Jeanne DeCelles gave this 1993 talk in the northern Virginia and South Bend branches, and perhaps elsewhere. She talked about sisterhood and friendship and the difference Christ makes in a friendship.
Transcript
This document is a direct transcript of an audio recording, and may contain transcription errors and other minor edits for the sake of clarity.
JEANNE: Today we’re going to talk about friendships in women’s groups. And I’ve passed out copies of Paul’s article from Vine and Branches on this subject1 because that’s the basis of the talk. So if you haven’t gotten a handout, please step over there and get one.
As I was driving down here this morning, I’d had a small crisis: I’d left the house in plenty of time and gotten as far as the garage door, which would not open all the way [Jeanne chuckles]. So I called Molly and I said, “I’m probably going to be a little late.” But by the grace of God, I’m not (and Paul’s strength in raising the arm up). But I was thinking on the way down: “Now, Lord, [Jeanne chuckles] is there anything here?” And it occurred to me that things like garage doors, things like cars, in fact, are just wonderful. We just—they’re so useful, and they’re so helpful to us in our daily lives. But when they don’t work, they’re like a millstone around your neck. If you’ve ever been sitting in the middle of traffic on a busy afternoon with a car that won’t move, and it’s smoking, and you’re feeling humiliated, and you’re the spectacle of the—on the street there and people are either cursing at you, or at least giving you dirty looks, and you can’t push it by yourself. . . . I mean, it really is like a huge millstone around your neck; you’d just like to sneak away from the car and pretend that you have no connection with it at all. That’s the way I felt about that garage door this morning: who needs them? you know; they’re just a pain in the neck. But when they’re working, they’re wonderful.
And I think that sometimes when a women’s group is not working, it feels like a millstone around our neck. It’s burdensome. We don’t want to go. It’s hard, and it’s difficult. And there’s a danger, I think, there, of submitting to a spirit of despair, and losing hope that a women’s group can ever be any better. So I just share that as something to think about and to work with, if you’re the head of a women’s group, or if you’re working in any way with a women’s group pastorally. But also, if you’re just in a women’s group that’s difficult, this talk is really designed, I hope, to try and help everybody in their women’s groups, so that they become a joy for us rather than a millstone, or an occasion of sin, or an occasion for hopelessness.
I want to point out some things in Paul’s article that may have sounded to you—I know they did to some women. . . . First of all, how many of you have discussed that article in your women’s group? [Jeanne pauses.] That’s it. Okay. But we have; that’s right. I want to recommend that you do that, that you . . . just do it. [Jeanne and others laugh.] I think it would be very helpful to find out if people read it, if they comprehended it, and if they integrated it at all into their—the way they view women’s groups.
Some of the things that Paul said in that article are somewhat revolutionary, at least when you first read them. I think that at some point in our history, we began to take an approach to our relationships in women’s groups that devalued the two most essential things to our understanding of and participation in women’s groups. Those two things are sisterhood and friendship.
This is my recollection of how things happened. Some folks began to talk about the importance of sisterhood in our life together. I think that—I certainly was one of those myself, and I wrote a talk in 1979 for a women’s track during an elders conference on sisterhood. And that’s—I think that that was when we first began to talk about sisterhood. Then, further down the line, some of us began to talk about “friendship and sisterhood.” And I think it was accidental, probably, but we began to speak about it in a way that created a dichotomy between the two concepts. I’m going to quote two remarks that I heard at various times—not in this branch only, but in other branches I’ve heard similar comments. So I’m just—you know, don’t try to figure out who’s saying this in this branch, because it could be any branch.
Once I was talking with the heads of women’s groups in a branch, and I had made a few comments about the quality of women’s groups and what they could be like. And one woman raised her hand, and said, with great wonderment in her voice, “Do you mean that I can have deep friendships in my women’s group?” Clearly, the idea of that was revolutionary to her. And some sort of flag went up in my mind at that point. What have we been saying that has led people to believe that they not only probably won’t, but it isn’t even a good thing, in a way, for her to seek out deep friendship in her women’s group?
The other comment was from someone who said, “I’m really glad to hear you say that in our women’s group sisterhood is essential, but friendship is not. Because that means that I don’t have to feel guilty anymore because my women’s groups are not my best friends. There are, in fact, women in my group with whom I cannot imagine being friends.” It’s a little like the old saying “I may have to love everyone, but I certainly don’t have to like everyone.”
Now, both quotes, I think, reflect a misunderstanding about women’s groups, but also about sisterhood and about friendship. And I think that Paul’s article helps us to sort it out.
First, his definition of friendship, which is in the first paragraph, is, I think, even for us, an unusual way of talking about—of defining friendship. Usually, when people talk about friendship, they talk about friendship in the classical sense: someone who is your soulmate, your “other self,” who reflects—is a reflection of your likes, and your temperament, and your personality. But here, his definition doesn’t say anything about that. He says that it’s two people who love each other for the sake of the other. Whereas in a classical friendship idea, you sort of “groove” on this person, because it makes you feel good. It meets some of your needs. It satisfies some of the things that you want. But he’s saying something that turns that upside down. He says it’s “a relationship in which two people love each other for the sake of the other.”. Now, that kind of love could certainly be present in the other kind of friendship. But he’s saying here that that’s what is—most defines Christian friendship, and that’s what we want—is a Christian friendship.
“For Christians,” he says, “this means sharing their lives in Christ.” Now, that’s quite different from most of the friendships that we have experienced in the world. “With this understanding,” he says, “I think that, if a men’s group or women’s group is fairly well put together, all the members of the group can expect to become friends in this sense, although it will take time.” Now, I’ll talk a little bit later about the element of time. If I don’t bring it up, try to remind me.
Then he says, how it’s put together does “make a difference, but not as much as you might think. On a natural level, people can achieve a certain degree of friendship on the basis of personality, likes and dislikes in common, and with a limited amount of love.”
Then he says, “When a coordinator assigns people to a group, he tries to take those natural factors . . . into account.” But obviously, at some time in your life in the community, you will find yourself in a women’s group, I suspect, where those natural qualities, you know—what am I trying to say? [Jeanne laughs]—where you’re not like everybody else in the group. And where there are not people in the group that you would go out, necessarily, and find a friendship with—just, you know, like when you meet somebody and there’s an instant rapport—you just laugh at the same things. You will find yourself, if you have not already [Jeanne chuckles], in a group where that’s not the case. It may not be the case with any of the other women in the group.
In Christ, even people who would not be friends on a natural level can become very close friends. Now, this puts a whole new spin on friendship and on the love between friends. And I think the way to look at it is that it does not limit our ability to love as friends. In fact, this notion of Christian friendship expands our ability to love and to have deep friendships. We actually can have more deep friendships because we’re looking for Christian friendship. What is required, then, is not that you look like me, that you like the same movies I do, or the same books I do, or the art, or the music that I do. The requirements for you and for me to become friends are much simpler, much deeper, and are directly related to our life together in community. But, more importantly, they are directly related to our life in eternity.
The requirements are three.
[First,] that we love each other. It requires two people; it cannot be unilateral. So it requires that—I’m sorry, I said it required three; that was—I misspoke myself there. [Jeanne seems to have meant “two requirements.”] It requires that we love each other not because you satisfy my personal needs for understanding and affection, a desire for fun and stimulating conversation and affirmation, but rather that each of us loves the other for the sake of the other.
The second thing it requires is a deep personality. What is a deep personality? I think we can connect a deep personality with character, with a certain strength of character. A deep personality is a person who can see beyond her own desires and needs, can put aside her desires and needs, and can do whatever is necessary to become a friend to another person. She has the self-control, the wisdom, and the courage required to overcome very genuine obstacles that exist between all human beings. She can put those aside; she can overcome the obstacles and build something that is much more important than the satisfaction of her own desires and needs.
A deep personality recognizes her own limitations, and she approaches them with honesty and courage. She also recognizes the limitations of her friend, and she approaches them with honesty, courage, and love. She has the humility to be awestruck by what she sees of the good, the true, and the beautiful in each person. It is not that we must overlook what is not yet perfect in one another. Rather, it is that we recognize both the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly, and we choose to love this person.
So, as Paul says, in Christ, even though people who would probably not be friends on a natural level can become very close friends. So why is this not happening in many of our groups? Or maybe it’s all—it’s happening in all your groups, and we don’t need to have this talk; we can go out for coffee [Jeanne chuckles].
Paul pinpoints three reasons why it may not be happening. “Whether it happens or not depends on” . . . one: “they are living in Christ.” In paragraph [Jeanne counts the paragraphs quietly: “1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . .”] . . . 4, you will find this, so you don’t have to take so many notes.
One: “whether they are living in Christ.” Two: whether Christ “has become the center of their lives.” And three: whether “they are willing to share this with” each other. It is on these three factors that the success of our women’s groups depends.
It is so simple, but it is so crucial. And sometimes in all our discussions of sisterhood versus friendship, or sisterhood and friendship, or the lack of sisterhood, or my desperate need for a friend, we forget these three simple necessities. If I am to become friends with any sister or brother in Christian community or elsewhere, I must be living in Christ. For a Christian friendship to exist, I must be living in Christ. Now I can form all sorts of friendships with people inside or outside of community based on common interests, pleasures, or pursuits. But in women’s group in the People of Praise, my friendships hinge on whether or not I am a friend of Jesus.
Am I living in him? That is, am I striving always to be his person in every situation in my life? Am I allowing my thoughts, my mind to be conformed to those of the world or to those of the Lord? Am I putting Christ’s interests above my own? Do I believe that it is his plan for me to be in this body, the People of Praise? Am I living in sin? Am I deliberately sinning and not repenting? If I am, then I cannot be friends with a brother or a sister in the body. I can’t have a Christian friendship. I can form a relationship with others, but friendship depends on these three things being in place, and that’s the first one. Otherwise, the relationship is always in danger of being centered on dependence, need, selfishness, or just pure satisfaction of my own desires.
Second, has Christ become the center of my life? Now if Christ is going to become the center of my life, guess who’s gonna have to get out of the way? I’m going to have to move over. For Christ to be the center of my life would mean that everything else—my work, my leisure, my friends, my conversation, my silence, my prayer, everything in my life—would be rooted in Christ, and thus rooted in life—in love (sorry).
Are we there yet? No. But we have to at least be desiring that Christ be at the center of our life. It’s like the first foundation and principle of Ignatius in our retreat. The first foundation and principle states that our—the end of our creation, the end for which we were created, was to love, serve, and reverence God and live with him in eternity. So that means everything we use, everything we do, is focused and directed toward that end for which God created us. That’s what it means to really put Christ at the center of your life, or, rather, to put yourself at the center of Christ’s life.
Third—and I think this may be the place where a lot of us are having trouble—how much am I willing to share about my life in Christ with others? And most especially, how much am I willing to share with my brothers and sisters in community? And even more especially, with my sisters in my women’s group?
Now why are these things so important to friendships in our groups? In the Spirit and Purpose of the People of Praise, section 13, called “Life Together,” the first line is very key to our understanding of why women’s groups are so important: “The establishment of a new people of God was an essential part of the saving work of Jesus Christ.” [Jeanne repeats this:] “The establishment of a new people of God was an essential part of the saving work of Jesus Christ.” You mean he didn’t just die to save me? No. He had another work, and an essential part of his work as Savior was to establish a new people of God.
A few lines later, it says, “God’s plan is that Christians should be united to him and thus be united with one another.” You could say God’s plan is that women—Christian women in women’s groups in the People of Praise—first be united to him and thus be united with one another as his people. This is the secret of Christian unity.
It goes on to say “The Father’s plan for all creation is beyond our understanding; he wants to unite all things in Christ.” Think about three people with whom you have the least affinity. Three people that you find it most difficult to relate to. Pick people in this branch. And remember that the Father’s plan is that he wants to unite all things in Christ, and that includes you and those three people.
The new pamphlet on community states—well, it’s not new anymore; it was when I wrote this—the pamphlet on community states: “Weekly small-group meetings of four to six men or women help members build friendships and encourage one another in the complex task of being Christians in the modern world.”
Now the first time I gave this talk, I gave it in the Northern Virginia branch, and it wasn’t hard for them to understand what a complex task it is to be Christians in the modern world. But, actually, I think we would all agree, it’s complex enough in South Bend. Interestingly enough, it’s a complex task in Corvallis, in St. Paul, in Muncie, in Appleton, in Saskatoon—in all of our branches. We do not join the People of Praise in order to struggle with that task of becoming a Christian in the modern world in isolation, alone, and independently. We join so that we can help and be helped to become more and more a part of that plan of the Father’s to unite all things in Christ. We can do that effectively in our women’s groups, if we strive to fulfill those three requirements that Paul describes: to live in Christ; to make Christ the center of our lives—both our individual lives and our lives together; and to be willing to share about these with our sisters in our women’s groups. And if we are not doing this in our women’s groups, we are wasting time in the name of the Lord. And none of us wants to do that.
It’s like this. Friendship—genuine friendship—is deeper than our common tastes. It’s more important than someone to go to your favorite foreign film with. It’s more important than a really high-powered intellectual discussion. It’s more crucial to our life together than having our needs, desires, and fancies met. Christian friendship is a taste of heaven. It is one of those places where we meet the Lord in the midst of the mundane, everyday, often difficult details of our lives, and we see him face to face. For it is in the face of our Christian friend that we most easily see the face of God. We can see his face in others, whether they be our friends or not. But often the face of Christ is obscured in those we would most naturally and easily be friends with, because we are distracted, perhaps even enchanted, by their face. They usually, after all, are faces which bear a strong resemblance to our own.
There are some historical examples of such friendships. Unfortunately, I can’t remember any between people who were not related to one another right now, but. . . . Well, Francis and Clare were not related to one another, and they had a deep Christian friendship. Corrie ten Boom and her sister were not just sisters; they were deeply Christian friends. I think I would have to say—and I love my sisters—but I don’t think we have what I’d call a Christian friendship. In fact, it may be more difficult for me to share some things about my life in Christ with my blood sisters than with almost anybody I can think of in the People of Pr- —well, with anybody in the People of Praise.
There’s a very charming story about Scholastica. She was the sister of Benedict, and he visited her monastery . . . rarely, but one time he had come to visit her. And they had spent the whole day in conversation about the Lord. And when night began to fall, Benedict said, “Well, I have to leave now,” and she began to cry and ask him to please not leave, to just stay a little longer, so they could talk some more. And he said, “No, I really have to go.” And so the—I don’t know if it’s a legend or not—but the story is that Scholastica just put her head right down on the table between them for a few minutes. And a terrible, vicious thunderstorm came up immediately, and Benedict had to stay the night [Jeanne and the crowd laugh]. So they continued to talk all night long. I don’t know [Jeanne laughs], but she told him—in the legend or the story—she told him that the Lord had answered her prayer and wouldn’t let him go [Jeanne laughs lightly].
But I’m sure there are others—and I’ve got to be sure and think about this some more—but there are some examples of good strong Christian friendships: between men and women, between women and women, and between men and men.
Perhaps the best news about all of this is that if you do put forth the effort, and the courage, and the time, to build this kind of friendship—based on your life in Christ, your commitment to Christ, and your willingness to talk about it—the best thing about that is that usually, your needs, your fancies, and even just the desires of your heart are met. They may not be met right away. But depending on the temperature of your love for the Lord and your humility in sharing that with others, just about anything is possible.
Now, why are these things so hard to do? Well, one reason, obviously, could be that I may not be living in Christ. Perhaps I’m in sin; I’m a woman who is in sin. I’m violating God’s laws. Well then, clearly, Christian friendship is not going to be possible for me. If I am not living according to the covenant of the People of Praise to the best of my ability, there is not much possibility of meaningful friendships in my women’s group.
But there are more often different kinds of sin at work among us. Few of us continue in the darkness of something like fornication or adultery—of what we might refer to as the “big sins.” But what if I harbor resentments or envy? Envy is an especially destructive vice in community life. If I do harbor such sin—and Paul lists those sins right along with the big ones—Saint Paul —then true friendships are impossible in community. After all, if you resent me and you make no effort to resolve that resentment; if I envy you, and I think I can just play around with that—those are like weak links in the body. They’re like a 6-inch bolt in the construction of a walkway or a bridge that has specifications for a 12-inch bolt. Community life is damaged by these things, because anyone living like that cannot form true Christian friendships. They can form friendships, but they will be based on need or other things, never on the basis of life in Christ. In fact, they may be based on the worst things. Maybe we have in common a resentment of something or someone.
In the auto- —the most recent, I think, biography of Teresa of Avila, there’s a description of her friendship with her cousins when she was young that was more full than anything I’d seen before. She had a lot of cousins, and she had a delightful personality. Everybody loved her. She was a leader. They wanted to be with her. She was pretty. And so she had lots and lots of friends. And she particularly spent a lot of time with her cousins, as well as her siblings, and she talks about those friendships, as having been not based on Christ, and to the extent that they were not based on Christ, they were not good friendships.
Now, when she got older, that circle of friends widened and became even more exciting. She was pretty, she was sought after, she dressed well, she came from a good family—she had everything. And—we would look at these relationships, and, for the most part, they were quite innocent. Although the author of this biography says that the tenor of the times was not unlike our own, in some ways, in the area of sex, which is interesting. There was a lot of stuff going on. I mean, we know that, historically, there’s always been a lot of stuff going on there. But she painted that era in Spain as being particularly somewhat corrupt in that area among young people. There was a very romantic attitude. The love in the Western world ideology was very entrenched in that society.
And the way Terese [sic] described it is that after she had been with these friends—this is when she was an older person, a young woman—she would enjoy it: she loved dressing up; she loved nice clothes; she loved being with these people. It was fun. And yet, after spending time with them—laughing a lot, having a lot of good jokes together, dancing, sharing music, that kind of thing—she would be overcome by a tremendous, deep sadness. She said her soul was just—she didn’t realize what was going on with her—but she just had this tremendous sadness after being with these people, whom she had these wonderful, wonderful, deep friendships with.
And it wasn’t until later that she recognized that what she was hungering for was a really deep, genuine friendship with the Lord, and that that was not present in these relationships. And so she experienced this great sadness, just a tremendous sadness, afterwards. And I think that a lot of us experience that in some situations that we’ve been in. We’ve had a wonderful time. The evening or the day has been everything that we had hoped it would be. But it was—it just doesn’t come close to friendship with the Lord. It doesn’t come close to what we can have with those who are friends with us because we share the Lord together.
So what it comes down to, then, is that our life together depends very much on whether we have decided to try to become holy, and whether or not we take seriously the commitment to support one another in trying to become holy. Unless that commitment is in place—and that means that each of us is doing spiritual warfare necessary and literally beating down our own passions and desires and wants, so that we become really just pure of heart for the Lord—then we are not able to form really good, strong Christian friendships.
If we entered Christian community for any reason other than the praise and glory of God and because we think it is his will for us to enter the community, then we’ve made a very big mistake. And it follows that unless we are using our women’s groups for the same purposes—to give honor and glory and praise to God, and to fulfill his will to build a people for this purpose—then we’re wasting time in the Lord’s name.
It is not enough to live a holy life alone, unless you were meant to. Then it might be okay, if that was God’s will. But not in Christian community. We have to share this life in Christ with one another, and women’s groups are only one of many places where that should take place. But I have heard many people tell me—when they’re talking about a difficulty in their women’s group, they will say, “When we talk about spiritual things, one of the women just shuts down. She will not talk about spiritual things.” Or she’ll say so. She’ll say, “I will not. I do not want to talk about spiritual things, and I won’t.” That’s really sad. And I heard a story about one woman who was in that situation, who was the head of the group, and she just started battering the Lord’s walls down about it, just begging him to change this. And the next time she went to women’s group, they all talked about spiritual things!
So the Lord can do it. And if you’re the head of a group where this isn’t happening, don’t be hopeless about it; don’t give up. If you can, find out why it’s so difficult for a sister to do that, and then help her do it. There could be a lot of reasons: she could feel threatened about it; it could be that her prayer life is in a shambles, and she’s embarrassed to admit it to anybody or ask for help. There could be lots of reasons, and most of them are pretty easy to overcome.
Now, I always—whenever I give a talk on something like this, I always—it seems like the pendulum always swings way one way or way. . . . Like, one time in the Servant Branch I was talking about women’s groups, and I said—somebody was asking some questions about a group, and it seemed to me that they needed to talk about, you know, their life, what’s going on in their life. They needed to have some time for the kind of chit-chat that my women’s group has as soon as we get in the door [Jeanne laughs]. “You know,” I said, “there’s really not—there’s nothing wrong with some chit-chat once in a while; that’s very valuable. In fact, that should be going on.” And she went away and said, “Oh, we can’t talk about anything important in women’s group.” [Jeanne laughs.]
So lest you think that when I talk about holy conversation in women’s groups—things about the Lord and our life in the Lord—being essential. . . . They are essential, absolutely; you must be doing that together. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t talk about the kids and the problems with the kids; the baby’s diapers (you know, washing them and getting hints from your sister on how to do it better or easier). Those things are all part of our life in Christ, too. If you are living in Christ, every time you change a baby’s diaper or fool around with a machine at work that won’t work or a garage door, then you’re doing something that’s sacred. Because you belong to the Lord, and he’s the center of your life; you’re trying to get to the center of his life. And so that makes what you do worthwhile and holy. Because you’re doing all things in Christ.
So, please don’t go back to your women’s groups and say, “We are going to have holy conversations from now on.” I am not saying that. In fact, I want it to be a natural part of our sharing that we talk about what the Lord is doing in our life; that we bring the problems we are having with getting our prayer time in and ask our sisters for help; that we talk about all those things that go to make up our life in Christ. We just need to put more and more in the pot.
But, unfortunately, one of the things that people withhold most often from the common pot in community is their life in Christ. “I’ll share about a lot of things, but I won’t share about that.” So we need to be so comfortable with that that it’s just as natural as breathing, and that, of course, we would talk about those things in women’s group. We also talk about ideas in women’s groups. We talk about spiritual things, but we don’t become a Scripture study. We don’t become a prayer meeting. We talk about ideas, but we don’t become a debating society. We need to have balance. But this part is crucial: that we share about our life in Christ is very important. And when that’s not happening—it really is hard on the rest of the group when somebody just flat out refuses. So I just want to encourage you to work with one another, to help one another, to do this more easily.
Okay, that’s it. Let’s discuss.
[Recording ends here.]
Endnotes
1. Jeanne here refers to an article by Paul DeCelles, “Friendship in Men’s and Women’s Groups,” For the Records column, Vine and Branches, April 1992. She references and quotes the article throughout this talk. Return to text
Copyright © 2022 People of Praise, Inc.