On April 27 and 28, fifty people met in a small church outside of Chicago to talk about friendship.

<strong>But not just any friendships.</strong> For these two days, the discussion was specifically about friendships <a title="When Jesus Met Mary: A Sacred Friendship Gathering" href="http://sacredfriendshipgathering.com/" target="_blank">between men and women</a>.

For many, cross-gender friendships are perfectly normal. We interact with people of the opposite sex all the time in our jobs, our churches, our day to day lives. But often when men and women develop close friendships, the response is to look for danger. The purpose of the Sacred Friendship Gathering was to encourage people to look at these friendships without the fear-filled lenses.<img class="alignright size-full wp-image-6405" src="http://provoketive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/sacred-friendship.jpg" alt="" width="180" height="157" />

We were welcomed to the event by <a title="Dan Brennan" href="http://sacredfriendshipgathering.com/speakers/dan-brennan/" target="_blank">Dan Brennan</a>, author of <a title="Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions" href="http://www.amazon.com/Sacred-Unions-Passions-Engaging-Friendship/dp/0982580703/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1335782568&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Sacred Unions, Sacred Passions</a> and organizer of the conference. Right at the outset he assured the attendees that he was not looking to promote one kind of friendship, but rather to allow us a glimpse at many different kinds of cross-gender relationships. He shared that his desire was to encourage us to embrace the beauty and moral passion available in these relationships.

The first speaker of the night was <a title="Meredith Efken" href="http://sacredfriendshipgathering.com/speakers/meredith-efken/" target="_blank">Meredith Efken</a>, author of <a title="Lucky Baby" href="http://www.amazon.com/Lucky-Baby-Novel-Meredith-Efken/dp/B004L2KNWS/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&amp;ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1324916866&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank">Lucky Baby</a>. She spoke of a close male friendship that developed as a result of the creative process of writing that they shared. She thought nothing of their friendship until someone disapproved and indicated that this friendship might cause a problem for her in the Christian publishing world. She acknowledged that when someone questions a cross-gender friendship, you can feel dirty even if that friendship is completely pure. As a result, she said that it can be important to exercise caution when discussing your close, opposite-sex friendships. However, Meredith also said that even when she went through seasons where she shielded her male friend, she needed to remember that <strong>outside opinions had no bearing on her ability to love</strong>.

<a title="Katie Driver" href="http://sacredfriendshipgathering.com/speakers/katie-driver/" target="_blank">Katie Driver</a> spoke next, and she shared about several cross-gender friendships, some that went well, and some that did not. One in particular that struck me was a mentoring relationship that she had. She and a young man developed a friendship as a result of a mentoring process. His wife had been fully supportive of their relationship until a minister suggested that it was an "unhealthy soul tie." (Soul ties are generally considered a close bond with another person, generally sexual in nature, but sometimes they can be a result of a close friendship.) Because of the poisoning words of the minister (who was not involved in the friendship at all, but was instead simply making an observation from the outside), the wife became deeply suspicious of the relationship and the young man completely cut ties with Katie without a good-bye. He contacted her later and told her what had happened, but the relationship had already suffered damage.

Katie is a motorcycle safety instructor, and one of the ways that she related her experience with cross-gender friendship to motorcycle riding is that those who enjoy riding are aware of the "what ifs" of riding, but <strong>they choose not to live in the what ifs</strong>. Instead, they focus on the beauty and joy of the freedom of riding. Honesty allows us to recognize if there's any truth to accusations made against a cross-gender friendship, but we are not required to live in fear.

Following a brief discussion asking what brought people to the event, Dan, Meredith, and Katie had a brief Q &amp; A. The main point of discussion was that of "attraction." What do we do if we discover attraction in a cross-gender friendship. Dan suggested that we have conflated attraction and lust. We feel attraction in all friendships - it's simply the desire to be with that other person. However, we have framed the discussion of male-female friendship, that we assume that all attraction is lust and that we have no ability to control it. Instead, he suggested that we need to embrace attraction so that we can be more self-aware and therefore more honest. <strong>Problems arise when there is dishonesty. </strong>When we allow ourselves to be honest about our friendships and separate out lust from attraction, we can better embrace the moral passion that exists.