OPM 135, June 28th Meditation, Being and Learning, ch 6, pp. 140-141

OPM 135  Back in Portland after a truly remarkable week on Mt. Desert Island.

I am very fortunate to have some very good friends.  When I borrow from Arendt and  write about philosophy arising from a conversation between friends I have many examples in mind to support that claim.  I have always treasured my friendships, and gone into some deep depressions when I’ve felt isolated and disconnected from my friends.  For the past two years, however, I have made some deep connections that I know will last a lifetime, and I have also reconnected with old friends, and sustained others.   There is no question that something significant happened in the move to Maine, for in the past two years the bonds of friendship have strengthened my soul.  

I’m prompted to write this because of the coincidence between the opening citation in OPM 135, and an epistle I received from one of my dearest friends, which I received today when I returned to Portland.  I use the word ‘epistle’ because my friend and I share a bond that is virtually familial, and he seems very much to be the younger brother I never had growing up.   This bond, which links our common interest and approach to philosophy and even music, is a Latino inflected Catholicism, one that is an expression of community, family, justice, art, and above all else, is made and remade each day through the unyielding ever giving Holy Spirit of Love.  Thus, I use the word ‘epistle’ to describe the letter my friend sent me, which he categorized as a memo [written during his slow move with his wife and three children from  the Midwestern Plains to the Pacific Northwest].   Like Paul, the letter was a plea from his heart written to a friend about their friendship and the ways to sustain it.  There is always a fear that a dear friend, like a family member, will suddenly be gone from our lives.  Of course, we are all aware of mortality, but equally painful can be the sudden breaking off of communication, the loss of trust, the sudden change in the way we perceive or are perceived.  And as we grow older we understand ourselves well enough to know just how vital and fragile our friendships are and how easily we can forget to care for them, to tend to them, and to make sure that we allow ourselves to be cared for in the process of caring for the relationship.   For me, the joys of friendship are always rooted in the mutual trust I share with my friends, which allows us to share moments of intense life together, laughing, sometimes arguing, but also keeping it real.  And for this reason I don’t fear being vulnerable and being totally present with my friends, although I do fear being abandoned by my friends.   That is to say, it is always painful when I realize that someone I believed was a friend turned out to be just another person I may have spent some significant time with, but, in the end, did not place a high value or priority on being a member of a shared community.  I write all of this because I was deeply moved by the honesty and sincerity with which my dear friend, my younger brother, addressed me when he confessed his fear that he had somehow abandoned our friendship, or, that he would at some point in the future do just that.  I know of no other friend who would take the time to write such a letter, to write an epistle, and to repeat back to me the very core values of my own spirituality and faith in humanity.

The epistle connects with the opening line from OPM 135, a citation from Lao Tzu, that conveys learning to be beyond the giving and taking of orders, “not the result of any ordination, but always a spontaneous tribute.”   I write of ‘learning’ in OPM 135, but I could easily have written ‘thinking’ or ‘wisdom’ or even ‘friendship,’ which are all part of the same family of terms.   When Lao Tzu speaks of ‘ordination’ he is referring to ‘putting things in order’ by way of a formal ceremony, which is to say pro forma.   In contrast to this he speaks of ‘spontaneity’ as the authentic way of things.   If there is an order to things, then this order happens by way of a flow that organizes via improvisation and spontaneity.  Of course, this is precisely what attracts me to Lao Tzu, and what I tried to emulate and follow in the writing of these meditations.  But I am focused tonight on this because I understand my friend’s epistle as very much an act of spontaneity, and one that had character of a ‘tribute,’ in the sense of showing gratitude and respect for the friendship we share, and, more generally, for the community we have been trying to form through our mutual friendships.   I could hardly have anticipated receiving such an epistle, and because it was so unexpected and spontaneous it has had an empowering impact on me, such that I am coding it as part of what was most certainly one of the most memorable weeks I have experienced in a very long time.