So many books...

An elderly friend died recently. He lived alone in an assisted living facility, surrounded by memorabilia and books, hundreds of books.

His friends were left to dispose of his possessions and, of course, the books. More than 400 of them.

I thought of my own books as I sorted through his. Many, many, were unread, like my own. They and their selection spoke of his wide-ranging interests. Germany after the great 20th Century wars, wars’ victims, the agonizing state of Palestine and Palestinians, the great ancient lost cities. He had four Bibles.  He had subscribed to the Folio Book Club. Many of those tomes had arrived in the mail and never been opened. Cellophane still enclosed them.

Boxed books, massive art books, several mysteries, biographies. Most unread.

He was a gentle, unassumingly erudite man. He would, when asked, recall his past and his struggles for human rights and dignity for all. He was gay. In his eighties when I met him, he never mentioned being gay. There seemed no reason to. He was at peace with his life and his world.

His library bespoke him: his fascinations, his passions, his curiosities. His library spoke, yes, volumes, of the privilege it was to know him and the honor to be bequeathed responsibility for these books.

He was a member of our Quaker congregation, and it was clear from his bequest that he wanted us to have and to see that his library was put in good hands. And so we sold them cheaply to Quaker Friends and neighbors. I bought five or six. Among them were a boxed Folio edition of Thomas Paine’s “The Rights of Man,” Calvin Trillin’s warm, evocative “Messages from My Father,” and Jimmy Carter’s impassioned “Palestine. Peace not Apartheid.” I also bought the massive “An Incomplete Education, 3684 things you should have learned but probably didn’t.”

I don’t know whether my friend read any of them. They were clearly well cared for. How many of those 3684 “things” did he absorb? What of the “Rights of Man”? The spines were uncreased except for the Bibles, which may have been handed down for generations, as Bibles often are. The pristine books might have been read. He no doubt cared for his books as he did for all who knew him. As I have said, above all, he was a gentle, deeply caring soul.

Now that I’ve turned seventy, I’ve looked at what I will leave when I die, and what I will have left undone and, yes, unread. I have at least as many books on my shelves. Who will take them, what do they say of me, will they ever be read — by me or anyone else?

Does it matter?

Yes, no and maybe. Especially maybe... You, friends, will decide.

Friends without enemies

The proverb “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” came to mind with the news that Iran (our “enemy”?) is giving bags full of money to Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan (our “friend”?)

First, let’s note that the terms “enemies” and “friends,” as applied to countries (which include land, animals, insects and people in addition to governments) is political short-hand and should not be taken at face value.

But if we accept these labels for the purposes of political discussion, what happens when an “enemy” (Iran) becomes the “friend” of a “friend” (Afghanistan)?

Could this be good news? Could this make our “enemy” less of an enemy? Would this not provide some kind of opening to friendship through a mutual “friend”?

Apparently not. Instead, the revelation seems to be having the effect of transforming Afghanistan into “the enemy.”

Perhaps this has always been the case and our government has simply refused to recognize it for geopolitical reasons, not the least of which has to do with natural resources.

The Karzai government (not “Afghanistan”) has always been duplicitous at best. Our own “bags of money” haven’t done much good, at least not for us.

I’m no expert but it seems to me that relationships in the Middle East and Central Asia aren’t defined in terms of “enemies” and “friends,” which are static, two-dimensional concepts. I’d go so far as to call them “Western.”

Relationships in Afghanistan and Iran are grounded in religion, culture, history and — opportunity. Those are things you can’t buy with bags of cash, weapons or boots on the ground.

To try to apply “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” or, in this case, “the friend of my friend is my friend,” simply doesn’t compute.

What’s needed throughout the world is a shared ethical culture and perspective. As long as we seek solutions through military force or bags of cash we will lose as a planetary people. We aren’t going to learn the values we share. To the contrary, we will ensure that we remain dangerously divided. For sale to highest bidder.

The good news is that all peoples know we share universal values. He have a “human perspective.” We need to start by naming, extolling and, finally, living by what we share. Doing so needs to extend consistently and rigorously from individual relationships to governmental relationships.

If we succeed, we will all be “friends” and the word “enemy” will disappear from our languages. Then, and only then, will absurd proverbs like “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” become, literally, meaningless.

On calling ourselves "friends"

Governments, political groups and corporations are notorious for twisting the meaning of words. “The Defense Department,” "The Justice Department," “The Central Intelligence Agency,” “Pro-Choice,” “Pro-Life,” “Death taxes,” “Outsourcing,” “Downsizing,” etc.

In “1984,” George Orwell created an entire society reshaped by twisted meanings.

And, of course, technology is constantly changing meaning. We don’t really “watch” television. Most often we gaze uncritically at it. With audience surveys, television is really "watching" us.

We don’t talk “on” the phone; we talk through it.

Thanks to Facebook, one of the most blatant twists in meaning in recent years has been to the word “friend.”

Clearly not all our Facebook “friends” are friends. Most are, at best, acquaintances or connections. Many are institutional, consumer connections.

We know this, but strangely, we have gone along with this bizarre misappropriation of the word "friend." What choice do we have? We are increasingly living in a machine-defined world.

I don’t want to come down too hard on Facebook’s use of the word “friends” because I happen to belong to a group called “The Religious Society of Friends.” We are more commonly known as “Quakers.”

I fear that, in our own way, we Quakers have also done a grave disservice to the word “friend.”

The origin of the use of “Friends” to describe Quakers comes from the New Testament. The reference is from John 15:15 where Jesus tells his disciples “Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends….”

Note that Jesus did not say “Friends” with a capital, as it is written in “Religious Society of Friends.” He said lower-case “friends.” It’s fair to assume he meant it exactly that way. It wasn’t just a manner of speaking. He considered the disciples to be his friends, and he wanted them to see him in the same way.

“friends,” with all that means. Think about what it means to be a friend.

The problem is that whenever I speak to my fellow Quakers as a group, I address them as “Friends,” with a capital. Many Quakers do this. “Friends, let’s consider the best way to proceed etc.” Or we might refer to a fellow Quaker as a “Friend.” Sometimes we say that we should act “in the manner of Friends.”

It would often help more if we simply acted in the manner of, lower case, friends.

Somewhere along the way what Jesus meant by “friend” became an institutional relationship defined by “Friend.” The word was drained of its meaning.

Recently I’ve shared my concern about this change with my fellow Quakers. I've urged Friends to become reacquainted as friends. “Friends” should be friends. Indeed early Quakers in the mid-Seventeenth Century intended exactly what Jesus did when they chose the name from the Scriptures.

To preserve their intention — to preserve true friendship — those early Quakers would have done well to have written the fledgling group’s name as “The religious society of friends.”

But organizations, like technology, change the meaning of words. They twist meaning. It’s up to us to retain it to safeguard meaning in our lives.