Charlie took friendship to the level of family.

KINGFISHER, Okla. – I had arrived early for the church service in which my friend Charlie was being installed as pastor here. So I sat quietly in the empty sanctuary to catch my breath after a six-hour drive from Kansas City.

The stained-glass windows were out of the ordinary. The art was much more impressionistic or abstract than that found in typical church windows, and the colors emphasized lots of blacks and reds and a few yellows or golds.

I’m glad, I thought to myself, that not every church looks the same. I enjoy variety, even if sometimes I don’t like a particular sanctuary’s architecture or feel. And I’m increasingly engaged by houses of worship outside my own Christian faith – Jewish synagogues, Islamic mosques, Hindu temples and on and on.

I’m equally attracted to the world’s wild assortment of human beings, even if I don’t understand or like some of them. The question I began thinking about here in an unusual church sanctuary is how friendships sometimes come to feel like a family relationship and why we don’t honor those attachments in others more consistently than we do.

In a world where many people find many reasons to hate others, questions about friendship and family are worth our time.

Ever since I first met Charlie – a former newspaperman who, with his wife, Diana, was also a member of my church – I liked him. He had an infectious wit and intellect. But I know lots of people I consider interesting acquaintances who are not quite friends and whom I do not consider part of my true extended family.

Charlie became a member of a small church group I meet with weekly. Members get to know one another in deep, personal ways and try to support one another in both good and bad times. Pop psychologists would describe this group as part of my support system, but that’s too neutral a term for me. The best word I know for the relationship that members of this group experience is family.

At any rate, Charlie eventually took a job in Omaha. We stayed in touch, but distance made it hard to be as connected as we had been. One day in 1995, however, I wrote Charlie and Diana a note telling them the sad news that my marriage was ending. I expected, at most, a note or

a phone call in return.

But the next Sunday morning, as I sat in church waiting for the service to start, I saw, to my amazement, Charlie and Diana walk in. Charlie had worked until after midnight on Saturday, caught a few hours of sleep, risen early and driven the 200-plus miles from Omaha to Kansas City just to go to church with me, just to be with me in my anguish.

Here were people who not only understood friendship that rises to the level of family but who lived out that value. It was a powerful example of love.

My trip to Kingfisher was a surprise to Charlie. Motives, of course, are always mixed. But I tried not to make the journey out of a sense of obligation, of having to even things up finally for his surprise trip to be with me in Kansas City years ago. Rather, I did it willingly, joyfully. I made the trip because I really wanted to.

Charlie is beginning a second career, and his becoming a pastor is a monumental commitment to values both of us hold dear. I really wanted to share with him his official start in his first church.

A few days after the installation, Charlie sent me a note that talked about the joy the father in the biblical story of the prodigal son felt when his boy returned home. “That pure, holy emotion is what I was filled with when I saw you in the sanctuary on Sunday,” he wrote.

What so engages me about deep friendships is that almost every human being on the planet experiences them to one degree or another. Certainly there are lonely people and people with whom such friendships are nearly impossible because of their inability to connect with others. I ache for such people.

As the 17th-century Spanish writer Baltasar Gracian wrote, “There is no desert like being friendless.”

But our task is to remember that nearly everyone is cherished by someone else. The wounded, bloodied world, however, is proof that more often we focus on reasons for condemning people and distancing ourselves from them. I suppose part of that is because the groups into which we migrate often build walls of fear to separate themselves from others.

My bet is that Charlie won’t let his new church do that. And what a better world it would be if all religious leaders also worked to prevent construction of such walls.

Bill Tammeus is an editorial page columnist for The Kansas City Star.

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