I'm currently sitting in a hotel room in Chicago, getting ready for two days filled with stories about love and friendship. Part of that will be Rich and me sharing our own story about how we discovered deep, intimate friendship through music, and also through the direct sharing of said music. I am honored to have the opportunity to talk about how my friendship with Rich has changed my life. In honor of the Sacred Friendship Gathering, I want to repost this piece I wrote a year ago about friendship and how, rather than pointing to specific rules about how we're to interact, Rich and I choose love as the boundary. +++++++++++++++ At the Good Women Project, Anne Wilson wrote a piece entitled Boundaries: No One Is Above An Affair. To close the piece, she wrote the following: Love … [Read more...]

Recently, Sarah Bessey wrote about her circles of friendship. I loved this post because in an age where we "friend" people who we might not recognize if we passed them on the street, it's good to have ways to explain what we mean when we talk about our friends. I don't have nearly the well-thought out categories that Sarah shares, but I do have people who I consider to be "best friends." I have my husband Jason, my friend Tina, and my friend Rich. They are all my best friend. Jason is my best friend because he shows me that honesty is worth pursuing even when it's hard. He makes me laugh better than anyone else. He is the first person to support me when I want to pursue my dreams. Tina is my best friend because she knows all of the words to Flood by They Might Be Giants. She … [Read more...]

Because I’m a bit of a novice speech-giver, I have been working on my presentation for the Sacred Friendship Gathering for a little while now. I’ve been pulling together my thoughts about the topic of love without boundaries, culling my blog for tweetable quotes, and combing through the Scripture for examples of various friendships. That last one has been a bit eye-opening. Not because I haven’t read these passages before. Stories about friendship always resonate with me. My two favorite books are Charlotte’s Web and A Prayer for Owen Meany, both of which deal with close friendships. So stories in Scripture about friendship have always held a special place in my heart simply because I love those kinds of tales. But in reading them again, I discovered something about these … [Read more...]

I recently spent some time on the phone discussing cross-gender friendship with a friend of mine. She and a married man recently discovered that they were developing a close friendship. They had read my three previous entries on friendship and attraction, but still had some questions, so we found a time when we could talk for a bit. The most pressing question that she asked, and one that I know plagued me when I first entered the realm of cross-gender friendship was, "What is emotional infidelity?" Honestly, even if people will grant that you might not knock boots with your opposite-sex friend, there is still a good chance that you'll be warned about having an emotional affair. This is of particular concern among those in the Christian community. First, I’d like to say that … [Read more...]

I hadn't really anticipated writing a part 3 to this series, but I was asked a really common question in part 2 that I felt like deserved its own post. Jessica asked: When, in your opinion, should cross-gender friendship be avoided? This tends to be a question that comes up regularly in this discussion. Before I get to answering it, I want to say that this question tends to be rooted in the danger and fear narrative. We would probably not ask when a same-gender friendship should be avoided. Our tendency is to assume that those should be taken on a case by case basis. So I would suggest that the question itself reveals a little bit of our thoughts regarding cross-gender friendships. That's not a bad thing, but I think we need to be aware of that. With that out of the way, the main … [Read more...]