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1962, Auburn University, C S Lewis, Four Loves, Friends, Friendship, Hurricane Sandy, North Carolina, Reunions
“Is any pleasure on earth as great as a circle of Christian friends by a fire?”_____C. S. Lewis, Letters of C. S. Lewis
As Hurricane Sandy raged outside, blowing leaves and branches into the turbulent air and hurling power lines to the cold ground, four old friends sat in a beautiful mountain home in North Carolina around a fire simmering in a lofty stone fireplace and laughed until they cried, mocking the petulant weather that had tried to keep them apart. The date had been set weeks before. They would not be dissuaded, because they had not been together for 15 years. How could that have happened?
Fifty years before, these four women entered Auburn University as freshmen and pledged themselves to the same sorority, never realizing that they were embarking on a life-long journey with each other. They had come from disparate backgrounds and different cities. They possessed varying tastes, friends, and faiths. One liked books; another, sports. One had a boyfriend; another, three. All of them were attractive, healthy, carefree young girls, oblivious to the knowledge that they were living in a time which was about to experience catastrophic changes. Their president would soon be assassinated; drugs would replace alcohol as a staple on college campuses; Vietnam would become a grim reminder of death and despair among their peers. But the fall of 1962 was an untroubled, magical time in “the loveliest village on the plains”— Auburn, Alabama.
Happily, I was one of these four; and I still don’t know how we gravitated to each other rather than to some of the other fine girls who pledged our sorority. However, I choose to believe, along with C. S. Lewis, that for the Christian, there are “no chances. A secret Master of Ceremonies has been at work.”
“Christ…can truly say to every group of Christian friends ‘You have not chosen one another but I have chosen you for one another.’ The Friendship is not a reward for our discrimination and good taste in finding one another out. It is the instrument by which God reveals to each the beauties of all the others….by Friendship God opens our eyes to them. They are, like all beauties, derived from Him and then…increased by Him through the Friendship itself.”
_____The Four Loves
Lewis calls friendship “that luminous, tranquil, rational world of relationships freely chosen,” which is a beautiful and true way to describe the phenomenon of friendship; but I don’t think we knew that at eighteen. Thankfully, we know it now—and have sense enough to treasure it.
As the wind roared outside and we carefully selected the pieces of our lives to lay out for our old friends to grieve, marvel, or laugh over, I discovered several very important things about life, love, and friendship.
First of all, laughter really is the best medicine for the soul. For three days, we laughed with raucous abandon, as “do you remember…” became the opening line for one story after another. I had no idea the halcyon days of our youth were so hilarious! Of course, they may only seem that way through the eyes of wisdom and experience. We didn’t come to North Carolina with unmarred lives. We’ve battled cancer, heart disease, and diabetes. We’ve been devastated by Alzheimer’s and autism, old age and death. But we are still able to laugh. And by doing so, we can lighten our present loads and diminish our past ones.
A second point worth considering is that time and suffering really do deepen and mature us, so that we become not only better friends ourselves, but also more cognizant of the need for solid relationships that last. With maturity, we recognize how insufferable we were (and are). But, in the same way, we see that the stubborn streak in a person of eighteen becomes the endurance ability in that person at sixty-eight; and we begin to see in our friends the “beauties” that C. S. Lewis speaks of. We are all flawed, but we are also beautiful; and God has given us to each other.
Lastly, I have to say that the best gift my friends gave me in this reunion experience was gratitude. I am so very thankful that we are all still able to enjoy the luminous qualities of friendship that grow over a long period of time. I appreciate that my friends still love me and are concerned about the things that matter to me. I am thankful that God has been so good to all of us and that we have not suffered deprivation or disaster. And perhaps most of all I am grateful that, though we have experienced many fearful and even devastating things, we still recognize Him as our source and our “Master of Ceremonies.”
Thanks for a great reunion, Lynne, Jane and Kay!