Chaplaincy

God’s Gift Of….Relationships

“I have no need of friendship; friendship causes pain…I touch no one and no one touches me… I am a rock; I am an island.”  That’s what the well-known folk duo, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, sang in the mid-1960s.  It’s a song that asserts a person’s independence, self-sufficiency, and their lack of emotional dependence on anyone else. Mind you, the fact that the song is sung by a duo does make the lyrics of the song a bit ironic (even though Simon and Garfunkel didn’t always see eye to eye in their career…).

For every song which claims that the person is “just fine on my own, thank you very much” (take Joan Armatrading’s, ‘Me, Myself, I’, for instance), there are easily dozens of other songs that state how much relationships with others are important to us – ‘Stand By Me’, ‘That’s What Friends Are For’, ‘We Are Family’ are just a few on an enormous list!  Since songs give voice to what we feel, it’s not surprising, really, that so many songs talk about how relationships are an essential part of who we are. As the poet John Donne famously wrote, ‘No man is an island’.

While it’s true that our relationships are what matters most to us in life, it’s also a reality that they can be the things that can cause us the most difficulty as well!  Not unlike two echidnas who huddled together for warmth on a cold night in the desert – only to find that their quills jabbed each other, so they moved apart.  Before long they started shivering, so they moved closer again – but soon they were getting jabbed again.  They needed each other; but they kept needling each other…

In all the joys and trials in our relationships, they are still one of God’s greatest gifts to us.  But God doesn’t just give us the family and friends with whom we share life; our Creator also makes possible a relationship with Him – which is, ultimately, what we all were created for…

Mark Rundle

Calrossy Anglican School Chaplain