"Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." Paul to the persecuted at Philippi (2:5-11)

26 July 2017

When near becomes a noun.

The French have a word for it, "proche."  Its an adjective and it translates pretty directly to the English adjective near.  If something or someone is close by, it is proche.  But unlike in English, proche also becomes a noun.  Best I read it, its a word for those people who are near us, too near to simply be friends, but not relatives by any temporal accounting.  The closest we might come in the Church is being brothers and sisters in Christ, but then, that still doesn't grasp the idea.  Jesus had twelve disciples, but only Peter, James and John seemed to be his proches. These are the people close to the heart, the only ones a true introvert can call "friends" without wincing at the weight of that word, the family beyond the familial.

Beth was my proche.   I don't have many.  Despite blogging and teaching and jumping headlong into more ministry that I can sometimes handle, I am a very private person.  So was Beth.  We were seminarians together, but not really friends then.  We knew and liked one another but Beth was the sort of person you had to cultivate before you could use the word friend, she opened up only slowly. 

We were adjunct instructors together.  By that time we were indeed friends, and when I needed someone to vent a frustration to, ask advice of, celebrate a minor publication with, or complain about the lack of a steady gig to, she was there.   She got me.  I didn't have to explain in order for us to share the humor in our situation.  We thought and taught in some ways quite alike.  I remember one term teaching New Testament and she had a bunch for Church History, when I mentioned I was assigning my students a large timeline project.  So was she.  The poor students- we shared a significant overlap in course list- had two big timelines in the works.  We both wanted them to have tools for ministry when they were done.  They, on the other hand, were probably anticipating due dates rather than ministry.

We were moms together, homeschooling two fifteen year olds born a week apart.  Sometimes they got along, my son and her daughter, in their shared geeky interests.  Sometimes they profoundly did not.  It didn't matter, we shared curricula, ideas, and frustrations equally whether our kids appreciated the relationship we had built for them or not.

Beth passed away yesterday.   It took twenty years of cultivating a friendship with Beth-  she even measured her time in PA by how old (and tall, and eventually bearded) the infant I was holding when she met me grew-  but she let me walk a rough road with her the last couple of years.  She hugged me when I lost my dad (2000) and I hugged her when she lost her mom (2015).  She shared her struggles and I shared mine.  We laughed together when she lost her hair to chemo and it came back with the curls both of us wanted from childhood.  We prayed together in her last days. 

We blogged together too. She's over at Endless Books (on my blogroll) and she was far more the verbal craftswoman than I. 

Bon voyage ma proche et à Dieu.