The joy of ancient friends
Surround yourself with wise companions who help to point the way
It’s my birthday today. If you’re reading this: thank you for spending time with me here at Things I Wrote Down.
Milestones like birthdays are a great time to reflect. As I think about the year gone by and look ahead, I’m really thankful for the great people in my life. Close friends and family. A church and community to belong to. Wonderful colleagues. And especially my readers—the salt of the earth!
Ancient friends
I’m also grateful for my ancient friends. The wise women and men who’ve written things down that are my companions along the way.
A while back, I had the privilege to interview James K. A. Smith about his book On the Road with Saint Augustine which was named by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the 5 Best Books in Religion for 2019. (It was the Feast of St. Augustine on August 28, which reminded me of the interview.)
When I asked Smith what motivated him to carefully study Augustine’s life, he said:
As we become more and more hamstrung by the tyranny of the urgent, I think it’s crucial that Christians cultivate ancient friendships. It’s an invitation to step out of the bubble of the contemporary and get some distance and perspective on the present. [T]here is a lot of wisdom that we’ve just plain forgot in the last 500 years that we need to remember and retrieve.
Many of the people I’ve spent the most time with, deeply learned from, admired are “long gone” but alive through the stories they’ve left behind.
Their voices pierce the noisy present to bring clarity, even calm.
My childhood imagination was grounded in the stories of Hebrew heroes, who remain some of my closest ancient friends today. Not a day goes by that I don’t read or engage the words of David or Moses or Paul. The stories and great acts of faith from people like Esther or Daniel capture the imagination of my heart.1
Strangely, wonderfully, these historical figures and thinkers become our contemporaries. Through their experiences, written down and preserved for us in core texts, we learn from their successes and failures. We observe their bold acts. This helps us perform our own unique riffs set against their movements in time.
[An] ancient figure like Augustine turns out to be our contemporary because he’s so familiar with the anxieties of our age. Augustine spent the first thirty years of his life looking for love in all the wrong places. I think that’s a pretty succinct description of our own age. The restless stems from looking for ultimate fulfillment from penultimate things, trying to satisfy an infinite longing with finite stuff. Augustine is like a theological psychologist who probes our hungry hearts.
~ James K.A. Smith
I have my own go-tos from the distant and recent past: Chesterton, Hannah More, Wilberforce, bp Nichol, Annie Dillard, Willard, Buechner. If you spend time on TIWD, you’ll see them appear.
Because it’s my party and I can write what I want to, today I thought I’d simply call attention to one of the great gifts of being alive: friends, both living and ancient.
In the year ahead, I look forward to surrounding myself with their humour, insights, and wisdom as I continue the journey. And to share those friendships with you.
Who’s your ancient, go-to friend? I’d love to hear!
I just had a birthday too, and since I can’t think of an ancient “friend”, I’m going to make a goal of finding an ancient friend in this new year.