Absinthe & Cookies (a bit bitter, a bit sweet)

I've always mentally used the term Anne used in "Anne of Green Gables": kindred spirits :)

Yes, that's a perfect term for it (I love those books).

There's too much cynicism around nowadays--that's why people can't accept the setup with you and Nin. "Oh sure they're just friends, sure they are," is the underlying thought process, if one can even call it that.

It's a shame, and it's probably devalued many otherwise promising friendships.

I love them too.

Since she's sort of a cross between a daughter and a sister to me -- in addition to best friend -- the whole idea is just "EWWW!" :)

Remember - lesbian vampire cult! Open to non-lesbians and non-vampires, also.

You'd think the first thought would be roommates - with costs being what they are and all. Heck, my mind is constantly in the gutter and that's what I would have thought first.

Hmmmm....

I guess I must be off base of the usual thinking
then. I am not trying to pat myself on the back here...I just never assumed that you and Nin were anything but friends.

To use eviltammy's expression ( slightly modified ) Yes, my mind is in the gutter quite often. However, all I thought was the last phrase in the above paragraph.

Robert, I'm not sure what our blog readers think :) I was talking more about RL situations. It may also be because we live in an area of CA that skews 'alternative' , so it colours people's perceptions.

Reminds me of those who've tried to assert that Holmes and Watson were homosexual lovers.

What I really find ironic is that because of the gay community's battle for acceptance, people tend to be MORE suspicious that other people are homosexual. I am not married and don't date, and I've been asked on occasion if I'm gay because of that. I think that a few decades ago, that idea wouldn't have even crossed anybody's mind. Instead, they would simply have thought, "He's fat and bad-tempered. No wonder he's not married."

Ith,

As I've mentioned before, one of the odd things that struck me when I re-entered into single life in my 40s was the institutionalization of the difference between "relationship" and "friendship". Various women friends would take about their past or current "relationships", by which they meant people they had s*x with, as distinct from their "friends", which didn't. Whenever I hear that distinction, I'm struck by how sad it must be for them to acknowledge that the people with whom they are most intimate are not "friends".

I fear that our culture has lost the basic idea of "friendship" in much the same way that it has lost the basic idea of "modesty."

One reason for this may be that we've also lost the idea of "virtue." What informed the liturgy you describe, and the also idea of "kindred spirits", was a deeply Aristotelian sense that true friendship exists between people who share a common commitment to an idea of the good.

Aristotle spends one chapter in his Nichomanichian Ethics on the idea of friendship - and I believe he is the only philosopher to ever spend any time on "friendship" - because he believes that friendship is essential to living the virtuous life. He felt that a friend is a mirror in whom we see the person we ought to be and who reflects back to us the truth about who we are, whether good and bad.

Obviously, for moderns who believe that "friendship" really means "relationships" which really means "s*x partner", the "friendship liturgy" is really about gay marriage. But the original understanding was truly much more profound.

Hear hear! to all the comments! And I love that there is a liturgy for that sort of thing. Its a shame that whenever we come across deep friendships in literature (hello! LOTR!!! M&C) and past histories, everyone nowadays sniggers and goes "yeah, right" and yet, I think that is what the world is sadly sadly lacking nowadays.

Peter - you hve the right of it. I am married, and have no intentions of rejoining singlehood, but it often baffles me that my single female friends have this compartmentalisation going on in their heads, as if friends and intimacy could not have anything to do with each other. Yet, one of the reasons I married my husband was because I knew I could trust him to be as good a friend as a lover to me. I trusted him because of our friendship.

I like the term "covenant friends"

I'm so glad you posted this.
What the bishop said is true, and in our highly sexualized society it will only become moreso.
It is good to know that some people still believe that true love, apart from sex, can exist.