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

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Spiritual Friendship

at Regent College named James Houston—a man who had once been friends with C. S. Lewis. Three good friends (Johanna, Uche, and Mel) and I spent a weekend learning about spiritual friendship from Aelred’s Spiritual Friendship . Our teacher was Father Francis, a man who had lived with a dedicated group of disciples as a Benedictine monk for over fifty years. The retreat confirmed in my heart that there was deep wisdom in Aelred’s little book for contemporary Christian leaders. When the opportunity came up to participate in the Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics series, I knew an edition of Spiritual Friendship would be my contribution. WhoWas Aelred of Rievaulx? Aelred was born in AD 1110 to a family who had served in various positions of church leadership for generations. As a young man he was a steward to King David I of Scotland, but soon decided to leave court life and become a monk. In 1134, Aelred left Scotland and joined a new Cistercian monastery at Rievaulx, near Yorkshire in England. 4 He rose through various positions of leadership, and eventually became leader of the community, responsible for shepherding its many members. Aelred was an excellent leader, and the community grew from around three hundred to some six hundred and fifty during his tenure as abbot. One of Aelred’s spiritual friends, Walter, (one of the three spiritual friends featured in Spiritual Friendship ) wrote Aelred’s biography. 5 4 Aelred’s community followed a rule of life developed by Saint Benedict around AD 600. For more information on what Aelred’s daily life looked like see Greg Peters, ed., Becoming a Community of Disciples: Guidelines from Abbot Benedict and Bishop Basil, Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics 2 (Wichita, KS: TUMI Press, 2021). 5 Walter Daniel, The Life of Aelred of Rievaulx: And the Letter to Maurice , trans. Frederick Maurice Powicke, Cistercian Fathers 57 (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1994).