Spirituality of Holy Friction
Closeness forms around snags, the places where a person’s real shape sticks out and catches on yours. We often imagine intimacy as a place where two people agree, where conversation flows easily and nobody rubs anyone the wrong way. But perhaps some of our deepest relationships are formed not in the absence of friction, but in the way we learn to live with it. Disagreement, oddly, can be intimacy’s proof of trust. It says, I believe this relationship can hold my actual opinion. I don’t have to become someone else to belong here. Of course, not every disagreement is healthy. There is a difference between being known and being wounded; between honest conversation and the need to win. But when we can disagree without withdrawing our affection, something beautiful happens: we discover that the relationship is larger than the issue. Perhaps this is part of what it means to be a community of faith. We gather not because we have all arrived at the same conclusions, but because we...