NEW MONDAY BLOG! A Gift From A Friend

Happy Monday! As you know I get so excited for these blogs that usually the hardest part is choosing just what I want to write about each week. I was contemplating this very thing when my little red light flashed on my blackberry. An email from a very dear friend. She didn't include any explanation for sending, she didn't need to. It was just a gift, and more special than anything else I could have imagined receiving this morning, or really, any time. The gift of her friendship, put so eloquently, by a favorite poet of mine. Happy Monday. Happy Hot Days, Happy Heart filled with friendship.
Love,
The Girls of Giving Tree

Friendship IXX by Khalil Gibran

And a youth said, "Speak to us of Friendship."

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside.

For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."

And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;

For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unaclaimed.

When you part from your friend, you grieve not;

For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.

And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.

For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.

And let your best be for your friend.

If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.

For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?

Seek him always with hours to live.

For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.

And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.

For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed