This is for all those friends who’s love warms me every day.
I recently heard my friend use a phrase that I love, “You paint God for me” and it has stayed with me ever since. Aelard of Rievaulx reminded me of this, how there are people in our lives that when we look in their eyes, we feel the touch of God embrace us. Last week I looked into a friend’s smiling eyes and it felt like our souls touched, something deep that could not be seen. It can’t be fully explained but there are some hands who reach much deeper than can ever be told. For me, these friends are like warm fires inside my heart. Whenever I feel cold from a frosty wind, I sit for a while by the crackling flames of my thoughts of these friends and warm my hands.
Though I have played around at the edges of Aelred’s exploration into spiritual friendship, it hadn’t occurred to me so plainly that loving a friend was loving God and that being loved by a friend was being loved by God. I liked this quote particularly well, “Therefore, not too steep or unnatural does the ascent appear from Christ, as the inspiration of the love by which we love our friend, to Christ, as the inspiration of the love by which we love our friend, to Christ giving himself to us as our Friend for us to love, so that charm may follow upon charm, sweetness upon sweetness, and affection upon affection.” I like the last part especially as it illustrates for me what a friendship is like as it grows and deepens. It has been quite some time since I began to believe that such friendships are the most precious things to have in life. Such friends hold the paint brushes making wide strokes the color of love in our lives.
365-09 #314