I am happy enough to offer the hospitality I would give any stranger: a meal spread before you, a table solid and safe between us. A practiced smile greeting you across four familiar feet of good wood. It’s harder for me to extend the intimacy of a brotherly kindness: to wrestle with you, put a dent in the wall. To give you crap and to let you grab my shoulders and shake once in a while to say you’ve had enough. It’s hard for me to leave the room when you come to visit, just let you soak up the sunlight, sprawled across the couch, as you wander through a shelf full of my books. It’s easy enough for me to let you choose what to do with your life, harder to let myself risk feeling like I have a stake in it. But once in while, even in a classroom even chatting in the bustle of the hall or standing outside as we linger after Church. Sometimes when you tell a story or when we laugh over a joke that reaches into the inside experience only you and I and a few million people secretly share— it’s then, when mirth and memory mix in your face at the same time they mix in mine that I remember why we call each other brother.
Originally published in Phoenix Song

That is so beautiful…and accurate ☺️