In 1998 a movie came out that I love. It was called Waking Ned Devine. Maybe you’ve seen it, too? It’s a beautiful film, literally and substantively. It follows the inhabitants of Tulaigh Mhór, (Tullymore), a small Irish village. I won’t give everything away. The community, small and tightly knit, commits to an attempt at community-wide Lottery fraud, (as you do), when Ned wins a substantial sum in the lotto and dies of shock.

When the Lotto man comes to town to interview Ned, a second man, Michael O’Sullivan, is reluctantly installed in Ned’s place, and the whole community pretends along—the goal being to split the massive lotto winnings among the whole of the village.

On the day of Ned’s funeral, the whole village turned out. But unfortunately, the Lotto Man showed up at the exact same time. So, in a panic, Jackie O’Shea pivots. He delivers the eulogy not for the dead man, but for the man sitting right in front of him.

Michael O’Sullivan was my great friend. But I don’t ever remember telling him that. The words that are spoken at a funeral are spoken too late for the man who is dead. What a wonderful thing it would be to visit your own funeral. To sit at the front and hear what was said, maybe say a few things yourself. Michael and I grew old together. But at times, when we laughed, we grew young. If he was here now, if he could hear what I say, I’d congratulate him on being a great man, and thank him for being a friend.

And of course, you will recall it was Ned who was the dead man, and Michael was himself sitting in the front row, hearing his friend’s words for him.

It’s a little quirky, but it’s a beautiful moment of friendship in cinema. It’s really a fabulously beautiful film. The hills and dales, the wee village of Tulaigh Mhór, and even Michael O’Sullivan, careening naked down the byways on a motorcycle.

For a year and a half I’ve been doing this exercise with people and often I’ve said, (including, I believe, at least once in this series), that True Friendship is my very favorite card in the deck. I have made it a little joke, (not joking), that I’m allowed to pick favorites, you’re allowed to pick favorites, and this one is my favorite.

If you’re keeping track, that completes my five. Protection of the Environment, Wisdom, Helpfulness, A World at Peace, and now, True Friendship.

I have already admitted that I value all fifty-seven ideas in degrees. I have learned to value values. And I think I’ve identified to you that there is no love card. No kindness card in the deck. You will not see an essay, at least not with a photograph of a card, on generosity or vulnerability. Because these cards aren’t in the deck. (Stay tuned for some bonus episodes).

These five cards still seem right to me, and I’ll hang my hat on them. I could spend my life discipling at the feet of these five things and never reach the end of my study.

I have another deck! It’s the Animal Kingdom deck. It’s the same words, the same phrases, same numbers and value categories. But there’s an animal on each one, along with a fact about that critter that exemplifies that value.

And very apropos to the situation, the animal for True Friendship is the domestic cow. Isn’t that nice? I love cows. My dad milked cows and raised cows and now my brother owns many cows. I do realize there’s a bit of a sticking point between cows and my value for Protection of the Environment, but regardless, I feel better when there are cows nearby.

The card says “Cows love to spend time with their best friends. Being near their best friend lowers a cow’s stress level.” I love that. I love that it’s true.

I am blessed with extraordinarily good friendships. It’s a struggle for me not to make this post a list of named names. Give a series of shoutouts to people whose love and affection for me has been a salve against a wearying world. Of course I will not do that. Probably.

I have known friendship all the days of my life. I am a good friend. I have been a good friend. I can be a good friend. I have the capacity for good friendship. I suppose I have not always been a good friend in every circumstance, but if we get what we give, I have strong evidence of my willingness to give. It’s the only real explanation for the blessed, miraculous place I find myself in now, in my forties, well supported and surrounded on all sides by friends new and old.

I have already told you that I have performed two marriage ceremonies. I have been called upon for three more, my name given out by the county clerk as a possible officiant. I have politely declined; this thing I do I reserve for friends.

My wife is my closest friend. We share finances and foodstuffs and plans for the future until our very old age. We even share sweatshirts.

My brother—whose nose I bloodied on the side of a freeway in the middle of the night—is perhaps my oldest friend, though I regret not realizing it sooner.

I am still close with the friend who stood as best man in my wedding. I am friends now with his kids. He is a treasure to me.

My friend, the beautiful musician, allows me to know him deeply, an honor he reserves and guards. I will apparently allow myself to be known by most anybody who shows even the slightest interest. It’s no great trick to know me. But for him to let me into his heart is a deep honor indeed.

I have so many friends, and of such varying quality and character that it’s now totally impossible for me to name a best friend. I would be lost without any of them. One day, (indeed it’s already started happening), we will all begin dying and I do not know how I will bear it. I do not know if I can bear it. A piece of me may well continue to die with each of them until at last I go on to the next thing which I am almost unmanageably unsure of but in which I hope we are all together.

There is, apparently, a great dearth of friendship, especially here in America, and especially among men. I have read about this, and I have thought a lot about it and why it could possibly be so. I have many thoughts, and many of them are either loosely or tightly bound to machismo. Bound to self, many men seem incapable of defining for themselves true masculinity, which is actually just a piece of true humanity.

And so they take up their time with manly pursuits that do not yield good fruits in their lives. I’ve seen it a million times. You’ve seen it a million times. We endlessly pursue a sense of worth at the expense of honesty and truth-with-self. Capability and obligation very often trump vulnerability and kindness. Value is ascribed to an ability to be a rock; an island.

I am again the subject of an embarrassment of riches. I cannot contain them all; my storehouse overflows and I will spend my life being grateful for the love I experience. I still want to make this a greatest hits list of my friends.

My friend who I’ve loved since youth group and who sang in my wedding.

My friend the thoughtful, well-read intellectual who nevertheless saw fit to make me godfather to his child. His wife who I’ve known for much less time but who still somehow seems to know me as if we were children together. She speaks my language. She knows me. We are deep friends, too, in our own right.

My friend from whom I stole $250 and who has loved me as a father would do for more than twenty five years. His wife who loves me as one of her very own and has since those early days. Their children whose affection I treasure. The $250 thing is an interesting story to tell but our love is built on a hundred trips to Seattle to pick up bags of green coffee in a Peugeot wagon, a thousand small construction projects done together, a million uneventful events of life.

True Friendship is my favorite because in it I find contained a multitude of the values-of-life. True friendship with my spouse, with my kids, with my family, with my friends. True friendship with my dogs and with the sheep of the field, with the natural world. Perhaps even true friendship with the God of my childhood?

Each of these essays has been beautiful to write down, to let my fingers linger over the keys awhile and decide what I will say and what I won’t. And often I have changed my mind about a value once or twice or three times just in the course of writing it.

I started this one with the idea that true friendship was my favorite and I expected to be convinced otherwise. But in the end, it remains my favorite, and perhaps is more firmly rooted as such.

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