One of the oft-noted joys of meeting up with old friends (as I’ve done today), even after years, is the way conversation can be gladly picked up just where it last left off. The love and friendships I encounter along life’s way profoundly touch me, teaching me, every day.

What the late and great journal keeper and poet May Sarton wrote about the natural world she believed also, I think, of the special gift of long friendship …

… if one looks long enough at almost anything, looks with absolute attention at a flower, a stone, the bark of a tree, grass, snow, a cloud, something like revelation takes place. Something is “given”, and perhaps that something is always a reality outside the self. We are aware of God only when we cease to be aware of ourselves, not in the negative sense of denying the self, but in the sense of losing self in admiration and joy.

May Sarton
Journal of a Solitude, page 99

Just so, for me, in honoured and treasured friendships – near or far.