Catching Up

Last night I was catching up with a very very old friend of mine, who’s getting married this October. She was asking me to be the overall co-ordinator for her wedding, and so bought me dinner. Grins. And as I sat there, I kept telling her I can’t believe she’s really gonna get married. She’s the oldest friend that I have, that I still keep in touch with, and we grew up together in church. So our history really stretches back a long long way.

We sat around the dinner table, just catching up and discussing abt some of the preliminary details for her wedding, and then our conversations turned more serious. She’s had her fair share of problems in the family, and also her pretty complicated history of a bad relationship that dragged on for 8 yrs. I told her I’ve never seen her so happy when she mentioned Joseph in the past, as she does when she talks about Douglas.

Then the topic turned to friends. We talked abt how many friends do we still keep from so long ago. About the friends who have drifted away, and the friends who have always just been around. The ones who have totally disappeared from sight, and those who let us down. One thing that’s very different about me is that I’m very needy towards friends. I built a community around me that I very much cherish and so give of myself to. In return, I ask for the same degree of honesty, openness and care. She doesn’t really have too close a community to call her own, and so after all these years, she’s had a much smaller handful of people whom she could really relate to and talk to.

So I started telling her abt my take on community, esp in church. I shared with her what Henry told Zhang Mu Shi on Sunday, something that really struck me very deeply. He was addressing the 2nd Service in church, and he said that when we all started pioneering the 2nd Service, the one thing we had in common was that we all had been hurt very deeply. By one reason or another, we all carried very deep wounds in our hearts, and so everyone was very fragmented, being very much unable to even take care of ourselves. What helped us to overcome it was the fact that out of this broken community, we had a group of people who had a very pastoral attitude, who reached out to each other despite their own hurts. It went a long way towards healing each other, and helping more and more people to stand up once again. It used to be that the 2nd Service was as cold as that of the Main Service, and no one really bothered much with each other. And we firmly believed it was because there were those who took the trouble to care of each other, which helped to rebuild the community. No amount of planning, dynamic sermons or inspirational music could have achieved that.

Then we started to talk abt the friends who had disappeared, and those whom we never wanted to see again. We both had our share of friends who turned out to be major disappointments. I used to ask myself if I shd be so judgmental towards people. After all, we all err from time to time. But I guess there are some things in a person that violates a very core principle in your own life, that makes you unable to ever face that person and look him or her in the eye the same way ever again. I always said that the one thing I resent the most is to be have been deceived or betrayed.

I remember the feeling once when I was crazy over a girl, only to be devastated when I realized that all the while she was crazy over someone else. After that I had a really torrid time talking to her, for fear that I might not get over her, and dreading the day she falls for someone else, but never me. I guess that’s a normal reaction, to want to avoid being hurt again. So maybe I really am not being too harsh if there are people whom I slowly let go of, knowing that they’re people who would turn out to be a disappointment in the end.

Of course, not everything was so heavy hearted. We still teased each other abt the past, when the whole church would assume we would end up together, we still laughed and joked abt the crazy things we did around the church together, and the friends in common that we turned out to have way after we’ve each gone on to different things in life and hardly caught up with each other anymore.

And just like that, 4 hrs sped past us, and we had to go home.

There’s something abt friends you grew up with, that nothing can ever replace. There’s nothing to pretend, and nothing to hide from each other, and on the whole I think I really enjoyed myself last night.

Grins.

Of course, the fact that dinner was free certainly helped. Tee hee.

Oh, the song now playing is one of my all-time favorites. A song that I listened to non-stop after I first heard it. The lyrics are beautiful, as is the melody. The fact that its from my fav Hugh Grant movie, Notting Hill, also helps.

Grins.

Enjoy!