I’m in Birmingham, Alabama for the next few days to preach at the Cathedral Church of the Advent and — you guessed it! — to give a talk later tonight on “spiritual friendship.” The good folks over at AL.com were kind enough to let me say something on their website about friendship, and I thought it would be worth sharing here too. An excerpt:

When I move to a new city, as I have had to do four times in the last decade, the question that usually looms largest in my mind is: Will I be able to make new friends here? I’ve been single all of my adult life, and without a spouse or children to help ease my transitions, I rely a lot on friendship, both for the support and comfort I need but also so that I can have a dependable place in my life to give support and comfort to others. Friendship isn’t just an optional luxury for me. It feels more like a calling.

For a while, my passion for finding and cultivating close friendship felt like an uncommon hobby with no blogs or group texts or nerdy conferences where I could go to gush with fellow hobbyists about it. Sometimes it seemed as though I were making things up as I went along, performing a dance of friendship I had to choreograph myself. I knew a lot of people were like me — men consistently report wanting close friendships at the same rates that women say they do — but it also seemed like a secret that none of us wanted to discuss with each other.

But then, being a Christian, I decided to start rummaging through the history of my religious tradition, looking for friendship exemplars — forerunners and models and saints — whose lives and writings might be able to give me guidance for my twenty-first century life…

Read the rest here.