In Praise Of Friendship (Or, Entertaining angels unawares)

Last night I dreamed of H. I’m not sure that I have ever dreamt of her before.  In the dream she was apologetic and deeply sad for the news of my marriage ending a decade and a half ago and hadn’t known how to deal with it. (I’m sure much could be analysed in this dream)
 
I was just going to pass the dream by. Let if float like a pleasant memory, down the gently flowing river of this unfolding day. But as I sat at my ‘writing desk’ this morning, on the pavement streets of Bergerac and asked my soul, ‘what do you want to write today?’, this dream came back into my mind. Why did she appear? What was the gift of this night time messenger? The meaning of the word ‘messenger’ is the meaning of the word ‘angel’ and sometimes in life, like the wisdom words tell us[1], we entertain angels unawares. Why unawares? Because they seem almost ‘normal’, no fanfare, just like the person you meet down the street, in the park, or crossing the road. They are just like any other human. Except something about the meeting does something within you. Touches you, connects you to yourself, to the divine, to hope. There is a sense of Presence. A message to be received.
 
An angel may simply be a friend, like any other friend (‘she/he was just like an angel’)… except they are not. H, as I reflect, was my first adolescent love. I met her as a 12-year-old at my new secondary school and only then because her class and mine were intermingled for a three-day geography field trip to the north Norfolk coast. She lived 10 miles away and I had just begun to get serious about cycle racing, so I arranged my after-school training runs to go past her house. Always hoping, but never succeeding, to see her by ‘accident’.
 
The infatuation, forever undeclared to her and anyone else, faded and morphed into a true but quiet friendship. Just a normal, thoughtful friendship. One of those relied on, undemanding friendships that span the school years.
 
It was in the first year of the 6th form, while walking and talking with H one day, that I found myself confiding with her that I had been writing. Poems mostly. She was more than politely interested. She wanted to hear some of it. She insisted. A few days later I brought some poems to school and we found an uninterrupted corner of a small lecture theatre…and I read to her. Me reading my poems for the first time, out loud. She was affirming, encouraging, insistent that I stick at it. It was her ‘seeing me’ that encouraged me into owning my real, true hunger to be a writer (I’m not sure if I will ever fully own this desire because of a constant battle with imposter syndrome). It led me into a whole new adventure.
 
I began reading my poetry at school and local arts evenings. I met other writers. I wanted to write. The more I owned my passion, the more it became painfully clear that I had chosen all the wrong subjects at A level. I was not a scientist. I was an artist. I tried to get my 6th form head to let me change, but with no joy. The jarring of vocation and reality crunching against each other, like the crashing of gears, revealed itself in abysmal A level results. The public humiliation of it burned so deeply. Everyone was going off to college to pursue their dreams and I was going…nowhere. Darkness. Hopeless. Shame. At 18 you know nothing of how the long-body of life works. It was a light-less autumn.
 
That December was the school Christmas reunion. I don’t know how I overcame the shame I felt, but I went. All I remember of that evening was meeting H again. We hadn’t spoken since school disbanded in the late June. We had a long conversation as she told me about her time at college training as a teacher and I told her my story of the slow climb out of a dark place. She listened and I experienced what I can only describe as grace. An unconditional feeling of acceptance. Kindness. Friendship. It was so quiet, ‘normal’, so undramatic – but it touched something deep within me. For the first time in five months, I walked home with hope in my heart. Life changed that day. Entertaining angels unawares?
 
What followed within weeks was a renaissance. A liberation. I woke up. I began my journey and it turned out that H was waking up too. We, along with her fiancée and a group of others, shared the same inspirations, searchings’. We met monthly as a group to encourage each other. It only lasted a short while, but it cemented us on our particular roads.
Years later I got a phone call one unassuming morning. It was H. She was feeling desperate. Depressed. Not coping. Frightened by her own emotions. She didn’t know what to do, or who to talk to. And she thought of me! I walked with her through that shadow-filled valley, as she had walked through mine.
 
There are friends who are really just acquaintances and there are friends. H was a friend. An angel-unaware type friend. We drifted into different geographies and lives. We haven’t spoken or seen each other for decades. But for some reason H, you decided to visit me last night. Entertaining angels unawares? I so nearly walked past the dream and would have missed you, ignored you. 
 
What message did you bring?
That being a true friend is as powerful a gift as an angel’s presence.
That touching a life with grace is transformative.
That the ‘unawares’, the normal, the everyday of friendships is the foundation of a life well lived.
That not rushing past sadness and loss, for the things in our lives that didn’t work out as we’d hoped, is important. Not drowning in sorrow, but making a space for it, composting it, feeds our ongoing journey of liberation.

[1] Hebrew Ch 13 v2

The painting is used by kind permission of Tim Steward Art. Its called ‘Grace’