I watch my 13-year-old daughter and her circle of friends, remembering back to my own days in junior high. The best of what adult women know as friendship often is in short supply in these early settings, as girls jockey for rank, position and popularity. Even so, these young women are beginning to learn that being in community means sharing time and space (even virtually) with those who have similar concerns, values, interests and beliefs.
In her book The Friendship of Women: A Spiritual Tradition, Joan Chittister explores women’s friendships by examining biblical women and their lives. Chittister observes that women’s friendships are marked by openness, possibility, support, empathy, personal experience, nurturance, acceptance and intimacy.
We women in the ELCA, both individually and collectively, offer the church a special model of how to be in relationship with one another.
This message is adapted from “New Hope for the Human Race” written by Linda Post Bushkofsky in the January/February 2004 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine. Today is the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost. The readings are Jeremiah 31:7-9; Job 42:1-6, 10-17 (semicontinuous); Psalm 126; Psalm 34:1-8 [19-22] (semicontinuous); Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52 (Green).
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