No one has greater love than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. John 15.13

In relation to our Presidents, we think of First Lady’s…lately First Gentlemen. A new angle is First Friends. I recently read journalist Gary Ginsburg’s FIRST FRIENDS: THE POWERFUL UNSUNG (AND UNELECTED) PEOPLE WHO SHAPED OUR PRESIDENTS.

Ginsburg chronicles the special friend of nine presidents who gave them companionship, affirmation, honest feedback, listening, off the clock free space, and apparently knew the timing of what was needed when.

A partial list: Six Foot-Three Thomas Jefferson and Five Foot-Four James Madison - the only First Friend who later became President. Abraham Lincoln and former roommate Joshua Speed. Franklin Roosevelt and his distant cousin Daisy Suckley. Lifelong friends Baptist Harry Truman and Jewish Eddie Jacobson. Introvert Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo. John Kennedy and British nobleman David Ormsby-Gore. Arkansas Bill Clinton and African American Vernon Jordan.

The book is a good read of known and new information about these people who were such a zigzag between like and unlike each other.

Ginsburg writes: “Real friendships manifest themselves in different ways and are forged for different reasons. When I think of my closest friends, some are confidants; others are sports buddies. I enjoy some friends for their wisdom and wit; others for the comfort and stability they provide. I imagine the same holds true for everyone including commanders in chief.”

The notion of first friends also struck me from a time view. Who were some of your first friends?

A couple early first friends popped up quickly. Bobby Rolen, same age, both December born, lived up the street on Ave J, near where my Morgan grandparents lived.

The summer we were five, we spent many days in my grandparents’ magic backyard. Back there, we served in World War 2 together. Not sure if we were in the South Pacific or European theater. We did have a cool Army tent my dad put up. We also made a couple safaris to Africa to hang out with Tarzan. Our attempts to suspend a swinging ‘rope’ from my Uncle Bobby’s Chinaberry tree were hard on the tree, our knees, and my grandmother’s flower bed.

Next year, 1st grade at Bush School, Bobby and I were in Mrs. Orr’s class. Kids were seated in double-seater table desks – alphabetically.

Significantly, that matched Billy Morgan with Johnny Mount. Another December born. Also, he was left-handed, like me. Back then, you got the drift that being left-handed wasn’t cool. “Billy, Johnny, don’t you want to try the pencil in your other hand?” Mrs. Orr whispered regularly…and unsuccessfully.

Bobby Rolen and I also went to Ensley Methodist Church, so were in Sunday school and youth group together along with Bush and Ensley High School. Now, retired from the FBI, Bobby and I have touched base a couple times over the years, also kept up through a mutual friend. But for the most part, Bobby is in my trove of growing up cherished first friend memories.

Johnny and I have been fast friends across the years. All through school we hung out together. Double dated together. His parents loved me and my parents loved him. There are uncountable crazy exploits we got in for which the code of silence only occasionally is broken. Most conversations begin in the middle of sentences…you remember that day in the 3rd grade…you remember that night we snuck out your dad’s car? Lot's of getting together for birthday lunch meals.

The First Friends conversations and connections have continued since the alphabetized double desk in Mrs. Orr’s class. …Incredible bonus: we have been Methodist minister colleagues to boot.

Some incomplete, uneven, no special order notions about friends…

+ My friend Barbara Harper had a framed poster: “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and sings it to you when you forget.”

I guess that could sound Hallmark sweet to some. But I find depth here. We are blessed by friends who hang in with us, help us keep our bearings when the various things that rattle our life cages come along.

+ Some of us chuckle about the difference between Foxhole and Revolving Door friends. Revolving door friends are fun yet seem to slip out the door when things get complicated.

As you can figure, a foxhole friend sticks with you when things get tough, and we are not the world’s greatest company. Thanks for my foxhole friends! I hope I have proven more a foxhole friend than a revolving door friend across the years. Maybe, we are all better foxhole friends sometimes more than others.

+ Friends for the Seasons of Life. From 1st grade to college roommate friends cover several seasons of life. Friends related to where we have lived across the years. Friends we have worked with along the way. Great friends emerged in all eight churches we served.

I appreciate how FaceBook connections help bridge the time gap a bit with people from the seasons of our lives. In the oddness of Godness, even later it snaps even more how much those people meant to us then and mean to us now.

+ Mentors. Mentors have a special friend role in our lives. Usually, a little older, and more advanced in life and profession than we are, they coach us, nudge us. Though their wisdom and advice are often invaluable, we learn how to be an adult, how to do our work, often just by watching them.

My Uncle Bob Morgan was THE mentor of my life. But there have been many. Here are only a few: Barry Anderson. Bill Curl. Jerry Sisson. Allen Montgomery. Oliver Clark. With them many more are on the Mentor Continuum in my life. Some may have been surprised at how the model and pattern of their life and work guided me.

Along the way, you hope to give a bit as good as you were given. I think there may be a few who consider me something of a mentor. With them, it is surprising how fast the mentor-mentoree relation becomes a great colleague friend relationship.

+ Cousin Friends and Siblings. I have a dozen 1st cousins on my mother and dad’s side of the family. There are good memories of growing with each of them.

What has been a great joy is winding up with several of them to be adult friends who like each other along with sharing such a tender family root system of ties and memories. My cousin Jim on my mother’s side and my cousin Michael on my dad’s side were close enough in age to be brother-like cousins and great friends.

+ Spouse Friends. Some speak of their spouse as their best friend. For sure, Dianne is like no other friend I have…ultimate fox hole companion!

I don’t recall the details, though, I remember wonderful Pastoral Counselor Charles Alexander making the case that spouses are not exactly to be considered under the friend rubric.

I think Charles’ thought was something to the effect that spouses are committed to one another’s growth as a human being which goes beyond the usual bounds of friends. This doesn’t mean trying to mold our spouse into our desires. But help them discover who God made and means them to be.

Spouses find good in us that we would not know otherwise, and they are number one on our case when we procrastinate or try to over-control or just generally be a jerk.

Sorry, Charles, if I didn’t say it right. But I think here is enough for some discussion and reflection.

+ Parents and Adult Children Friends. You know the old line: “When I was a teenager, I couldn’t believe how little my parents knew. On into my adult years, it’s amazed me how much they had learned!” Though we love each other, there are pockets of times when parents and kids may not particularly like each other. As time passes, we find that we really do like each other, see each other as pretty cool human beings after all.

It wasn’t long enough, but I was able to have some adult friendship time with my parents. Dianne and I now enjoy friendship with our adult children. They are principled, smart and funny…know stuff we don’t know! They seem to accept and appreciate the strength and foible mix that we parents are.

++++++++++

“No greater love…to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

Just now, those words make me think of the 13-US service people who lost their lives trying to help the Afghan people at the Kabul airport. Not exactly a usual way of thinking of friends laying down their lives. But there is some sort of connection there.

As I have considered some aspects of friends, it occurs to me that there is a sort of daily laying down our lives with and for people we love, ones we consider friends. It’s not exactly dying but a living our non-repeatable time together. We are here instead of there, we do this instead of that, and so we lay down/share our precious increments of life time together.

So, thank you, friends, for the time and times of our lives.