On My Delayed Vocation

 2021 was a monumental year for me....

I got engaged, married, pregnant, and gave birth to my beautiful daughter. It was the year when everything that seemed "missing" in my life for several years happened. I still pinch myself, wondering if the life I'm now living is real. I can only thank God and attribute so many miracles at once to His divine intervention.

When I was single, I did my best to stay busy and not focus on the family I didn't have. I reminded myself that life is what you make of it, and that ultimate contentment comes from our relationship with God. I tried to fill my life with enriching hobbies and outings. I reminded myself that husbands are not perfect and children can bring heartache as well as joy.

And yet, there was a restlessness.

It was not deliberately willed. I fought "woe is me" thinking with all of my will power. Yet, there were times when I wondered...

"How happy can I be? should I be?"

It seemed like I was doing everything I could, from a spiritual and temporal perspective, to thrive. What was I missing?

I resisted answering that question with, "a husband," or "children." And yet, what else could it be?

What I learned, is that other people matter. Your vocation matters. God has a plan for you, and you're meant to live it. He won't bring you peace and joy until you do. And, sometimes you have to wait for it to come about. Sometimes, the answer really is, "just wait." It isn't always time to thrive. Sometimes the victory is not giving up, and continuing to hope through the pain.

So often, when people pine away for something, it doesn't quite deliver when they get it. They realize that the discontent they experienced had more to do with their attitude, and less to do with whatever they thought was missing.

I am here to witness that, if we are properly disposed and our desires are godly, some things really do deliver. Some things are worth suffering and praying and waiting a long time for. There are different seasons of life. Seasons of sowing, waiting, and reaping. Meanwhile, the waiting prepares us to rejoice over the gift when we receive it. Nothing this side of heaven is perfect, including husbands and children. But when we suffer for something, we know its true worth apart from its flaws. Our commitment to the gift, come what may, will be unshakeable.

Looking back on it, there were three things I did while waiting that served me well. And when it comes to distinguishing between holy and unholy discontentment, the following could be helpful markers.

First, by the grace of God, I cultivated an attitude of prayer. My prayer life included rote and scheduled prayers, (e.g. morning and evening prayers, the rosary, devotions to saints, adoration time). It also included regular scripture and catechism study. I tried to think about God throughout the day and abide in His peace. I was earnest in lifting up my sorrows and questions to the Heavens. I was also diligent in studying everything I could about my faith and seeing if I could bring my life, as it was, into better alignment with God's will. My quest for a family deepened my prayer life. It brought me closer to, and not further away from, God.

Second, I practiced radical openness. What if a marriage and family was not what God had planned? I pondered different vocations, thinking about their inherent goodness and I lifted them up to God in prayer. What if God had a vocation to religious life for me? Or what if He planned on me building the Kingdom as a single and professional woman? I tried to stay open. I got to the point where, in some ways, I didn't care about any particular outcome. I just wanted to feel a deep sense of contentment, purpose, and well being, whatever that meant. I told God this. There is a sense in which I surrendered the hope for marriage and children, and then saw if the desire for it "came back" to me even after letting it go. After doing this enough times, and having the desire return repeatedly, my commitment to marriage grew stronger. I also learned to value a vocation for its own sake. I learned that joy is doing the work God calls you to do, whatever that is. I knew that my future marriage would bring me happiness not because marriage always makes one happy, but because it is my vocation. It is the work to which I have been called. This gave my future marriage greater dignity. I am marrying to serve and do the work unto which I have been called.

Last, I always experienced the Biblical "fruits of the spirit," when I placed my hopes marriage and children. In short, when the Spirit is present, burdens are lifted. There is a deep sense of well being and abundance. We feel a joy that is also accompanied by contentment and peace. We experience a state of being that is definitive, where nothing is found wanting. In contrast, sin always makes us feel restless, anxious, and weighed down.

In closing, we know from Proverbs that the human heart is deceitful. But, we also know that, when it comes to intimate communion with God, it's all we've got. The catechism beautifully reminds us that the heart, as we call the core of our being, is the place of encounter with the divine. Like all things in this world, it is imperfect, but made for redemption. The desires that flow from it are sometimes bad, but they are also sometimes good, for God's grace is active in the desires of our hearts, stirring up some desires that are meant to be listened to. Our hearts are redeemed through prayerful listening. As we lift up our desires to God in prayer, we will find that some are tamed and corrected. Yet, others burn ever more brightly. In time, our redeemed hearts, enlivened by God's grace, can guide us rightly to everything God wants for us, great and small. Sometimes, our test is to be like Peter walking on water. We must learn to place ever more trust in the promises and encouragement God whispers in our hearts, no matter how impossible and frustrating our circumstances may be. As we cling to the voice of the Shepherd, speaking to us through our holy desires, we will be guided over the stormy waters to the rest and blessings God has prepared for us.

A Good Fit

One of the exciting things about American culture is the emphasis on dreaming big and achieving challenging goals. It’s good and important that we all have the freedom to build lives of our own choosing and develop our talents. However, wisdom is needed if we are to expend our energies effectively. How can we know if something is worth the effort, sacrifice, or risk? Where do we really belong and who are we meant to be?

The answers to these questions is partly inscribed in our nature and circumstances. We will find that, based on our innate talents, personality, and the conditions of our upbringing, some things come more easily than others. As a result, certain things are what I like to call, “a good fit.”

In my own life, piano was “a good fit.” I had a naturally academic temperament and a love of beauty and the fine arts. My parents bought me a grand Steinway piano. I was given piano lessons from an early age. I had a terrible case of acne in my early teen years which caused me to withdraw socially and I preferred introverted activities. My ballet training gave me a natural feeling for music and I even have long fingers. Piano was a good fit.

Does that mean the piano was a perfect fit? No. Sometimes I wanted to get off the piano bench and be more social. Piano often made me feel isolated. It was frustrating to work hard learning music that most people don’t like to listen to or know anything about. Classical  music education is filled with robotic kids and greedy parents, more hungry for awards than artistic enrichment. Further, the piano was hard. Recitals and competitions were extremely stressful. It was a major sacrifice to practice two hours every day on top of homework and I didn’t always enjoy making it. No, piano wasn’t a perfect fit.

But, looking back on it, piano was a good fit. When I weigh the pros and cons and honestly assess my natural gifts and the opportunities available to me, practicing the piano just made sense.

I think anyone of average ability and intelligence can be a pianist. Give anyone piano lessons, a nice piano, the structure and encouragement to practice, and—if that person practices—then, over time, they too can be a pianist. But does that mean everyone should try to be a pianist?

No. 

I can see after working with several students over the years that, the piano is a good fit for some and others not so much. For some people, musical concepts come naturally. They like music and value musical ability. The sacrifice made to sit an instrument is challenging but not unduly burdensome. They don’t have to fight their nature. For others, that is not the case. When time and resources are limited, they would get more value for their effort applying themselves to something that comes more naturally. And, not everyone has access to a music education. Pianos and lessons are very expensive. Realistically, the best time to learn is when you are a kid and have the time to practice. Not everyone has those kinds of resources or support from parents to practice, in their childhood.

Up until now, everything I’ve said probably sounds like mere common sense. It is, yet common sense can be surprisingly uncommon. When we apply common sense to our larger life decisions, it can be tempting to resist it. In the long run, I believe we resist common sense, in all of its beautiful simplicity, because we can’t and won’t accept limitations. How dare anyone tell us we can’t be whatever we want, or do anything we want. 

And, in fairnesses, making choices isn’t easy. We often find ourselves having to choose between good things. To choose one career path is to not enjoy another. To live in one location is to not enjoy the benefits of living in another. To marry one person is to not marry another. At every turn, we must make choices and then discipline ourselves to commit to those choices. If we are wise, we will not look for what is absolutely perfect, in the sense of giving every benefit without asking us to make any sacrifices. Such a scenario only exists in a fantasyland, or Heaven. If we are wise, we will choose what is “a good fit.”

A good fit is often right where we are, though not always. People who change careers and embrace their “good fit” the second time around can attest to this. After all, it takes time to know ourselves and what works and what doesn’t. Sometimes we really do need to make a change, and that change may require substantial sacrifice and even risk taking. But the key is always being active and testing our mental plans in reality. If we think a change might be for the best, what concrete steps are we taking to move towards it? As we make baby steps, do we sense an interior joy, peace, or improvement in our health and the healthiness of our relationships? These are signs that we are embracing our true nature instead of working against it, and going in the right direction.

This way of thinking—following your nature—is diametrically opposed to hardcore American dream existentialism. Existentialism as a philosophy asserts that we start with nothing and must create everything from scratch. I am only what I make of myself and therefore I can be anything. Will to power.

I’m not saying a person can’t choose the life path of will to power, only that it’s an exhausting and miserable way to live. Sure, you can go for it, but you’ll potentially self-destruct.

I believe that we start with something. We start with a natural temperament and skills and strengths. Our childhood circumstances have a profound effect on our worldview and our psyche is shaped in all kinds of ways that are incredibly challenging to change. Our subconscious self is barely accessible to us, but already deeply formed by adulthood. We simply do not have access to the same resources, financial or otherwise, as we embark on the journey of life. Why fight that? When life is short and resources are limited, why not embrace who we are? Why try to be someone else?
Some changes are worth making. It is always good to strive to be the healthiest version of ourselves. Perhaps we suffered some childhood trauma and we are in deep need of developing a new worldview and outgrowing wherever we come from. Maybe we were born into poverty and want to better our circumstances. In other words, there is a time and place for changing our trajectory. The goal is always to be the healthiest version of ourselves and bring the combination of nurture and nature that life has given us to its fullest potential.
To take it a step further, from a Catholic perspective, we can entrust the circumstances of our nature and nurturing to God’s Providence. We are all being shaped by God into a unique and unrepeatable saint. We are all created by God to participate in salvation history in our own way, through a combination of trials and blessings God has permitted. Happiness comes from freely embracing God’s providential plan and accepting the destiny He has willed. We can rest assured that our God-given destiny is the one that best honors our natural gifts and temperament because God has nothing but our ultimate joy in mind. We are also free to do something else. God doesn’t force us to accept His plans, just as He did not force Moses to lead Israel to freedom, or Mary to be the mother of Jesus. God never forces anything. Instead, he creates opportunities and extends an invitation. 
We can choose a different path, but it won’t be the best one. God’s provision meets us along the path He has willed. For other paths, we’ll have to go it alone, so to speak. God designed us for a specific mission. His mission will challenge us because God loves to challenge us; He wants us to be great Saints, radiating wisdom, intelligence, and the full spectrum of virtues. However, God will ultimately provide us with everything we need to accomplish our mission. We can choose a mission of our own making, but it won’t be the mission we were created for. Guaranteed, we will be less or not at all successful at it. And, success must not be measured in mere temporal terms. If we choose our own way, we may be wealthy by worldly standards. But God wants us to be Saints. His way will not only consider our temporal potential, but also our spiritual one.
So, as we ponder our lives, we would do well to embrace what is a good fit. What are the circumstances and natural gifts that make one life path a good choice? How can we more fully embrace the nature God has given us and the resources He has planted in our lives? The more we can maximize these divine blessings, and stop chasing an identity God has not blessed, the more fruitful our lives will be.

Love Your Heaven (don’t chase others)

What is Heaven? It is life lived in the presence of God by doing His will. The Catholic teaching is that Heaven begins in this life at baptism. To test our faith, God remains partially veiled to us in this life whereas in the next He will fully reveal Himself. Nevertheless, in a real way, Heaven begins now, when we live in His presence and busy ourselves with whatever He asks.

For each person, God puts together a unique set of circumstances in this life that will be Heaven for them. This is their vocation, how God calls them to labor on His behalf and where He will meet them and make them super abundant in virtue and the fruits of the Holy Spirit. We all have different temperaments, hopes, dreams, and opportunities. God is putting it all together and waiting for us to step into that blessed space of Heaven for us (e.g. our vocation). When God puts something together we will notice two things:

1. organic, a flow. There will be some things that will “just flow” organically, on a natural and supernatural level for each of us. There are so many things we take for granted about ourselves, but we are all more uniquely gifted than we realize. The truth is that we have our own way of doing things, and there are certain activities that we assume other people could easily do, but we actually do well and other people would do them less effectively. Those activities and pastimes are “a good fit” even if they challenge us. We can try pursuing another lifestyle, but we will find that there is a lifestyle that just flows and works somehow. It just works and feels right. This is a sign of a vocation.
   2. Fruitful. God makes some things fruitful in our lives and not others. God opens some doors and not others. He makes different things fruitful in our lives and opens different doors for each of us. What worked great for us may not be beneficial for another person based on the different ways that God makes our lives fruitful.
   

   Where there is an organic flow and we are fruitful, is our vocation and Heaven for us. That is the little corner of the Kingdom of Heaven that God has tasked us with and called us to grow and care for. There are as many different vocations, or Heavens, as there are people. We have each been formed and capacitated to serve and thrive in different ways.
   
   

   One of the most tempting and toxic things we can do is “grass is greener” towards the success and well being of another person. They do something well that is our highest idea of fulfillment and achievement. We look at ourselves and ask, “why didn’t I achieve that?” or “why doesn’t my life look that way?” We may try, from sheer will power, to create the life we think we should have in imitation of the other person. If it worked so well for them and is so fulfilling for them, then we want it for ourselves. We try to claim someone else’s Heaven and make it our own.
   

   While it’s true that we can and should be inspired by others, we should keep it to emulating their virtues, and not trying to replicate the actual circumstances of their lives. According to the Bible, human beings make plans, but God guides their steps (Proverbs 16:19). God is providential over circumstances. It is not for us to create our circumstances from scratch. God gets to decide what He wants to shape each of us into. He is the potter, and we are the clay (Isaiah 64:8). We don’t get to choose where God will meet us and prosper us. This is another way of saying that we don’t get to choose what will be Heaven for us. It is foolish to go chasing after someone else’s Heaven, or think that we can architect any particular Heaven for ourselves from sheer will power.
   What  keeps us chasing other people’s Heaven is sometimes FOMO, fear of missing out because we don’t understand what Heaven is. We think it is a particilar place or destination. We don’t understand that it is fundamentally a relationship with God, and an optimal state of being that flows from that. When we understand this, we will give ourselves full permission to rest in that place that Heaven is for us. We don’t have to be thrown off by the fact that Heaven is different for someone else. If wonderful things are happening “over there,” that is no threat to our Heaven. There is no need to abandon what we’re doing in case it’s even better elsewhere. It won’t be better: our best is our vocation, what God has put together uniquely for us. Our job is to thrive where God plants us. Mysteriously, this requires some discipline. 
   

   God decides what will be Heaven for us, and we can choose to embrace that and step into it, or not. In many ways, this is an extension of the moral choices God asks us to make. Heaven is a place of holiness, as summed up by the Beatitudes and the Ten Commandments. We can choose to live or not live virtuously, but that does nothing to change what Heaven is. Heaven will always be what it is, and to enter it, I have to conform myself to what It is. The same is true of our vocation. There is a path to Heaven, our vocation, which God has willed for each of us. We can choose to accept or not accept it, but that will not change the truth about our vocation. Our vocation, Heaven on earth for us, will always be what it is. It’s up to us to accept it and conform our lives to it.

Mass: The Invisible Made Visible

Signs

In the Catholic tradition, every concrete thing is a sign and symbol revealing an invisible truth. A family isn't just a family (father, mother, children); they are a sign of the Trinity (God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit). Marriage isn't just two people uniting on the basis of mutual attraction; it is a sign of Christ's eternal marriage to His bride, the Church. A meal isn't just something tasty we share with friends and family; it is a sign of Communion, the holy meal of immortality.

God intended for creation to be a sign. We are meant to move from the tangible to the intangible, the concrete to the abstract. All of life can be "read" in this way.

At any given moment, so many things are happening to me. It mostly seems mundane, and yet mysteriously purposeful. People come and go. Opportunities present themselves, doors close. I feel inspired to try this or that. In spite of my best efforts, trials come and not everything is within my control.

What is the invisible, ultimate reality constantly at play beyond what I can see? When I sense greater forces at work, what are they?

The standard religious response to this would be, "God." His Providence, etc. But can we flesh that out? Can we draw back the veil?

Eden and Heaven

I think yes, and I believe the mass is the key. Before we can understand the significance of the mass, however, we must first understand Eden and Heaven.

First, Eden.

In the Bible, we read that in the beginning, somewhere between metaphor and reality, there was a sacred garden in Eden. It was a place of flowing waters, bejeweled rivers, trees and wildlife, a Tree of Life, and an Eternal-Life giving fruit from said tree. It was also a place of free choice and the possibility to choose God, or not to choose God. Before our first parents rejected God, it was a time of harmony: within man, between man and God, and between human beings. Everything "worked" because the love of God animated and harmonized every aspect of reality.

Then, Heaven.

In the Book of Revelation, we read of another realm in conversation with our own. Angels travel back and forth between this realm and hours, carrying our prayers to God and shaping world events in accordance with His designs. There is a Lamb of God, an altar, candles, gold, and incense. God is adored by a multitude of martyrs in white robes. There is praise and singing, the reading aloud of the Word from a scroll, and a moment of silence to acknowledge what is unspeakable.

The Mass

In light of these definitions of Eden and Heaven, let's see if anything sounds familiar.

Imagine stepping inside a Catholic church...

One's first instinct would be to speak in hushed tones; for some, this is a sacred space. There is water; a baptismal font may be quietly flowing, or at least there may be various fixtures filled with water in which people dunk their fingers and bless themselves. Stained glass glistens like gemstones above us, and if we are in a cathedral, there will likely be foliage and animals carved into the stonework. Distantly, we see a crucifix, a man hanging on a tree. We have heard the strange custom of eating and drinking something called Communion (eternal-life giving food?) Are we in Eden?

Mass begins. Ahead, is the throne-altar, attended to by deacons in white robes. Candles flicker, and incense may be burning. The choir sings the Gloria, a lector reads the Word of God. Following the homily, there is silence to acknowledge what is unspeakable. Like martyrs, the faithful make an offering of their lives to God in acclamation after acclamation. Have we stepped into Heaven?

My answer to both questions is yes! In the mass, Eden is restored and Heaven is revealed and made present. We really do experience Eden, or Earth set right, Earth as it was meant to be (ordered to God). We really do step into the realm of Revelation, or Heaven. The great surprise is that they are experienced together, as one and the same thing.

The Union of the Physical and the Spiritual

In God's plan, Heaven and Earth are meant for each other. The Book of Revelation describes God coming down from Heaven to dwell with His people at the end of time. The Nicene Creed reminds us that we await a New Heavens, and a New Earth. Although we fail to reflect adequately upon it, Heaven will not be as otherworldly as we imagine. It is of the faith that we will be resurrected and live on a new, renewed earth. The difference is that we will "see" God with the eyes of our hearts completely and perfectly, even as we dwell on this earth. In the final analysis, Heaven will be like Eden, only Eden brought to a greater degree of grandeur than it was before the Fall.

Understood in this light, Earth (and all of creation, including us!) is destined for glory. Heaven and Earth will be one and the same reality. 

Yet, in our sin and ignorance, we struggle to unite the two. We are suspicious of the spiritual (Heaven), as though it will sabotage the joys of the physical (Earth). We are suspicious of the physical (Earth), assuming that it is too base in comparison to the spiritual (Heaven). Yet, it is God's will that Heaven and Earth be united, at the end of time. The incarnation of Christ was a foretaste of this blessed union. In His very person, He united the divine (spiritual) and human (physical).

We the baptized are living, walking first fruits of this Earth/Heaven marriage. The Holy Trinity lives in our hearts, therefore Heaven dwells in our physical bodies. In our very beings, the union of the two has already taken place.

Heaven is Earth redeemed. It starts with us, with the redemption of our bodies into temples of the Holy Spirit by virtue of our baptism. It then extends to our little corner of creation, which we set right under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. We might as well say that we already live in Heaven, though we will experience it with more perfection and intensity after death. We can rightly say that our lives, homes, and workspaces are Heaven because we have sanctified them by our stewardship and they are now ordered to God.

Everyday Heaven

Heaven looks surprisingly everyday, doesn't it? It is simply life lived in union with the Holy Spirit. As our life flows by, the greatest tragedy is to see nothing particularly extraordinary in it. We try to "make it," hungry for achievement and pleasures in the hope that we will be enough. We intuit that we are here for a purpose and we are. But we too easily succumb to ideas of greatness that are easier for the human mind and ego to visualize: all that impresses, all that sounds good, all that looks good. 

But just as Jesus's life was hidden to Israel, so is the purpose of our life--Jesus in us--hidden. As we go about our day to day, making phone calls, finishing projects, fixing this, putting food on the table, helping a loved one, we may not see that we are God's heavenly, helping hands. The extraordinary and heavenly is hidden in the ordinary and earthly events of our lives.

We struggle so much to unite the two in our minds. We have a tendency to think of our messy, imperfect lives as "mere Earth." Heaven is distant, imperfect, unattainable. But the truth is that, for the baptized, Heaven is now. And it will continue to intensify in us and in our lives as we die to sin and grow in the Holy Spirit.

The Mass as Seeing

The mass is an exercise in "seeing" reality as both physical and spiritual, Eden and Heaven. All of the trappings of Eden and Revelation are present, and yet. Maybe the lector is your neighbor. You've driven past this parish for years. The homily was a bit long, will mass really end by 11:00am because you need to be somewhere....

Yet, as everyday Catholics celebrate the mass, they are acting in concert with the Heavenly mass. They are doing so in a sacred space, Earth redeemed. If they have the eyes to see it, they are in Heaven. And they have a solemn obligation to bring Heaven into their homes, workplaces, and communities. The mass invites us to entertain the mystery of the divine amidst the everyday, where we least expect it to be.

The Divine is often less otherworldly than we expect it to be. No one recognized Joseph and Mary for anything special. The Son of God was almost born outside, roadside for lack of anywhere to stay. When He came forward in the synagogue in Nazareth and read from Isaiah, citing Himself as the fulfillment of Israel's hopes, the people could only say one thing, "Isn't that (just) Joseph and Mary's son?" Much of the Bible reads like genealogical lists, wars, migrations, and marriages made. Yet, God is present in all of those things, using those things to further His Kingdom.

The challenge of the spiritual life is not escaping reality, it's seeing divine purposes in everyday reality, where we least expect them to be. The hardest thing is not to levitate to somewhere else, it's to give the ordinary extraordinary dignity.

Next time we attend mass, may we remember that we are stepping into Heaven, and that this Heaven is meant to overflow into our daily lives.

St. Lucy, pray for us that we may "see"!

A Litany

God in the start

God in the end

God from beginning

To completion

Through and through

God's work

God's will

God's love

God's life

In me

God's strength

God's patience

God's joy

God's vision

God's passion

God's mercy

God's provision

Lord

Lord of my life

Lord of my thoughts

Lord of my dreams

Lord of my desires

Lord of my hopes

Lord of my relationships

I asked my Lord

What it's all about

He answered:

Us

You and Me,

Me, and you

Our mutual life in 

Time

Our mutual life in 

Eternity

The existence we share

Now

and

Forever

Poem ~ A Constant Heart

Here it is

All the willpower and

muscle

I need to

fight for you

my love:

my constant heart

Not grown overnight

My gift to you

Seasons return

The tides ebb and flow

But there is nothing

inevitable 

about the human heart

A constant heart is a sword 

that pierces the enemy

mortally

A constant heart is 

a book of truth

filled with 

life's answers

A constant heart

sees you

Beneath your worst surface

A constant heart

Always retrieves

the good lost

and

protects

the good gained

Shifting hearts

Are sea changes

Lives set adrift

Shipwrecks on the rocks

Shifting hearts

are death

They poison 

What is green, and growing,

And could be

Every good thing starts out

in infancy

Weak and vulnerable,

Unfit to survive

Life or death,

a gamble

Into this uncertainty,

I give you 

my constancy

I give you my constant heart

On Friendship

What is the greatest pleasure?

When I was younger, I might have said being in love, eating chocolate, a quiet afternoon with nothing to do but read or walk my dog, or a day trip to Carmel.

I still love all of those things.

But now, after years of weathering the ups and downs of life, I might say a meeting of the minds.

The greatest sorrow of my life has been parting ways with people I love because we disagree over the fundamentals of life. I am not referring to a legitimate range of opinion when it comes to religion, politics, artistic taste, and lifestyles. However, beneath the contrasts that make any relationship vibrant, there must be an underlying mystery of truth, goodness, and beauty, that all parties are committed to in their varied ways.

In the classical tradition, I believe that truth, goodness, and beauty are real and objective things. I don't fully understand them, and that's why I'm interested in talking to you. You don't fully understand them, and that's why I hope you are interested in talking to me. Collectively, I hope we bring together the best of our diverse ideas in a wise synthesis. Hopefully, this capacitates us to build happier families and communities, renew our social structures, rescue our environment, and improve the quality of our civilization.

This meeting of the minds is friendship. 

In friendship, we step into a shared space of desiring the same things. In desiring the same things, we have a shared vision. I imagine Dante's Paradiso, with all the saints an angels sharing in the vision of God. In that shared vision, their hearts and minds are in sync. This seeing is not about biological vision. It is about seeing and possessing with the heart. Because we are not created to function in solitude, our joy is not complete until the seeing and possession of what we love is a mutual, shared experience.

I like to imagine that every time I chat with a friend, we step into Dante's Paradiso. Together, in the shared moment of talking about matters great and small, in our shared journey towards the true, good, and beautiful, we mutually possess what is most dear to our hearts. In knowing that you see what I love, my possession of that thing because more sure. In you knowing that I see what you love, your possession of that thing becomes more sure. In the mutual back and forth of a shared vision, our seeing and possession are amplified and made real.

Such is the joy of friendship.

At a certain point in life, we all have to grow up. We must begin to see a greater vision of life and move towards it, otherwise we will die intellectually and spiritually. With time we will understand that this journey is the great struggle of our life. We will realize how deeply we need others to help us articulate our vision and pursue it. We will understand how miserable we are pursuing this vision on our own. Indeed, we will find that we can't do it on our own. Other pleasures will not exactly fall by the wayside, but they will be demoted in the hierarchy of goods. Friendship will ascend ever higher in our estimation of what is most valuable.

Is it possible that the value of friendship is an index of personal development?

If we define personal development as awakening to the great ideas of life and maturing in our ability to share in them in union with others, then yes, most definitely. We can say that the value of friendship is an index of personal development. The more we value friendship, the more mature we have become.

Our culture will try to sell us short when it comes to friendship. Friendship is merely about "having fun" with others, or that it is merely about belonging to a group or being around other bodies. Or, far worse, it is an ego-based attempt at conquering and maintaining connections that make us feel important and powerful. All of these ideas of friendship fall so far short of what it actually is: mutual accompaniment in the shared pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty.

But then perhaps that's because we have abandoned our commitment to truth, goodness, and beauty. Perhaps our collective focus has shifted to other things: sex, food, a big house, looking good, and being impressive. Being comfortable for the sake of being comfortable. Being important for the sake of being important.

Hopefully we are striving for more from life than those things. But sadly, we will lose friends along the way when and if they choose to build their lives around those things. There will come a point when we must part ways because the meeting of the minds (and wills) is lost. And though it is not what we want, the friendship falls by the wayside. The loss can not be helped because friendship is having a shared teleology.

There may come a time when we lose so many friends that we start paying attention. All is not well. There are competing visions of life and the best one doesn't always win out. Perhaps some friends will return once they experience the disillusionment of other life paths. Others may not. But we treasure those who join with us in common cause. We fight for those friends. Other good things become less and less important. When all has been stripped away: youth, success, wealth, popularity. What will remain? What will we prize above all? Our friends.

And, when this life ends. May we step into Dante's Paradiso. With our friends.