Dear Caminoheads,

These days (and weeks and months and years) have been intense, 50 shades of intense I could say. Yesterday, I spent time with 5 friends. It started with spending a bit more than 1 hour in the car with my 96 years old neighbor -who is now my friend- as my co-pilot, as I was driving him to his 91 years old sister’s house, so he could visit her. From there, I went not far away to have breakfast with 2 of my work colleagues: one is leaving to Switzerland on 21Oct after a horrific year with her mother’s illness, and the other to Frankfurt after losing her father to Covid (just before the vaccines were available here, and being her one of those who helped in the development of one of the vaccines…). Then, I had lunch with another of my friends from the office, the person who interviewed me almost 16 years ago and gave me a chance to get into clinical research, and became one great friend. Then, I went to pick up my neighbor to bring him home, and on the way back, I paid a “Doctor’s visit” to a friend of mine who is a priest, so I could drop him some books (and my neighbor was telling me how much he wanted a blessing!)

Probably yesterday was the best day of the year for me. My friends are the only relationships I have in this country right now. They are my roots also. And equally important, they are the ones who see me, who are witness to my live in my joys and my struggles, and are there for me even when I don’t feel like being with myself.

Today, I got a beautiful email. And it resonated in my heart in a way that hours later, I can sense the echos… I think it is only fair to post a piece of this majestic prose about “Friendship” in the book “Consolations”. If you aren’t familiar with the whole prose, look for it and read it several times, it does require some contemplation. And I do very much deeply wish you, that you bring “your friend” in mind and whisper “Thank you”.

FRIENDSHIP (excerpts, by David Whyte, from Consolations book)

“… Friendship not only helps us to see ourselves through another’s eyes, but can be sustained over the years only with someone who has repeatedly forgiven us…

A friend knows our difficulties and shadows and remains in sight, a companion to our vulnerabilities more than our triumphs, when we are under the strange illusion we do not need them…

In the course of the years a close friendship will always reveal the shadow in the other as much as ourselves, to remain friends we must know the other and their difficulties and even their sins and encourage the best in them, not through critique but through addressing the better part of them, …
…
Friendship transcends disappearance: an enduring friendship goes on after death, the exchange only transmuted by absence, the relationship advancing and maturing in a silent internal conversational way even after one half of the bond has passed on.

But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close relationship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship… is witness, the privilege of having been seen by someone and the equal privilege of being granted the sight of the essence of another, to have walked with them and to have believed in them, and sometimes just to have accompanied them for however brief a span, on a journey impossible to accomplish alone.”

Friends like those, Love,

Cris