Over the last weeks the Star Tribune has been running a series on loneliness. Statistics state there is an epidemic of it. We have been talking about this since Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community was published in 2001. The series has offered ways people have addressed the loneliness in their lives, a loneliness that seems to be present no matter age, gender, occupation, education or economic status  Of course, some of this has been heightened by the isolation many experienced during the pandemic and has lingered, perhaps even grown in the confusion of living into the what next.  People describe how they have searched out making friends. Friends in their neighborhoods. Friends at work. Friends that share interests.Sometimes there is success and other times not so much. 

Friends. As I have read these accounts I was reminded of the Simon and Garfunkel song from my earlier years…

Old friends, old friends
Sat on their park bench like bookends
A newspaper blown through the grass
Falls on the round toes
Of the high shoes of the old friends… 

The memory of listening to this song when I was in my twenties always brought about such a melancholy. The image of these people sitting on a park bench was outside my reality and probably something about it conjured a kind of fear in me. It might have actually been a fear of loneliness. Certainly it was a fear of what growing older might mean, might be like.

This past week I had the privilege of spending time with old friends. Friends I had known at the same time as this song was playing on turntables in bedrooms and dorm rooms, spinning sweet sentiment in the hearts of listeners. With this group of old friends, there were no park benches but there was a sense of knowing we had, by this time, lived some life with all its joys, losses, triumphs and failures and that we were there,blessedly present to one another. The melancholy was absent but the knowing and the  laughter and the gratitude was full. 

Old friends, winter companions, the old men
Lost in their overcoats, waiting for the sunset
The sounds of the city sifting through trees
Settle like dust on the shoulders of the old friends

These old friends and I had made music together in a choir when we were on the cusp of discovering what our grown up lives would be. We had traveled together and had experiences in places far away from anything any of us had known up to that point, experiences most of us had not ever imagined for ourselves. We were shaped and changed by the music making and the travel and the friendships that were forged by it all. The dust that settled on us has recently been stirred up by reunions and memories and a desire to honor what we had together. Though we all now live in different places around the country, we are drawn back to place a marker on what once was and to tip our hats to the places we now find ourselves. This coming together carries a sweetness, a sweetness that I now hear in this song, something I had missed listening with my younger ears.

Friendships come in all shapes and sizes. As the reporting on loneliness describes, it takes effort and intention to overcome. The friendships that endure from childhood and youth are rare as people are more mobile and stray farther from home. The intense friendships we had in college or early adulthood, those we thought would last forever, get interrupted by partners and growing families, by careers, by transience.  As years unfold, friendships get lost and new ones are formed and if we are lucky…or blessed…we find one or two people who are the ones we call our besties. Those that know us for who we are, warts and all, that will walk with us through the mud and mire and can laugh, hard, until we are weak from it all.

Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be 70
Old friends, memory brushes the same years
Silently sharing the same fears.

I think back to the times when I listened to this song and felt all those conflicting feelings about these imagined characters created by the pen of Paul Simon. I know these people now. And I feel such gratitude for knowing there are people with whom I can share fears and memories and maybe even a park bench. 

****Have a listen here…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A76lTte8qE

‘But ask the animals, and they will teach you;
    the birds of the air, and they will tell you;
ask the plants of the earth,and they will teach you;
    and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
    that the hand of the Holy One has done this?’
Job 12:7-9

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by those who have been named as Saints. Certainly, I have known many humans who I would call saint but here I am talking about those who have been named by the Church as those who have lived a life extraordinary enough to be somehow set apart a bit from the rest of us. For this Protestant this is something to admit I realize. Yet it is true. I have any number of amulets and icons scattered about my house that speak to this fascination. In the places I travel I am always on the look out for images that celebrate these sources of wisdom and devotion.

Perhaps the most well known is, of course, St. Francis of Assisi. A few years ago I was privileged to travel with a group of people to the places in Italy where he lived, walked, taught, and urged simplicity. Even writing these words brings a flood of memories and feelings that were imprinted upon my soul in those places. Walking the streets of Assisi and Gubbio which still seem to carry the essence of his simple yet profound spirit can wash over me in a flash. Somehow the people who live there carry forward the light and wisdom in his honor. Or so it seems. 

I was reminded of this last week as I was walking along Summit Avenue in Saint Paul. It was one of those crazy days we had when it was 50 degrees and the humans making their way down this historic, stately street, had the goofy look on their faces of those who did not know quite where they were…what month it was…how this temperature was even possible. In February. In Minnesota. As I passed one of the row houses built at the turn of the 20th century, I saw flittering and fluttering of the winged kind. As I got nearer, I saw that it was not only the humans who seemed ecstatic in their praise of the day, so were the birds that swooped and swarmed around a bird bath and several feeders. These feathered creatures were simply giddy with the prospect of taking a dip followed by a snack. I stood and watched and laughed out loud at their enthusiasm. What lessons were they imparting?

Watching them I remembered a dear friend who left us this year and his love of birds and the above verses from the Book of Job. The idea that we are taught by the birds of the air was the sermon he preached anytime he was given the chance. Just as St Francis did. Francis was said to have remarked “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.” and also “While you are proclaiming peace with your lips, be careful to have it even more fully in your heart.” Watching what appeared to be a joyful sermon from those little birds brought a peace and grounding to my day. In all the turmoil of our world, these feathered teachers proclaimed a kind of peace from their very tiny hearts.

Francis was born in the tiny hilltop village of Assisi, Italy in 1182 and died in 1226. The writer and historian Coleman Barks said of him that he “was so empty of nervous haste and fear and aggression that the birds would light on him.” And when he died at twilight on October 4, 1226, it is said the larks rose up to the roof of his cell and circled it with wing beat and song. What a wonderful image!!

Teachers come to us in a variety of forms. On that particular day on a street far from Assisi, the birds and the spirit of St. Francis offered lessons. Of how to be present. Of how to be joyful. Of how to celebrate the gift of warm temperatures and blessed sunshine. And above all, how to be grateful.

****Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love. Francis of Assisi

If you search the internet for words people have spoken about expectations, you will find something to the effect of “Expect nothing and you’ll never be disappointed.” attributed to many people. It seems a tidbit of wisdom that many live by. I have been thinking of expectations over these last weeks as the temperatures in Minnesota have been very warm and what little snow we had on the ground has melted. The truth is, living in this state known for cold and ice and snow, we expect this to always be the case. A Christmas without snow? Travesty! Not being able to skate, walk, or drive your car onto the ice from sometime in December till March? Unheard of. No need to layer upon layer before headed out to shovel or dig or simply walk to the car? Crazy talk! We have expectations.

Yet our expectations have been shattered along with records for temperature, snowfall, and ice depth. Yesterday I saw people running in shorts and t-shirts. Today’s paper carried a photo of a young woman cross country skiing in shorts and a tank top. The snow had been made by a machine, no doubt the same kind of contraption that created the snow for the snow sculptures that were created for the St. Paul Winter Carnival that now lay in lumpy heaps.  Make no mistake about it this weather has made for an easier life…no digging out, no chopping ice, no spreading of salt or other compounds to melt the sidewalk. Yet, I’ve come to expect the cold and the work that winter brings. It helps to keep my life in balance…makes me appreciate the spring and warmth and eventually the summer. Talking with others we express our confusion and general sense of how to behave in any rational fashion in the face of it all. Choosing to live here means having certain expectations and certain concessions to the life we chose.

Today, February 1st, the Sun is shining and it promises to be nearly 50 degrees. This day in the Celtic calendar marks the first day of the season of Spring,called Imbolc, sitting midway between the Winter and Summer Solstices. I have always loved this. While the weather may be messing with my seasonal expectations, marking this date as this shift has always brought me a certain sense of order and hope. The fact that it is also the Feast Day of St. Brigid, one of the patron saints of Ireland, makes the day twice as sweet. 

So, this morning I made a kind of homage to the bridge of the day. I pulled out the paper white bulbs that had been resting in a brown paperbag in a closet and prepared them for what they might become. The weather outside may not be what it normally is on the first day of February but the bulbs do not know this. The Sun that will draw them to their green and white height will be their own kind of expectation. And I will get to be present to it and revel in its power. 

The wise woman and author Caitlin Matthews writes this Song of Imbolc for this day:

I am the unopened bud, and I the blossom,
I am the life-force gathering to a crest,
I am the still companion of silence, 
I am the far-flung seeker of the quest.
I am the daughter gathering in wisdom,
I am the son whose questions never cease,
I am the dawn-light searching out glad justice,
I am the center where all souls find peace.

My expectations of winter may have been dashed for the time being. But there are weeks to go in this new year and who knows what they will bring? For the time being, on this first day of Celtic spring, I will celebrate the unopened bud, the blossom, the life-force, the silence, this quest. And I will pray that my soul…and all souls…find peace.