Friendship… is pure gift. It is more than practical help and support. It is mutual enjoyment. It implies this letting go, this freedom to let go.
David Steindl-Rast
Friendship Is Pure Gift
Topic: Family & Friendship
But when you get to Friendship, it is pure gift. It is more than practical help and support. It is mutual enjoyment. It implies this letting go, this freedom to let go. But when you get to friendship, it is pure gift. It is more than practical help and support. It is mutual enjoyment. It implies this letting go, this freedom to let go. I am not bound to you. As the Sufis say, “Two birds tied to one another do not fly better for having four wings.” That is something true friends understand. They fly with one another, but they are not tied to one another. They are completely free.
Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., was born Franz Kuno Steindl-Rast on July 12, 1926, in Vienna, Austria. Raised in a Catholic family during a time of political unrest, he endured the hardships of World War II, including conscription into the German army, though he did not see combat. He earned a master’s degree from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and a PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Vienna in 1952. That same year, he emigrated to the United States and entered Mount Saviour Monastery in Pine City, New York, becoming a Benedictine monk in 1953.
With his abbot’s permission, David Steindl-Rast began interreligious dialogue in the 1960s and studied Zen Buddhism with teachers such as Haku’un Yasutani and Shunryu Suzuki. In 1968, he co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies alongside leaders from several religious traditions. His writing and teaching explore the relationship between mysticism, science, and spiritual practice. Among his published works are Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, Belonging to the Universe (with physicist Fritjof Capra), and The Music of Silence. He spent extended periods in monastic communities and in solitude at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California.
Gratitude has remained central to David Steindl-Rast’s teaching, which he describes as a way of recognizing our shared life and cultivating peace. In 2000, he co-founded A Network for Grateful Living to support this vision. His TED talk on gratefulness has reached a wide audience, and his message continues to resonate through interviews and dialogue with spiritual and cultural leaders. He emphasizes that religious forms must remain alive by reconnecting with their inner vitality, encouraging a return to what he calls “the fire that’s within.” Now in his late nineties, his life continues to reflect a sustained inquiry into gratitude, belonging, and interfaith understanding.
Steindl-Rast, David. "Thomas Merton: Now at the Crack of Dawn." Gratefulness.org, https://grateful.org/resource/thomas-merton-now-at-the-crack-of-dawn/. [Now at the Crack of Dawn: The Essence of the Monastic Life. Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000.]
David Steindl-Rast
Theme: Friendship
About This David Steindl-Rast Quotation [Commentary]
Br. David Steindl-Rast describes friendship as a “pure gift,” something that arises freely and without demand. It is not limited to “practical help and support” but blossoms as “mutual enjoyment.” Friendship, in this sense, is not based on usefulness or exchange. It reflects what he calls the “superfluous”—those aspects of life, such as poetry, music, and love, that exceed necessity yet give life its richest meaning. This kind of gift cannot be created through effort or strategy; it simply appears, like a song offered for its own joy.
At the heart of this vision is freedom. Friendship, Br. David writes, “implies this letting go, this freedom to let go.” Unlike comradeship, which still rests on mutual need, true friendship does not bind or possess. It allows each person to be fully themselves. Quoting a Sufi proverb, Br. David reminds us: “Two birds tied to one another do not fly better for having four wings.” Real friends “fly with one another, but they are not tied to one another.” The bond is real, but it does not constrict. It allows love to coexist with interior spaciousness.
This understanding of friendship echoes Br. David’s contemplative approach to life. The things most essential to the human spirit—friendship among them—are often the least useful in the conventional sense. They do not serve a purpose but overflow with meaning. The contemplative life, as Br. David describes it, is “the search for meaning over and beyond purpose.” Friendship, then, is not a means to an end but part of life’s deepest unfolding. It holds both connection and freedom, joy and detachment, honoring the fullness of each person while allowing room to breathe.
From David Steindl-Rast’s essay Now at the Crack of Dawn [Extended Passage]
“Meaning is what really counts in our lives. If our life is filled to the brim with purpose, we may one day wake up and still wonder: Where is the meaning of it all? Purpose is not of itself meaningful. We must give meaning to our purpose; we must allow meaning to flow into our purpose, opening our hearts and giving ourselves to the Word of God, to the situation. There is more than purposefulness, and if we come to see it on many different levels, what really matters is not the useful but the superfluous! All the great things in life, like poetry and music and friendship are totally superfluous – superfluous in the sense of superfluity, of an overflowing, of not fulfilling any particular practical need, but being gratis. Then we come to see that the whole world is really superfluous. Who needs it?
We create the impression sometimes that God worked hard to make himself a world. Well, did he need it in the first place? No. It’s a superfluity of his love; it’s a superfluity of his enjoyment. It’s not like someone making a woolen sweater against the cold, or a fan against the heat. No, it’s much more like someone singing a song (in the shower, maybe, just for enjoyment). It is like someone dancing, an image often used in spiritual tradition – God as the Cosmic Dancer. Much more than work or purpose, all of creation is play, unfolding of meaning, celebration of the meaning that is at the root of it all.
This is where Merton’s vision of the monk at the margin of society comes in, the monk as being totally superfluous. Nobody needs the monk, and yet, from another point of view, nobody needs anything as urgently as we need monks. For we need nothing more urgently than the superfluous. What would life be without poetry? What would life be without music? What would life be without friendship? But real friendship goes far beyond comradeship, where you still need one another. Comrades, like two sides of a step-ladder, hold one another up. But when you get to friendship, it is pure gift. It is more than practical help and support. It is mutual enjoyment. It implies this letting go, this freedom to let go. I am not bound to you. As the Sufis say, “Two birds tied to one another do not fly better for having four wings.” That is something true friends understand. They fly with one another, but they are not tied to one another. They are completely free. The realm of our life where the superfluous matters most is our contemplative life. In that sense all of us have a contemplative life. The contemplative life of every human being consists in the search for meaning over and beyond purpose.”
―Steindl-Rast, David. Now at the Crack of Dawn: The Essence of the Monastic Life. Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000.
This Br. David Steindl-Rast quotation was Incorrectly attributed to Thomas Merton [Correction]
Upon investigation, the quote in question—”But when you get to Friendship, it is pure gift. It is more than practical help and support. It is mutual enjoyment. It implies this letting go, this freedom to let go.”—is attributed to Br. David Steindl-Rast, OSB, not Thomas Merton. This passage appears in Br. David’s work, “Thomas Merton: Now at the Crack of Dawn,” available on Gratefulness.org. In this piece, Br. David reflects on Merton’s perspectives, offering his own insights into the nature of friendship*.
The confusion may stem from Br. David’s close association with Merton―I would venture to say his friendship―and his interpretations of Merton’s ideas. However, the specific wording of the quote originates from Br. David Steindl-Rast.
*Many thanks to eagle-eyed readers—and friends—Lewis Burgess and Jeff Scharfen who brought this attribution error to my attention. — Arthur
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