Seven Great Things about Old Friends

Next year, Dean and I are especially looking forward to visiting friends. Some are people we knew before they were adults, and some helped us learn what adults could be, but all of them live somewhere we don't. Here are seven reasons we really appreciate the people we've known for awhile:

1. They live in really interesting places. This year, we've been in the mountains, the valleys, big cities and tiny towns. We love exploring places on our own, but the experience is richer when we have friends to tell us stories about their neighborhoods and their communities.

2. We get to eat with them (and sometimes even to stay at their homes). Whether our time together is long or short, we usually get to have a meal (or at least a snack!) with the friends whose community we're visiting. And food makes it easier to talk, doesn't it?

3. Old friends' customs are familiar in a new place. Some of the friends we're visiting have been roommates at one time or another. Even though the years change us in many ways, getting together with an old roommate can be comfortable in a way that meeting new people isn't.

4. Old friends are great for connecting us with new friends. Even when we just saw that "old friend" a few months earlier, when we meet them in their territory, we get to meet their friends (who sometimes become our friends ... and we love making new friends).

5. Who else shares memories of the particular bit of your life that old friends share? These are the people who remember the fifth-grade teacher who wore the same top every day for a week. They remember fighting over doing the dishes. They know what you looked like when you had brown hair.

6. Related, but not the same: Apart from the family you grew up with, who knows how you felt on your first day of kindergarten? First kiss? First time away from home? When you sent a child off to the first day of school? When you first dealt with loss?

7. Getting to know old friends in a new setting has been a wonderful experience. We can't wait for the opportunity to get to know more of you all over again.*

*In 2016, we plan to visit a church and a bar in every state, and we're hoping to stay in homes as much as possible. If you'd like us to visit your church or your favorite bar, or if you'd be willing to host us (we don't eat much, and we're happy to sleep on the floor), please let us know! We expect to cross the southern US in the first part of the year, then head up the East Coast. We think we'll be in the Midwest in the fall, and the Northwest as the year ends.

-- Mindy

Home Churches

I believe it was Jack London who said, "You can't go home again" (he must, of course, have been quoting Thomas Wolfe). The thought, of course, is that "home" when you go back is not the same place, and you're not the same person you were when the place was "home." It's another way of saying what Heraclitus said centuries before, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." (You now have read your daily recommended portion of literary quotes for the day. You're welcome.)

This month Mindy and I will be going to "Home Churches", specifically churches where I've served on staff. If you include my internship, I've worked at six churches. Two of those churches have dissolved since we were there (one in Minneapolis and one Santa Rosa), so those are certainly places we can't go home to again.

So, four churches for the four Sundays of September. Three of the four churches we'll be going back to have different senior pastors than in the days we were there. I know that all four have some people who were there back in the day, along with plenty of new folks. Some facilities will surely have changed. When we visit, the place will be different. And, of course, we're different people now.

We are still excited by the chance to go back to familiar places and see familiar faces. And we're looking forward to see the work that God has done to make four new churches for us to visit.

-- Dean

Thanks to Carol Finwall for the photo of a Healdsburg Community Church afternoon on the Russian River about ten years ago.

Seven Things I've Learned about Old Friends and Spiritual Journeys

I met Brad along with a number of other people on my first day at Meridian Middle School. Seeing him this past weekend for the first time in almost ten years reminded me of the gift God's given us in long-time friends. Thanks, Brad, and all you other old friends, for hanging around all these years.

1. Old friends know other versions of the stories we tell. I remember getting sent to the office for having a knife at school (true story); a friend might also remember that I'd been bragging about what a good woodcarver I was.

2. Old friends' spiritual journeys have different trajectories, but since we've known each other so many years, through so many other changes, it can feel safe to be honest about our lives in ways we might not be with people we see more frequently -- or even with family.

3. Old friends stay in touch with other old friends in different ways. Because this is true, we can love and understand not just the friend we see, but also the other friend. In middle school, I couldn't see beyond my own insecurity.

4. Old friends' spiritual journeys may break our hearts, but God is God (and I know He's been working in my life. I can trust He's working in their lives as well). And it's pretty likely my friend is concerned about my journey as well.

5. Old friends are just as old as I am. They have a lot of the same historical experiences I had. So we always have something to talk about, even if it's just marveling over the future we're living in compared to the future we expected to live in (where's my flying car, by the way, and why am I not living in a moon colony?).

6. Old friends' spiritual journeys can be encouraging. They've suffered and triumphed in ways I haven't. A couple missionary friends are able to use technology to continue a part of their ministry in Papua New Guinea while being based in the United States in order to be available to their aging parents. I continue to appreciate how God is using them here and there at the same time. (Some parts of this future world are pretty cool. Yay, internet!)

7. Old friends introduce us to new friends, and eventually, the new friends become old friends too.

-- Mindy