Christ." Julie Hanlon Rubio, Catholic theologian

"Those of us who have experienced the abundant being that can come from a deep personal relationship with a person of the opposite sex would never speak of our relationship as 'just.' Calling these relationships 'just' friend is not only misleading; it trivializes the relationship in a way that seems sacrilege." John Scudder & Anne Bishop

Three of my closest and dearest cgfs, Jennifer Ould, Susanne Osborne, and Jennifer Roach were all at  my son Jonathan's wedding and reception.  I've been wanting to write on this for a couple of weeks but I've been at a loss of words.