Where Elephants Swim

Best friends come in small numbers, great friends are even fewer and farther between. Why is that? Well I think mostly it takes time (I’m talking years here) to deepen a friendship that’s prepared to bare all. It’s as raw and naked as we are want to get because that’s the very essence of a great friendship.

Great friendships coax cavernous depths of emotion from us that other kinds of friendships don’t. They command of the participants a frankness, a transparency and a depth of non-conditional love that’s meaty. ‘Love’ as a meaning in these modern times is so often-used it’s like a kitchen tea towel thrown in the wash so often its true meaning fades as time goes on.

Great friendships command such an honesty between people it can be a scary thing. Scary because imperfection of any kind can seem so intolerable. We get over ourselves eventually don’t we! Actually the very nature of a great friendship demands that we do.

They grow like mustard seeds, their beginnings are small but over time they grow into a strong shrub that has substance and an equally strong heart-beat.

I don’t believe anyone goes knowingly into a great friendship because the road to is most often unmarked. The Australian theologian Leon Morris when describing a particular book of the Bible once noted,”John [the Gospel of] is like a pool, in which a child may wade and an elephant may swim.” I think the same might be said of a great friendship.