“In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can fully bring out,” Lewis says in The Four Loves.  He’s talking about how, now that their friend Charles Williams has died, there is some aspect of Tolkien that doesn’t show up anymore. It’s been my experience that certain friendships waken different parts of me, parts that I may not even know are there, but in that person’s presence something is called out, something is ignited.  

I have watched my brother Sam, whom I live with, when he gets around one of his oldest friends Roger. They ignite something in one another, a kind of hilarity that is unique to their friendship. My brother is already a lot of fun and very funny, but when he gets around Roger, a whole other layer of joy and jokes that had been dormant suddenly bursts into life.

Friendship is so important. In a manner of speaking, I think we are ‘made out of’ the people who love us well. I can’t deny too that we are made out of the people who’ve failed to love us well, and we have wounds that shape us. But, if we have friends who will bear our scars with us, even those wounds can become touch points where trusted hands can travel with us into courage and hope.

What got me started thinking about all of this was when my friends Abbye and Jeff Pates were in town a few days ago. I first met Abbye in 2005. We worked at an urban home repair summer camp in Memphis called Service Over Self. We were both singer/songwriters and worship leaders. Both Mississippi natives. After camp was over, we kept in touch, and I eventually met her boyfriend Jeff. A few years later, I played guitar in their wedding. A few years after that, I lived in intentional community with them for a time in Memphis.

The season I lived with them was one of the most difficult and painful seasons I’ve ever experienced, and it’s probably not an exaggeration to say that their friendship played a central role in saving my life. They are not the only ones, of course, and I won’t name them all here, but Abbye and Jeff are among a group of long-time friends who have been with me through so many seasons of life. I would not know who I am or how to survive without the friends God has given me.

I’ve lived away from Memphis for more than five years now, so I just see Abbye and Jeff every once in a while. Last week, they came into town to record a new 5-song EP of retuned hymns with Casey Combest, a friend of mine who runs Blue Sky Studios here in Jackson. I packed up a couple of guitars and drove Vandalf over to the studio to spend a couple of days tracking guitars for the new project. Jeff was on drums, Abbye on vocals and acoustic guitar, I was on electric guitar, and our friend Ty was on bass. We’ve been playing music together for almost fifteen years, and I was surprised at the joy I felt. I already knew that I loved these people, I already knew that I enjoyed playing music with dear old friends. But, still, I was surprised all over again. I was surprised to feel parts of myself come alive that only certain people seem to activate. I was surprised to feel so at home.

Ok, at this point this will feel like a weird turn to take, but this is where my mind is going. Hang with me. Have you seen the movies or read the Harry Potter books? If you have, you’re familiar with the concept of a Horcrux. In the story, the big baddie Voldemort splits his soul by committing evil deeds and embeds or hides these pieces in a variety of objects. In order to kill the villain you have to gather all the horcrux items and destroy them. It’s a great story device, and it’s not unlike Sauron’s ring in Tolkien’s books. Sauron has infused his soul into this object, which, if destroyed in Mount Doom will destroy him. Now, all these are negative examples – but there can be no perversion without a version; since, as Lewis points out in Mere Christianity, in order for evil to be bad, it has to borrow all its material from goodness.

I’m playing with the idea that friendship is like a positive opposite to a horcrux. This is how personhood works: our very identity is embedded within the stories of those we are in relationship with. The late Dennis Kinlaw, in a great little book called “Let’s start with Jesus”, says,

“If Jesus is the prototype of all other persons, then persons never exist alone, because the Son cannot be explained apart from the Father and Spirit. He is distinct in himself but inseparable from the Father and Spirit. He and all other persons always operate in webs of relationships because persons, human or divine, by definition do not and cannot stand alone.” 

I can’t understand myself unless I’m somehow in conversation with other people. It is not good for a human to be alone, because personhood is a fundamentally relational reality – and Kinlaw says that’s true for us because it’s true for God in whose triune image we have been created! I wrote a VBS song about it that says, “You can’t be a person without some more people, so God made a family. So we can love like he loves, and live like he lives, a little picture of the Trinity.”  

Actually, the opposite of a horcrux might be the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a meal where Jesus by being broken unites many parts into one indestructible body. All these individual stories, these persons, take on new meaning, they understand themselves, when they’re suddenly joined to all the other stories at the table of the Lord.

Another connection to the idea of horcrux is that Voldemort embedded the pieces of his soul in these objects in an effort to cheat death. Voldemort takes the lives of others in order to splinter off shards of his own soul for safekeeping in a handful of items. Do you see a mirror image? Jesus doesn’t try to escape death. He allows himself to be killed by others. He is broken like bread and his life is hidden in the bodies of his followers, constituting a new body. Now, ever since Jesus was raised from the dead, those followers have gathered around a meal of mutual breaking and giving where our lives are hidden in him, as his indestructible life is hidden in us.

Friday night, Abbye and Jeff came over to mine and Sam’s house and we grilled hamburgers in the backyard. For several hours we caught up on news, laughed together, cooked and ate together, told old stories; we even broke open some places of fear and frustration and found comfort in our friendship. I felt my heart swell with great thanksgiving in the presence of old friends around a table as the single candle in our midst lit our faces with warm light even as the night descended around us.

Part of me is carried along in them. They’ve been with me in joyful times and times of astonishing loss, and in the most beautiful and blessed of ways who I am is broken and given to them for safekeeping. Whatever perversion a horcrux is, here is the version: family, friendship, the blessed mutual enfolding of God’s gift to humanity of his own shared personhood.  

Something wakes up in me and comes to life when I’m around my friend Oliver, something different wakes up when I’m around my friends Ashok and Neha, more of me comes to life when I’m seeing friends and singing in their homes as I play house concerts around the country every Fall. When I give myself to friendships, somehow there’s more of myself available to myself. I grow. My story enlarges. Who I am takes on new meaning when I am embedded in a family.

Finally, when Jesus returns and we are gathered at the Great Wedding Feast of the Lamb, our faces will be lit by the light of his face in our midst, and all that we are will waken, all that can be will ignite for the first time. We will see the faces of all those at the table, and we will see how our story is held in theirs and all of those stories are hidden in Jesus. We will know who we really are. We will be home.

John says it this way, “You will know at that time that I am in my Father and you are in me and I am in you.”

Links: 

1. Learn more about how the Tolkien, Lewis and the Inklings helped each other write in Dr. Diana Glyer’s great book Bandersnatch. 

2. Find Abbye West Pates online.

3. Learn more about hosting me for a house concert Fall 2019.