VERY SCATTERED THOUGHTS ON ST AELRED’S SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIP: Read due to the discussion toward the end of this thread over at Disputed Mutability. I seem to recall that Andrew Sullivan cites it also, in Love Undetectable, so apparently it… speaks to a wide range of people. For my own part, I think I need to let it percolate a little while; here are my first impressions. If any of my readers have read it and want to chip in, please do!

1. I don’t know that this book spoke to me as deeply, or at least as immediately, as e.g. Alice von Hildebrand’s exceptional essay on friendship. I feel like (and this could be a trick of memory) her essay spoke more about the devoted service of friendship, whereas Aelred tends to emphasize friends’ harmony of wills. I’m rarely in full harmony with my friends’ wills (…or with anyone else’s, you may add), so that language is not very helpful to me in figuring out how to order my own life.

2. This definition of a “good person” was striking: “We call a man ‘good’ who, according to the limits of our mortality, ‘living soberly and justly and godly in this world,’ is resolved neither to ask others to do wrong nor to do wrong himself at another’s request.”

I’ve growled before about my loathing for the concept of the “good person.” But I was intrigued by Aelred’s definition, in which good people may do bad things, but they don’t involve others in their mess–they don’t compound the bad deeds of others by following in their footsteps, nor do they lead others astray.

3. The dialogue (really a four-person-o-logue) has many distinct personalities, and it’s fun to watch them interact. (Walter struck me as kind of catty!) I sometimes have poked fun at the convention, in philosophical dialogues, of opening with professions of friendship and humble desire to hear the words of the master, I cannot teach you my son for you far surpass me in etc etc. But now I see it as an endearingly clumsy way of indicating a deep truth: Philosophy is best done by friends.

4. There is a very powerful, bravura passage about Jonathan and David, toward the end, which I should re-read before I return the book to the library.

5. It’s interesting the emphasis Aelred places on keeping confidences and being able to bare one’s heart, pour out all one’s thoughts and feelings, as the mark of true friendship. There’s also interesting stuff about how to correct a friend (and when not to), including a fascinating description of Aelred’s own difficult friendship with a sharp-tempered man.