In a glossy, hashtaggy voice, Sow and Friedman describe what it is like to live friendship for better and for worse. Much of the book discusses how friends “stretch” you-and stretching hurts as it strengthens. They can write honestly about the beauties of friendship because they have also confronted some of its pain. Sow and Friedman ditched the comfort-food ideal of friendship long ago. A new book, Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close, by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman, gives one of the best defenses of sacrificial friendship I have read in a long time. ‘Big Friendship: How We Keep Each Other Close’ by Aminatou Sow and Ann Friedman offers a defense of sacrificial friendship.Īs contemporary secular writers notice how attenuated our concept of friendship has become and look for ways to build lives where friendship is central, they are also rediscovering the sacrifices common to deep friendships. For Aelred, friendship is sweet (he himself was called a “honeycomb” because of his tenderness toward his monks) but it also requires painful honesty, loyalty in spite of faults and selfless love. Aelred’s dialogues, Spiritual Friendship. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” That model, in which friendship can be the site of our sanctification because it is a site of sacrifice, animates much of St. Jesus identifies friendship with discipleship and with his own sacrifice for us on the cross, in Jn 15:13-15 (of course it’s in John, the Gospel of the “beloved disciple”): “No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jonathan, having made a covenant of friendship with David, gladly sacrifices personal safety, his relationship with his father and the kingship.

The greatest friendships in the Bible are sites of sacrifice. It isn’t even the most obvious Christian model. This is not the only Christian model for friendship.

Friendship is safe, because friendship is too small to really hurt you. Friendship is sweet because friendship is easy. Friendship is “The Golden Girls,” where every tiny comic tiff is resolved by the end of the half-hour. We often picture friendship as our refuge-romantic relationships bring drama, work brings hassle, family is chaos, but with friends you can relax. There is a way of praising friendships that unintentionally undermines them.

The big friendship book