Joan Chittister - The Friendship of Women: The Hidden Tradition of the Bible

I t is not easy to find models of womens friendships. By and large they were not recorded, lost like so much else of the history of women to the dust of time, underestimated in their own times, unnoticed throughout time, but never far from the surface, always the collagen of the womans world. What we do have, however, is the knowledge emerging in our own day to speak of their value, to describe their qualities. More than that,we have models of women who embodied the best in what women value in a friend. Lydia and her love for ideas, Prisca and her sense of self, Deborah and her sustaining wisdom, Phoebe and her untiring support, Esther and her courageous leadership, Martha and her respect for truth, Veronica and her empathy, Elizabeth and her acceptance, Ruth and her unrelenting availability, Anne and her nurturance, Miriam and her abiding joy, Mary Magdalene and her undying intimacy. Out of these small shards of barely profiled lives emerge the pictures of every womans love.

This small book is not meant to be anything more than the beginning of the cry to see the friendships between women as a strong power for good, a potential political force for the preservation of values that the world has greatly overlooked in favor of dominance and reason and individualism. But dominance has not saved us. And reason has been grossly unreasonable. Individualism made us cripplers of human community and has left us crippled ourselves, lost in a morass of solitary biases.

It is precisely in their penchant for bonding, fortending, for befriending, for embracing, for the gathering of peoples that womens gift for the creation of human community becomes most clear. Women supported women in biblical times; women support women today. They care for one anothers children, they cook one anothers meals, they edit reports for one another at the office, they dry one anothers tears, they applaud one anothers gifts, and they build up one anothers spirits through one dashed dream, one hoping generation to the next. Mothers urge daughters to be more than they were ever enabled to be. Sisters hold up sisters when everything else in life conspires to hold them down. Women carry women friends down the rutted roads of a womans life until the friend is strong enough to make the journey on her own. Women bind themselves to other women not as prisoners are bound but as mountain climbers are linked: on loose ropes designed to save but not control.

Life for a woman is far too commonly a long and lonely climb, often difficult, customarily overlooked. The contributions of women are seldom noted. The history of women and womens place in history isseldom told. The wisdom of women is, by and large, not anthologizedis, in other words, ignored. Despite the findings of modern psychology and sociology on the nature and quality of womens friendships, for instance, even many references in this book on womens friendship come from menbecause it was mens works that were printed, published, taught across time. Those days are over. Women, and the rest of the world as well, are listening for the voices of women now.

The bonding of women through contemporary groups, organizations, social circles, and public projects is now the breeding ground of a new kind of emotional life, personal development, re-creation, and even the transformation of public institutions. Womens groups expand the definition of women beyond the domestic arena to full public participation and voice.

Womens friendships and womens penchant for openness, possibility, presence, support, empathy, wisdom, truth, courage, nurturance, acceptance, joy, and intimacy are a new hope for humanity. If we can only recognize them, if we can only bring them to liferespected, revered, and invested with honorin theworld around us. For friendship is far more than a personal gift. The right friendship, rightly given, has the power to change the world. Albert Schweitzer said, Sometimes our light goes out, but it is blown again into flame by an encounter with another human being. Each of us owes the deepest thanks to those who have rekindled the light.

Whats even more important, perhapsit lasts. Or, as Emily Bront wrote, Love is like the wild rose-briar; Friendship like the holly-tree. The holly is dark when the rose-briar blooms, but which will bloom most constantly?