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"Friend" is the Proto-Germanic "lover, friend," from a root "loving." While family love is extolled first among human loves, friendship, with another human or animal, can form a stronger bond. Often, persons feel an obligation with family, as though destined by blood to loyalty, while friends we freely choose and, so, freely share with. In this being with, one relaxes, for in friendship there is no authority figure, no one-up-man-ship. As long as one seeks to control another, he or she blocks friendship, for power over is inimical to friendliness.
A joy I had was to see, while my father lived his last years, becoming close friends with him. That relationship was more enriching to both him and me than prior, and more affectionate. Before, he felt a need to be an authority in my life; he shifted to our being companions. We both enjoyed being with each other in a way we did not in all the prior decades, while the tensions between us subsided. We became adult with adult, rather than father with child. We laughed more; we were more playful than before. I am blessed to have these memories of our last years together.
The Gospel, in John 15.15, records Jesus having a like shift with his close followers: "No longer do I call you slaves, for the master doesn't tell the slave what he's doing. But I've called you 'friend,' for everything the Father has told me, I've told you." This affection was what I felt as a child, that Jesus was my best friend. This same relaxed friendship appears in the relationship of some Hindus in friendship with Krishna, who has been traditionally seen as a fun-loving incarnation of the one God.
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Proverbs 18.24 . . .
A person of many companions may come to ruin,
but there is a friend who remains closer than
a brother or sister.
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Aelred of Rievaulx (12th Century), raised in the court of the kings of Scotland, became a Cistercian monk and, soon afterward, Abbot of the monastery. Under his leadership, the monastery grew to over six hundred monks and became the largest religious community in England. His classic work is Spiritual Friendship.
Aelred called the monastery a school of love; he encouraged friendship among the monks, reflecting their friendship with Jesus. The custom in monasteries had been to discourage friendly intimacy. Aelred believed a monk could not suppress the need for affectionate closeness with others and, at the same time, enjoy it with the Divine.
Aelred taught about three kisses. He wrote, "There is a physical kiss, a spiritual kiss, and an intellectual kiss." The physical kiss is "a pleasant experience to share," one that "rouses and joins together the affection of those who embrace." The spiritual kiss is "a union of spirits." The intellectual kiss is "an infusion of God's grace." "Intellectual" [theoria] in Christian contemplation is beyond the spiritual - the most inward 'place' of ineffable intimacy with and knowing the other as he or she is in the One.
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Thomas Merton, in his Thoughts in Solitude, shared of this need to welcome the other, any created other, not as an object of love we possess, but in detachment.
We cannot see things in perspective until we cease to hug them to our own bosom. When we let go of them we begin to appreciate them as they really are. Only then can we begin to see God in them. Not until we find Him in them, can we start on the road of dark contemplation [wherein we learn to see with insight; in Buddhism, prajna] at whose end we shall be able to find them in Him.
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