We Did Not Wear Armor Well

We Did Not Wear Armor Well

(“Go in peace. We have taken an oath in the Lord’s name to be friends forever.” 1 Samuel 20:42b)

There were bottles of cabernet, a well-used kitchen table,
a couch shared with dogs and teenagers and talk that could
extend for hours.
We shared the wine those times when the days were thicker than
mud and we resigned ourselves to well-worn company protected
by in-house
understanding that the world could not enter in.
And so we would begin, whether from shame or fear,
to share what we hid most often outside those weary walls.
Occasionally we socialized (Sunday’s of course, after all,
I was a pastor). But we were clear from the beginning:
Friendship was why we were together.
But at a banquet, a wedding reception, bingo, or groups
of more than a dozen,
we were always the first to leave. We loved every person attending,
but social anxiety had the last word far too often for us both.
They said we were well-liked; we did not believe it.

Neither one of was very brave, though we shared our opinions readily;
God knows, we both had a trove of accumulated knowledge that we
could dispense at will. We did not wear armor well, sometimes
the sunlight was all that sent us
seeking each other’s company when our personal
darkness stole the day from us.

We lived only a block apart, but now hundreds of miles away,
the same friendship carried me for months, but awkwardly.
We once sparred gently with our wine at the table,
but now, unable to see your face, to hear the laugh in your voice,
I fear, still without armor, I let a priceless gift gather dust on the shelf.

With so many miles and years between us now,
with the place the path has led me now,
with former friends who ignore me now,
(in their cases, they could not understand my shift)
I still long for a place, a person, to sift through the
unwinding of life. When I have failed, I have feared
all the more.
But, though far in time and space, the door between us, sweet friend,
is open. My best friend here,
a retired Lutheran minister, now as liberal as I am,
would complete an amicable trinity.