Jim Burklo's blog continually throws up quirky, creative and sensitive ways of looking at practical spirituality. Today he's written about a more open view of friendship that I think can come about with greater spiritual depth. Here is part of what he had to say.....

Everybody needs friends who will speak up when they sense something isn't quite right.  We all need somebody to seek us out, if we should suddenly fall off the social radar.  We all need friends who don't just throw up their hands when the going gets rough, but roll up their sleeves and try to be useful.  It helps to get specific about the kind of intervention and support that we need.

Of course, friendship can get tricky if we intervene too much in each others' lives.  Few of us want friends who are going to take over and boss us around.  But neither do we want friends to fail to show concern when we appear to be in crisis.  Sometimes we let our friends down when we go too far in protecting their privacy.

Each of us draws the line at a different place, so what a great idea it is to speak up and tell our friends what we hope from them in tough times!

I admire the "friendship contract" that Jesus specified for his disciples.  He let them know what he wanted from them.  He spelled it out in detail:  stay with me, watch with me, pray with me, preach with me, heal with me, continue my work after my death. To be sure, they broke that contract repeatedly.  But his "contract" with them was ultimately unforgettable.  Even after he was gone, they tried to follow it with each other.  His is an example for us to emulate in expressing to each other what it really means to be friends.

I'm continuing to be energised by reports of "nonsense" and how it's essential to the creative life. This report from Salon explores how "nonsense" from children begins to make a lot of sense in generating creativity. Yesterday I was in a meeting where someone described a planning techniques where "it felt like we were children again and it felt so good." And of course the Jesus character in the Christian testament loves to draw the parallel between the life of the child and the spiritual life - which I think is also the highly creative life.

Let us move to a time of quietness, a time of thanks for the gifts of the whole cosmos. Let us close our eyes and quieten our minds, heightening the other gifts of the senses we enjoy.

We recognize the presence of an imminent spirit in every loving act. And in each such act, a seed of selflessness is planted that might grow richly, fervently, abundantly in yearning hearts.

It is a simple choice to grow in love, yet it is never easy. The World is impatient for decision and action. Making space to see, hear, smell, touch and taste this imminent spirit is not a luxury the World often affords. We are thankful for our awareness of the need for discernment. May we support each other, building resolve to wait for your wisdom.

We are thankful, as we grow ever more aware of how to wait on such wisdom, that this wisdom comes ...so often in ordinary ways.

So we are thankful for our sense of sight. And at the sight of poverty in our streets and on our television screens, we ask how our gifts - seemingly tiny against the scale of the problem - can nevertheless be a force for good?

We see, we discern and our spiritual wisdom grows.

So we are thankful for our sense of taste. At the taste of fresh fruit, may we understand there are places where children have never tasted fresh fruit - and we understand that justice is somehow about stepping into the other's shoes.

We taste, we discern and our spiritual wisdom grows.

So we are thankful for our sense of smell. At the smell of car fumes, we wonder whether our rush to get from point a to point b is fair to those who make their homes on hundreds of small, vulnerable atolls around the World.

We smell, we discern and our spiritual wisdom grows.

So we are thankful for the sense of touch. At the touch of a hand much older than our own, we understand that our differences of opinions with our elders are the product of a wholly different set of circumstances.

We touch, we discern and our spiritual wisdom grows.

So we are thankful for the sense of hearing. And at the sound of a baby's cry, we know that so much of our whole life is about being heard, and how unfulfilling it can be to not be heard.

We hear, we discern and our spiritual wisdom grows.

In a moment of quietness, name up the things for which you give thanks, faithful that in the way the imminent spirit moves, you can find - in discernment - a faithful way to use these gifts.

Our prayers envelop this place and its creatures today and all the gifts that that place and those creatures bring to the World. May this be a place where spiritual wisdom pours in all of the ordinary ways of life such that "the Christ" - the sense of divine always imminent - might be known here.

Amen

I find myself in "church meetings" from time to time. There are frustrations associated with most institutional meetings but I couldn't put my finger on a particular frustration I had with church meetings.

Then someone who never attends such meetings found themselves in one. And I had to ask - at the conclusion - what they thought of it.

They told me they detected a significant feeling of self-congratulation. By this they meant, even amongst the quite open-minded group that were present, there was a pervading sense that the church "had spirituality under control" or was "the peak body for spirituality."

Suddenly a light went on for me. That's the frustration I often feel. A mild sense - (well, often more than mild) - of a stifling self-sufficiency and a separation from the world.

Recently the Uniting Church in Australia made some marvellous decisions about its constitutional preamble. The preamble now recognises an existing indigenous spirituality in this land prior to European settlement. Knowing the mechanics of the church, it is a wonderful achievement for the church to make this institutional recognition. So be assured that I don't want to detract form that achievement. Yet the hyperbole from some church groups about the decision might lead you to believe that the institutional church had just led society down a new path.

Let's face it, hundreds of people have been following God's spirit (church jargon for the perceived tendency in the cosmos to value diversity and gather that diversity towards unity) in this direction. Various world citizens - within and beyond the church -  have recognised a profound spiritual consciousness - pre-settlement - in our indigenous brothers and sisters. And this has been happening for quite a long time.

The institutional church is finally recognising that movement of the spirit. I am not criticising that response time. I am simply asking that we say our "hoorays" humbly.......... And recognise that there are so many other "movements of the spirit' where parts of the world are calling the church towards them .....not the other way around. I'm fairly sure that has always been the case.

I guess that last paragraph sums up my "wondering" for this blog entry. We - individuals and institutions - can all be self-congratulatory. We all need help to say our "hoorays" humbly. I wonder I the church would be open to a little help on that front too?

My "wonderings" from yesterday re-minded me of Bliss Browne's beautiful understanding of "Trinitarian" wholeness. In this she refers to the "recycling symbol" as a symbol of perfect giving, perfect receiving and nothing wasted. In thinking of the "ideal" entrepreneurship - as I was yesterday - I'm dreaming of a world where no human insight or gift is wasted.

Impossible you say?

Maybe.

But are we at an optimal point of waste reduction?

I think not!

There is still a deeper place to go.

I'm also reminded here of James Carse's provocative words in his life-changing little book Finite and Infinite Games:

Waste persons are those no longer useful as resources to a society for whatever reason, and have become...noncitizens. Waste persons must be placed out of view  - in ghettos, slums, reservations, camps,  retirement villages, mass graves, remote territories, strategic hamlets - all places of desolation and uninhabitable. We live in a century whose master players have created many millions of such "superfluous persons." .....It is society that declares some persons to be waste.