Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

Resources for Application

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Figure 1: Dunbar Circles of Intimacy

specific spiritual friendships. It then looks at the life of Jesus and the prioritized pyramid of relationships we see modeled during his earthly ministry and suggests ways Jesus’ example can be adapted for Christians today. Finally, it briefly describes five tools for building spiritual friendships from the many that have been used over the past twenty centuries. Aelred invites us to enjoy the feast of spiritual friendship with some, while welcoming all with Christian love. If he lived today he would be interested in the findings of social scientists like Robin Dunbar. Dunbar has shown that human social networks tend to operate in expanding circles of intimacy (see Figure 1). 4 Aelred would likely agree with

4 Robin Dunbar, Friends: Understanding the Power of Our Most Important Relationships (New York: Little, Brown, 2022), 56.