It is Mark Nepo’s Book of Awakening that I turn to again and again when I need to think more deeply about life. Which is to say, I read it daily. 🙂 After spending half his life as a poet and an educator, it was his journey through cancer that uncovered his journey to write about the life of Spirit and celebrate life fully as it is now.

I discovered Mark Nepo when Oprah choose this book for her list of Ultimate Favorite Things. He has a way of finding the Divine inside and all around us that guides me to a place of comfort and joy, regardless of the circumstances of life.

Friendship

“Nothing among human things has such power to keep our gaze fixed even more intensely upon God than friendship.” – Simone Weil

I have been blessed to have deep friends in my time on Earth. They have been an oasis when my life has turned a desert. They have been a cool river to plunge in when my heart has been on fire. when I was ill, one toweled my head when I couldn’t stand without bleeding. Another bowed at my door saying “I will be whatever you need as long as you need it.”

Still others have ensured my freedom and they missed me while I searched for bits of truth that only led me back to them. I have slept in the high lonely wind waiting for God’s word. And while it’s true — no one can live for you — singing from the peak isn’t quite the same as whispering in the center of a circle that has carried you ashore.

Honest friends are doorways to our souls, and loving friends are the grasses that soften the world. It is no mistake that the German root of the word friendship means “place of high safety.” This safety opens us to God. As Cicero said, “A friend is a second self.” And as Sant Martin said, “My friends are the beings through whom God loves me.”

There can be no greater or simpler ambition than to be a friend.

The Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo

It would be an incomplete post about friendship if I didn’t end it sending gratitude to all the blogging friends I’ve met this year. My life is richer for meeting and learning from you all. Thank you!

(featured photo from Pexels)