Tag: friendship (page 1 of 1)

December 23, 2025

Daniel Treier, R.I.P.

Men in their latter years fall into three general types, which can to some degree overlap but are nonetheless distinct:

Grumpy old men
Explorers (“Old men ought to be explorers,” T. S. Eliot said, but this is not common)
Wise elders

Dan Treier would have been a wonderful wise elder, had he not died very prematurely, which happened yesterday. In 2015 I lost two dear friends — Brett Foster and Roger Lundin — within four days, and now in 2025 I have lost two more dear friends — Jay Wood and Dan — within four months. All of them died too young, Brett and Dan several decades too young.

Many years ago an acquaintance said to me, “You Christians say you believe that the dead will be resurrected, and that Christians will experience eternal joy — so why do you cry at funerals?” I replied: “If you were going to be parted, possibly for a very long time, from someone you love, would you cry?” This thought had not occurred to him. Such partings are painful, even if they’re not forever.

When people die, you typically think first of their family — and I am constantly remembering Dan’s wife Amy and his daughter Anna in my prayers — and then of their friends, and then of their larger community. Dan, whom I felt had always been a grown-up, was a repository of wisdom, compassion, and good counsel to everyone he knew, and to be parted from Dan is to be parted from those virtues, those gifts.

Dan and I had a lot of fun together, in large part because we had amassed a repertoire of jokes over the years that we deployed often and joyfully. For instance, he took a wicked pleasure in reminding me that a story I had just told was one he had heard several times before. (“You told it really well that time, though.”) But whenever I had a difficult decision to make I knew that Dan’s counsel would be immensely valuable to me, and I always sought it. Dan, though considerably younger than me, was a wise elder for me. I will miss that greatly.

Dan was an Ohio farm boy, raised in a very conservative Christian environment, and though his own theology and spirituality developed over the years in ways that could be said to set him somewhat apart from that world, it didn’t feel that way, because he was always so grateful for the faithfulness of those who raised him. This was a great lesson for many of Dan’s doctoral students: that it’s possible to hold different theological positions than one’s friends and family while remaining united with them in Spirit and in Love. “There is one body and one Spirit — just as you were called to the one hope that belongs to your call — one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.”

I had hoped — well, really, I had expected — that Dan would be offering his wise-elder counsel to those who sought it for another thirty or forty years. That was not to be. So those of us with less wisdom and charity must take up the cause — until we meet again.

August 12, 2025

a good and faithful servant

My dear friend of many years, Jay Wood, has died. I want to pay some tribute to this extraordinary man but it is difficult, for me anyway, to know what to say. He was so distinctive — I’ve never met anyone like Jay; he didn’t fit the usual categories. He had a sharp and dialectical mind, and spoke forcefully, which intimidated many people. But he was also exceptionally kind, always quick to notice those in need and to give of his resources.

One summer day in Wheaton Jay and some other friends had come over to my house for a time of fellowship and prayer, and I had to apologize because my air conditioning system had gone out and I had yet to find the money to get it repaired. Later that day there was a knock on my door: it was Jay, lugging a big window air conditioner which he then installed for me. (It had been sitting in the basement of a friend — Jay asked if he could have it.) Probably everyone who knew him at all well has a story like this.

When Jay was a young faculty member and had little money, he managed to buy a house that needed repairs that he simply couldn’t afford to have done. So he taught himself how to do everything needful — from hanging drywall to wiring a room to plumbing to building a deck — and then for the rest of his life would gladly share his knowledge with other people.

He was a person of exceptional discipline, in almost all the ways one could be disciplined. He was always in great shape: he ran marathons, and also would put the Wheaton football players to shame with the number of pull-ups he could do. He also considered it his absolute duty to go to church, so one Good Friday he sat through a service in agony, because he had a kidney stone … which he passed before the service was over. I’m not sure Jay fully understood why other people weren’t as disciplined as he was, but if he judged us he did so silently.

Jay and his friend and colleague (also my friend and colleague) Bob Roberts wrote a wonderful book on the intellectual virtues, and no one could have striven more consistently to practice those virtues. We had some great talks about the subject when that book was being written.

These are all miscellaneous reflections; they probably don’t add up to anything. As I say, Jay is very hard to describe. But maybe one more story will help.

Jay and I shared the experience of growing up in highly dysfunctional homes, with fathers who were damaged themselves and did much damage to others. That Jay ever became a Christian is so remarkable a thing that it almost by itself proves the existence of a merciful God; and I think the primary reason for his self-discipline was to emancipate himself from the consequences of that upbringing. He wasn’t perfect; he always had rough edges; but nobody knew that better than Jay.

All that is the context for one of my strongest memories of Jay, and one of the most influential ones in my own life. This was early in our friendship, probably some time in the early 90s. We were at Jay and Janice’s house, talking in their living room, and Jay was sitting in a chair by a doorway. One of his daughters, Diana or Gillian, ran across the room and was headed through the door when Jay shot out an arm and roped her in. She squealed Daaaadd! — but he gave her a big hug and a kiss before he let her go.

I said “She’s gonna hate that before too much longer.” Jay smiled. “I don’t care. I’ll still do it. My kids will always know how much I love them.”

And they do. Adam and Diana and Gillian and Sam — and now the grandchildren, and always, of course, Janice, his wife of nearly fifty years. They all know how much Jay loves them.

May 13, 2025

John and Paul

Imagine a man who has another man in his life with whom he is deeply intimate and has been for a number of years, a person who understands him as no one else understands him — and he understands the other in the same way and to the same degree. One just looks at the other and knows what he is thinking. Moreover, these two men have a creative partnership, and their intimate friendship feeds creative partnership, and vice versa.

Now, imagine further that these two men are not lovers, but rather friends — and, moreover, friends in a society which has no real vocabulary for describing such intimate friendship, and sees no reason why such intimacy should ever happen, much less be encouraged and nurtured.

Imagine also that these two men are sexual beings, and however intense their friendship is, they still want sex with women, companionship with women, maybe even marriage with women. Imagine further that their pursuit of women, coupled with certain other (largely economic) circumstances, tends to limit the amount of time that they can spend with each other. Each of them also develops a distinctive set of artistic and intellectual interests not usually shared with the other, so that over time the intimacy which has sustained them emotionally, and has sustained their creative partnership, is diminished.

And now, finally, imagine that all of these forces that diminish the friendship eventually become strong enough to bring the partnership to an end. Inevitably, the friendship itself will then be damaged, perhaps beyond repair. It’s a kind of vicious circle in which the circumstances that weaken the partnership weaken the friendship also, which in turn makes the partnership even less plausible. The two men never cease to be connected, but the connection becomes less predictable, and is often interrupted. It never again will be what it once was, and both of them realize it, and oscillate among regret and acceptance and anger. They think: It didn’t have to be this way, it didn’t have to end and It ended and it’s your fault and … many other things.

That’s John and Paul: A Love Story in Songs, by Ian Leslie. People will read it because they love the music of the Beatles — I read it because I love the music of the Beatles — but it’s really a sobering and moving meditation on the possibilities and impossibilities of male friendship in the culture we inhabit. It’s an outstanding book, and an immensely sad one. I’ll keep it on my shelf next to the best book about the band’s music, Ian MacDonald’s Revolution in the Head.

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November 9, 2022

From a really helpful essay by my colleague David Corey:

Some people I know worry that genuine friendship is less possible in a pluralist age than in contexts where citizens share a robust conception of the good, or of God. But this is not my view. From experience I have learned that friendship does not require that friends love all the same things, much less that they love the same ultimate things. Friendships based on such common loves of course do exist, and perhaps they are of a higher order than those in which ultimate truths are not shared. But friendship is possible where what is loved is simply the person, not the person’s metaphysics or theology. Pluralism thus need not be the death of friendships that are genuine and deep.

But if pluralism does not render meaningful friendships impossible, the tendency to understand politics as a form of war certainly makes them less likely. That was the claim I supported above by distinguishing between friendship and allyship. The second claim I made was that how one understands friendship can affect how one practices politics. Why would this be so? It is because the experience of genuine friendship, which is not merely an intrinsic good but a peak intrinsic good, cannot help but put politics in its place. Politics today makes great claims about its own importance. Yet politics cannot bring meaning to our lives — not deep meaning at any rate — because it is never more than an instrumental good.

December 17, 2020

muting

Goodness, this post from Noah Millman is challenging. It’s about those complicated situations when we mute, unfollow, or otherwise disengage from our friends who have become overly unpleasant online. It’s a two-way street, Noah says.

On the one hand, we as a society have become far too ready to shame, harass, disown, expel, and otherwise punish people who transgress lines that often didn’t exist until the moment the mob attacks. On the other hand, our provocateurs themselves are far too ready to get high on their own supply, indifferent to whether they are actually provoking thought in those they see as complacent or oblivious, or whether they are just making those who already agree with them less thoughtful, less worthy of anyone’s time and respect.

In the end, Noah wants to make two points to those of us who disengage (as opposed to those who are disengaged from). The first is this: “We need to be clear to ourselves that our disengagement is something we’re doing for ourselves, and not for any greater good, much less for the people we’re disengaging from.” And the second: “That’s no way to be a friend. And it’s no way to be a citizen either.”

I want to take these ideas on board, but I think I also want to dissent, at least in part.

First, when I have disengaged in this way I have indeed, and absolutely, done it for myself — but I don’t think that’s necessarily a reason not to do it. I find the online direhose of wrath and contempt and misinformation immensely wearying, and indeed depressing, and especially given the damage I have sustained from the unavoidable depredations of the Year of Our Lord 2020, I think there can be good reason for avoiding the depredations that are not necessary.

Second, I think that how you disengage matters. On many occasions I have decided to unfollow or mute or just ignore people I know IRL, and when these were just acquaintances it was a simple thing to do. But on the rare occasions when they were genuine friends it was complicated. In all such cases, I began by telling them that I had problems with their online self-presentation and that I wished they would behave differently. Memory may fail me, but I can’t at the moment remember an occasion when that intervention had any effect whatsoever. So eventually I unfollowed/muted/ignored — and I told them I was doing that, also.

Before you tell someone you’re muting their online presence you take a deep breath because you don’t know what the consequences will be. In one case, my friend was a bit hurt, but our friendship is as strong now as it ever was. In another, the friendship ended.

Why the difference? It may have something to do with the character of the people involved; about that I’m not sure. But two major factors were certainly in play. One: In the first case, I had a much longer and stronger history of face-to-face connection, so that a rejection of his online persona obviously did not mean a rejection of his whole being. Two: in the second case, the friend was much more deeply invested in his online presence — maybe to the extent that he couldn’t have accepted the rejection even if we had a stronger face-to-face history.

Looking back on these situations, I am not sure what lessons to draw — Noah’s column has got me reflecting and I don’t know where that reflection will lead. But at the moment I am thinking that in all the cases where I disengaged I was right to do so — some degree of self-preservation made it necessary. But maybe I should have done so silently, and not spoken of the disengagement unless asked. I thought at the time that friendship required honesty; but maybe there’s a place for reticence in friendship also, or at least more reticence than I demonstrated.

July 15, 2020

the emotional intelligence of long experience

Reading this for reasons unrelated to our current kerfuffles, I came across an interesting passage:

As it turns out, scientific research bears out this Confucian insight: “One thing is certain: Emotional intelligence increases with age.” Fredda Blanchard-Field’s research compares the way young adults and older adults respond to situations of stress and “her results show that older adults are more socially astute than younger people when it comes to sizing up an emotionally conflicting situation. They are better able to make decisions that preserve an interpersonal relationship…. And she has found that as we grow older, we grow more emotionally supple — we are able to adjust to changing situations on the basis of our emotional intelligence and prior experience, and therefore make better decisions (on average) than do young people.” Other research shows that older adults seem particularly good at quickly letting go of negative emotions because they value social relationships more than the ego satisfaction that comes from rupturing them. In short, we have good reason to empower elderly parents in the family context — to give them more voice, and let them decide in moments of emotional conflict — because they are more likely to have superior social skills.

This may help to explain why cancel culture is driven by the young: perhaps they don’t have enough life experience to understand the long-term costs of “rupturing” relationships. Maybe not even the short-term costs either.

Samuel Johnson had a young friend named George Strahan, who at one point thought he had said something to offend Johnson. The older man’s reply is one of the most glorious things he ever wrote:

You are not to imagine that my friendship is light enough to be blown away by the first cross blast, or that my regard or kindness hangs by so slender a hair, as to be broken off by the unfelt weight of a petty offence. I love you, and hope to love you long. You have hitherto done nothing to diminish my goodwill, and though you had done much more than you have supposed imputed to you my goodwill would not have been diminished.

I write thus largely on this suspicion which you have suffered to enter your mind, because in youth we are apt to be too rigorous in our expectations, and to suppose that the duties of life are to be performed with unfailing exactness and regularity, but in our progress through life we are forced to abate much of our demands, and to take friends such as we can find them, not as we would make them.

These concessions every wise man is more ready to make to others as he knows that he shall often want them for himself; and when he remembers how often he fails in the observance or cultivation of his best friends, is willing to suppose that his friends may in their turn neglect him without any intention to offend him.

When therefore it shall happen, as happen it will, that you or I have disappointed the expectation of the other, you are not to suppose that you have lost me or that I intended to lose you; nothing will remain but to repair the fault, and to go on as if it never had been committed.

Maybe something of this wisdom applies not just to friends, but to fellow citizens, co-workers — in short, our fellow human beings.

February 24, 2019

three stories to reflect on

Ross Douthat:

The sexual ethic on offer in our own era should make Catholics particularly skeptical. That ethic regards celibacy as unrealistic while offering porn and sex robots to ease frustrations created by its failure to pair men and women off. It pities Catholic priests as repressed and miserable (some are; in general they are not) even as its own cultural order seeds a vast social experiment in growing old alone. It disdains large families while it fails to reproduce itself. It treats any acknowledgment of male-female differences as reactionary while constructing an architecture of sexual identities whose complexities would daunt a medieval schoolman.

From the Economist, “An entrepreneur brings professional grieving to eastern Congo”:

Deborah Nzigere, a 65-year-old Congolese woman, is nervous when she sits down for her job interview. Her hands are clasped tightly together, her words are slow and deliberate; she is blinking too much. “What inspired you to pursue this career?” asks one of the two people on the interview panel. Her answer is garbled, she mentions money. When asked to give a demonstration, she giggles awkwardly and leaves the room. She comes back in crying.

“Bettina,” she howls and throws herself to the ground. “Bettina, Bettina, why did you leave us?” She thumps the floor with a flattened palm, her body convulses with sobs as she moans and wails. The interviewer’s eyes fill with tears. Mrs Nzigire has got the job.

Christopher Mims in the WSJ:

Through Papa, college-age young people can sign up to help seniors by going to the store, doing housework or just hanging out. For these “pals,” Papa works on the same gig-economy model as Uber or Postmates. Ten hours a week of Papa service is covered for members of Humana ’s Medicare Advantage insurance who are in a pilot program in and near Tampa.

Ms. Sumkin’s Papa pals take her on trips to the store since she can no longer drive, and they also help combat her loneliness. Ms. Sumkin says that, aside from occasional visits with her children and grandchildren, her only regular human contact is a bi-weekly stretching class and time with those insurer-provided friends. “They’re all very nice and, you know, I’ll converse with them and find out what they’re doing and studying and so forth,” she says. “It’s for me a very important service.”

January 5, 2014

I must admit to going back and forth on the topic of the New Homophiles. Apostolic celibacy is a great good. The struggle to be faithful Catholics is a great good. Trying to identify with Christ is exactly what we are all called to do. Spiritual friendship could be a good thing though I worry they envision something like Charles Ryder reading scripture with Sebastian Flyte. Can we accept them on their terms? I do not know.

— The New Homophiles: A Closer Look | Crisis Magazine. What, indeed, are we to do? We are not under judgment; we judge. We need not worry about acceptance, we only have to decide whom we will, or will not, accept. We keep the gates; we decide who is or is not worthy of admission. We instruct; we have nothing to learn.

It must be awesome to be “we.”

January 3, 2014

loneliness and hospitality

As a student of family life from the outside, I’ve come to a conclusion that family life, as opposed to celibacy, is a life of high highs and low lows. The high is that you are loved by someone who has promised never to leave you. You are needed by children who are utterly dependent on you, and who return your smiles. The low is that you may lose those people to death, or they may at some point reject you.

The single life is more moderated and less risky. The high is that my will is never crossed. The low is that my will is never crossed. Another low is that I am lonely. But at least I don’t have another person who is directly responsible for my loneliness.

“All the Lonely People”: On Hospitality, Again | Spiritual Friendship. Please read the whole post, in which Betsy Childs manages the enviable feat of being charitable to the uncharitable.

August 26, 2013

When Christians sell books and preach sermons encouraging non-married people to embrace their “singleness” as a blessing, we are promoting the destructive effects of the sexual revolution. “Singleness” as we conceive of it in our culture is not the will of God at all. It is representative of a deeply fragmented society. Singleness in America typically means a lack of kinship connectedness. This was not the case, for example, with Jesus who was not married. He never lived alone. He went from the family home to a group of twelve close friends who shared daily life with him until he died (followers who would have never left off following him). His mother and brothers were also still involved in his life and are often mentioned. Jesus’ mother was there at his darkest hour when he died. In contrast, singleness in America often refers to a person who lives alone or in non-permanent, non-kinship relationships.

— Karen Keen (via wesleyhill)