Friendship III - Truth.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009. We are talking about the layers of friendship, the “spectral decomposition” of this important experience of human life. Yesterday we talked about the bright yellow of understanding. Let us speak about the blue of truth today.

Friendship needs truth. Every deep and sustainable relationship needs truth. We cannot go without truth. Truth is like a deep pilar on which the roof of friendship rests. It is like a post which goes deep into the ground. Truth will keep the whole thing together when the storms of life shake the building.

The matter with truth has several dimensions itself. One important point: truth in a relationship means that we stop playing a game. We are not the actors, the others are not the audience. We need to be ourselves. For some of us that is a quite challenging task. We have made the play out of our life. We play, it is the only thing we can do - and usually it is the thing we can do well. We can play so well that we even convince ourselves. We are what we play.

But God sees much deeper. He penetrates our play, he knows exactly what role we pretend to have. And he knows our soul, he knows our mind, he knows all we can do and all we can't do. He knows us deeper than we know ourselves.

In friendship we need to break the walls of fictitiousness. We need to break the walls which keep us from being truely veritable. We need to stop playing a game and need to play honest. We need to admit what our true state is. We need to stop playing any game - games of strenght or games of victims. Games of sacrifice or games of genious. We are human, he is God.

It is a sincere question: how much of a true friend can I be? Can I be honest with myself? Do I know what I cannot do? Am I willing and able to see my own failures in the same way as my own gifts, strengths and successes? Am I balanced enough to be truthful? If we want to be true friends to someone, we need to learn to be truthful first. We are not a complete failure. We are not a complete success. We are what we are, and we are loved by the eternal God and savior. Friendship and joy are close to each other, since being freed from the need to play a game will generate joy in us, the joy of being truthful, being honest, being ourselves. ... more texts