Friends and friends.

Today T-Block had a Christmas roast, which was pretty nice, we all worked together and it didn't turn out to bad, even if the sprouts were completely raw.

Obviously it was as secular as Christmas can get, which I supposed was how I'd like it. There's no reason I see to focus on the mythology side and everyone knows the whole Jesus thing isn't why we have winter celebrations anyway. No moments silence before we tucked in either.

Well in fact, there were quite a few silences, but with a "little s" where the conversation just died down. What I didn't expect was how incredibly awkward it made people, and how they had to say that it was making them feel awkward just to get rid of the silence.

Without really realising it, I've been brought up to tolerate silence, not just tolerate it but to actually enjoy it or at least feel comfortable in it. I doubt somehow that it's a skill unique to Quaker children but somehow my sheltered upbringing or something left me ignorant to how much people suck at just sitting around.

It's around this point that I'm supposed to go into some beautifully versed ministry about what silence means to me, to talk about different types of silence and how the inner light is bound to shine through all them, even the noisiest. But I'm not going to and to be honest anyone that really cares has heard it before by someone smarter than me anyway. Today didn't make me think about silence, no matter how important it is: today made me really think about who I am friends with.

There's quite a few people who I'm fairly fond of with whom I don't share that much in common beyond an ability to sit together in silence for an hour. There's quite a few people without any of the above who I'm fond of anyway, most of my flatmates for a start; it's not like silence is a necessary criterion for friendship. It maybe that what's bugging me is really all me, I can't understand how people can't do silence, I completely fail to empathise.

For the three months since I've been at Uni I haven't really spoken about myself as a Quaker, or myself at all really. The fact is, I'm really bad at it. If someone were to ask me about silence or integrity or pacifism then I would become bumbling and awkward and generally useless. People may suck at silence, but more importantly, I really suck at talking.

The people who I'm really close to, seem quite often to be Quakers, I think part of the reason for that isn't what we have in common, but what we don't have to bother explaining to each other: it makes things easier when you can gloss over the religion bit and get down to the nitty gritty of drinking habits and musical tastes. That sounds awful doesn't it? That it'd be so much easier to be friends with someone of the same religion, I feel a lousy Quaker for just thinking it.

At Quaker youth events there's always some conversation or debate about how friendship works alongside with Friendship. I always ignored those, it sounded to much like hippies moaning that the man was out the get them (armed with peer-pressure and conformity no doubt) which to be fair, it was. There's always a lot of bother about how someone can only find their true family amongst other Quaker children and that their relationships with school friends were shallow and meaningless in comparison. I always though, how fucking ignorant it was to assume that the rest of the world can't do close and meaningful friendship. Of course in retrospect my peers at the time weren't saying that at all, they really did find it easier to make friends with kids who'd been brought up in kind of the same way as them and, as much as it pains me to say so, I do to.

Whiny little teenybopper hippies are a lot more insightful than I ever gave them credit for.