In a quiet room lit by candlelight and softened by rain, this episode invites you to settle into the living rhythm of friendship as something more than connection, something closer to a shared becoming. Drawing from moments of reunion, long-held bonds, and a story that didn’t last, the conversation gently explores how the circles of fellowship shape us over time. There is a sense of returning here, to people who have known us across seasons, and also a quiet reckoning with the edges they reveal in us. What does it mean to truly tend a friendship, not just name it? What do we learn when a relationship asks more of us than we can give, or reflects something we are not yet ready to face? Moving between memory, story, and reflection, this episode becomes a space to notice who walks beside you, who has fallen away, and how each connection has quietly shaped your path. It is an invitation to sit with gratitude, to feel the weight and warmth of belonging, and to consider how friendship, when deeply lived, becomes one of the most powerful forces in who we are becoming.

Invitations to Consider:

• The idea that friendship is not just connection but “tending what we tame,” requiring care, presence, and reciprocity
• How friends act as companions of emergence, shaping who we become beyond our family of origin
• The evolving nature of friendship circles, including growth, distance, repair, and renewal
• A deeply personal story illustrating how friendships can expose moral boundaries and identity edges
• The concept of fellowship as shared investment, drawn from both personal reflection and literary influence

About Aaron:

Aaron Tabacco, PhD, has spent more than thirty years guiding people through growth and change, often in complex and high-stakes environments. He currently serves as the Director of Staff Experience at a major academic health sciences university. With a background spanning nursing, neuroscience, education, coaching, and mediation, his work centers on helping individuals and organizations navigate identity, connection, and transformation with greater clarity and care.

Known for his grounded presence and compassionate communication, Aaron works with students, clinicians, faculty, executives, and senior leaders across healthcare and other industries. His approach integrates relational depth, reflective practice, and a commitment to creating more humane, integrated ways of working and living. He works in San Francisco, California, and lives in Vancouver, Washington, where he continues a lifelong engagement with writing, music, and the landscapes of the Pacific Northwest alongside his husband and three adult sons.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/aaron-tabacco-phd-83359b9/

https://lucusgroup.com/home

https://substack.com/@aarontabacco?r=b5ap9&utm_medium=ios

https://www.youtube.com/@CirclesEdges

Email: aaron@circlesedges.org

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Our lives. Move in patterns, things. We repeat things. We return to rituals, stories, people and places, the familiar cycles we experience as our sign posts, our stations of attention, and then sometimes we awaken more fully to these patterns, reaching a moment that asks something of us, a boundary with an invitation to turn those lines into thresholds of growth and transformation. I am Aaron tabaco here again with you tonight, you're listening to circles edges.

Good evening, dear ones and good wishes to you. I want to welcome each one of you listening to this next broadcast of circles edges radio, for those of you who have been tuning in regularly, I just want to express my gratitude and my excitement at being able to spend another evening together, and for those of you who are just joining the show, I want to offer you the warmest welcome. Please make yourself comfortable as we all arrive together tonight here in my home office, as many of you know, I have a very comfortable reclining chair in a dark room with my candles going once again, I'm listening to the rain outside as the winter here in the Pacific Northwest just does not want to let go of its grip on us, so I'm looking forward, hopefully soon, to some warm sunshine that can match the flowering trees and bushes that are appearing all around me In my neighborhood, on the streets of my town, I've missed you, and I wonder how you are arriving tonight. I'm not sure about you, but lately I've noticed my mind has been very noisy, very hard to quiet down, and I have wanted several times to sit down and light these candles and just have this conversation with you again. So I'm very pleased that tonight we get that opportunity. In addition to my busy mind, I've also had a bit of a busy life lately. The last few weeks have been busy in a really delightful way, in that I have been the recipient of several visits from very dear friends. And interestingly enough, all of these friends who have wanted to visit have come from another state and made a large journey to be here with me and to spend some time with me. And even more interestingly, they all came from the same state friendships that go back more than 30 years of mine, a state I've never lived. I've certainly visited and seen my friends over the years, but it isn't a place that I have, you know, deep roots, other than these people who've shown up on my doorstep recently and reminded me of our close ties,

we're in a place now, in this first planned Season of circles edges, where we are exploring our inner circle, the circles of our relational life. And last time we were together, we talked about, you know, our families of origin, and the stories that they have offered to us, stories that we have spent our lifetimes, receiving, questioning, honoring, abandoning, I felt like it was a very rich discussion you and I had together, and this week, of course, you probably guessed a. I want to talk about the circles of our relational life in the context of friendships or fellowships, maybe is a different word I would use. And it's no coincidence that in preparing for this episode, knowing that the topic would be on friendships and friends that the last few weeks has been marked by an abundance of connection and reconnection with people that are very dear to me. So why don't we jump into that now that we've arrived, I want to invite you to just take a really deep breath with me. You can sit right beside me

wherever you are, or lay down whatever is convenient. I hope you're not driving somewhere, because the late night FM radio vibes and voice might not be conducive to your safety. So please be thinking about where you are as you're tuning in, but as you're doing that, settling in, closing your eyes, if you can, taking a deep breath, I just want to invite you to be mindful of your body. Give yourself a moment to tune in to what feels tense, what feels sore, what feels weighted down by whatever burdens you might be carrying, and as you breathe and exhale and inhale and exhale Again, try and consciously relax, paying attention to your body, thanking your body for letting you know it needs a rest, and you and I can sit here side by side and move from our quiet bodies into our hearts as we explore together tonight, these rings of fellowship we experience in our life, the circles of friends and The edges they expose in us as we experience them.

I think it would be impossible for me to begin a discussion of the the inner circles of our friendships without thinking about some of the stories and metaphors and people and experiences that have shaped how I think about this idea of friendship or fellowship even, and as I was preparing For this evening together, one of the first thoughts I had was of a book from my early life, my very formative childhood and adolescent years. It's got the story of The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint er superi, obviously, very, very famous book and story, and I'm particularly remembering the interactions of the Little Prince and the fox. The Little Prince had been well on his way seeking to find connections and friendships, and became quite despondent at the time that he encountered the Fox, and he explained to the fox that he was looking for friends because he was all alone in the universe, and asked perhaps if the fox could be his friend. And the fox responded by saying, Well, I can't be your friend because I'm a wild creature. I haven't been tamed. And the little prince asks him, well, you know, what does that mean to tame? And the fox instructs him that it means to to create ties. He's very puzzled, just it just means that just establishing ties. And the fox responds, Yes, it just that. He says, you know, to me, you're just a little boy, and you're like every other little boy in the universe, and I don't have any need of you, and you don't have any need of me, because I'm just a fox like all of the other foxes in the universe. But he explains, if you tame me, then we'll need each other, and to me, we will be tied and you will be unique in all the world. You will be my boy, and I would be your fox. I would be unique to you and all the world. And as they discuss it, the fox shares the wisdom that if you tame me, you also need to tend me. And that was his wisdom. He tried to pass on that we have to tend what we tame. And I really love that. I love the

idea that when someone becomes unique to us, and we establish a connection, and the connection moves to a tie, or some kind of investment in each other that we really need to tend to those things that they come with, not just the establishment of a titled relationship of a friend or fellow In our life or companion or a million other terms, but that it comes with a responsibility that we have to take care of those things, and as we take care of these relationships, as we tend to them, so Many things arise from that, so many things that shape us in reciprocity and fill so many needs we have as humans. Last time we were together, we talked about the first of our inner circles, the families we are born into, and how we come into the world with a story that was generated of who we would become and who we are that happened even before our birth and our families in our first and closest Inner Circle of our lives become companions of that inheritance. And yet, as we start to grow and we

become social, and we begin to acquire the ability to communicate and connect with people on our own, the process of friendship emerges, the process of connecting with people that are just a step outside of that closest inner ring for us, and those people become friends, and those friends are companions, not of our inheritance, per se, but I think they become Companions of our emergence, and as they're present for us, as we are emerging and figuring out who we are in relation to the story we inherited, and our desire to test it and try it and honor it and grow beyond it and all of those things, you know, they become such critical parts of that experience and such valued parts of our lives. I know that I'm not saying anything groundbreaking. Each of you listening has friends, I would assume an abundance of friendships, and maybe those friendships are really deep friendships, or maybe they're not so deep and they're unsatisfying, and you have experienced friendships of breadth and volume, but you're seeking friendships of curation and depth, maybe friendship has been really hard to come by, and you have very few people that you would give that title to. And like The Little Prince, you are here because perhaps you're seeking that, and you're finding it in in me, and our connection through the show and our conversations that we're having, regardless of how you're coming to the conversation, I do think about how you experience friendships, and I have so many questions for you. I would love to hear from you about you know, what? Friendships feel like home, even when there's distance or big gaps of time between your abilities to connect with each other who knows you and your life in a way that feels both real and accurate and honest, as well as generous and loving and kind. In spite of all that honesty, who who's been a witness for you across multiple chapters of your life? Those people, perhaps, who knew you before you became who you are now? And have those

friendships evolved with you, or have you had to let some of them go as time went on, because in that circle of friendship, you embraced some of your growth edges, and your friends didn't feel like they could cross that threshold with you. Or perhaps you realized you had crossed a threshold that left them behind in some way, I know that as I have gotten older, my friendship circles not just the not just the structural circle of who I hold close and call friends and best friends or closest friends or intimate friends and others that may be Different levels of my world little farther out, still friendly, but maybe a little more distant. I have just become so much more selective about who's part of that inner life and world with me, because I want those friends that bring out the parts of me that feel the most authentic, the most real, and sometimes I have to really think about friendships that might hold versions of me in their minds that no longer exist. I certainly don't want to be in spaces where I am in friendships, where I feel I have to become someone else or maintain an old version of myself. But nonetheless, with all of that musing, I do think about the specific circles you know beyond the structural

right I have to recognize that these friendships aren't Something that usually stays the same way over time, friendships bring us circles of shaping direction for us their forces in our lives. There's also certain patterns I have seen in the kinds of friendships I have sought and cultivated, or the friendships I've let go, as I mentioned, friends offer me the ability to practice cycles of, you know, emergence and decay and return the work of tending to the friendship, because I have noticed that when I have failed to tend the friendships that have emerged, they may diminish or decay, and if and when it feels time to return to that re experience it, renew it that I have work to do. I also find that friends have offered me the chance to think about and practice boundary setting and belonging, sort of literal circles of social life. Who do I pull in? How do I create boundaries that keep the ones I love close and perhaps healthily and safely, keep others at a certain distance? I've also noticed that friends are mirrors, helping me see who I am, helping me explore that by reflecting it back to me, affirming the emergence of who I'm becoming, maybe resisting. The change, calling me out when in fact, I'm being inconsistent, or putting on a mask of some kind, challenging me to really think about how intentional I am in showing up for them and the rest of the world, as well as showing up for myself, and I definitely think about how friends have been companions for me, at the threshold, moments when I've been evolving or changing or moving through something incredibly powerful or difficult for me, so many ways that I experience circles in the context of friends and friendships. Which of your friendships have endured longer than you expected. Do you have those people who have come into your life? And perhaps initially, you thought, Oh, this is a friendship of convenience, a friendship of proximity, a friendship based on a narrow interest we share, but

that didn't seem applicable to other parts of your life, and yet, somehow those friendships evolved, and they stayed with you and grew with you and surprised you in that I certainly, I certainly have had those. You know, one of the things I really have to credit my father for, there aren't, there aren't in my life, an abundance of things for me to credit my father for is as much as I loved him as much as my relationship with him became something so profoundly beautiful in the act of growing up with him as he experienced a lot of difficulties in his life and a lot of challenges that made it hard for him to truly show up as a father. One of the things he impressed on me early that I really listened to was the advice to really, really think about and be intentional with the friends that I chose. And for some reason

that seemed so important to me that I really, really took that lesson into my heart. And I have to say, While not every person I have met and befriended across my lifespan has stayed with me, or been supportive and grown with me across the seasons, I have been so lucky to have chosen and been chosen by some of the most incredible humans in My life, many of which have stayed present for me across so many changes, geographically, spiritually, emotionally, physically, philosophically, structurally, as my life and Family evolved and changed, I feel so lucky to have people I dearly love who have been a part of my life for so long that history has become so valuable. So as the circle of time unfolds, I look back and I think that the abundance of influences that have come from these companionships, these fellowships, individuals have been perhaps the greatest shaping forces of me altogether. I mean, I can't deny the influences of my family, my parents, both my mother and my father, my sister, our shared context, the family I created, the sons I have, the beloved, two partners I have shared my life with at different points in time, and yet, with all of that, I think about that companionship of emergence through friendships and the cycles and seasons of those as something that has been probably the most formative so maybe right now. Now I just want to pause for a second and inhabit a space of gratitude and invite you to join me in that as I've been talking about these circles of friends and friendships, I would imagine that there are people that have come into your mind as I've asked some of these questions, and I wonder who those are, and I wonder if you are tending those friendships the way you would like to. Are they reciprocal? Are you showing up for them as they are showing up for you? Have you expressed lately the profound value and impact that stem from these relationships? Are you in a space, perhaps, where you're longing for different kinds of

friendships, where you do access the reciprocity that perhaps is lacking where you're looking for somebody to show up for you and be that mirror and that companion and that witness and that shaping force that you need to move toward whoever you're becoming whatever. Your state of friendships right now. Take a moment to feel whatever you're feeling, gratitude, longing, satisfaction, and ask yourself what those feelings are telling you about your relationship with these people in your life? Because this circle, or I should say, these circles, right, these dynamic circles that follow us across space and time with people who move in and out like fish in a river across our lifespans, some who stay for a season, some who have been there beside us the whole way, Some who have gone through many cycles of connection and fracture and distance and repair and renewal. All of these circles

are so valuable and necessary for our becoming that Now I begin to wonder about the edges. What have the experiences of friends and friendships invited you to learn about who you are and how have they impacted your becoming? How is it happening for you right now? What is unfolding in these connections of yours that is giving rise to whoever you're becoming next as your life is moving forward, are the right people there for you? Have you invested in them in ways they hopefully have invested in you, such that you can harvest what you need in your own times of growth. My hope is that in reflecting right now upon these circles of friends, that you can recognize the value that you can reflect on your role, and that you can identify the gratitude of belonging to them, that you can honor the companionship of emergence you share together, and that as we look at these edges, you'll have a clear picture in mind of how these individuals have kept you company In these very critical times.

A little over 25 years ago, I was a young father of at that time, two sons, and about five years into my marriage, I was working all the time. I had very little room for friendships or socializing, and also, I think it would be fair to say that I'd had kind of a complicated history with friendships in my life to that point, as many of them were not particularly reciprocal in terms of our circles. Concept, I realized that there was sort of a pattern in my life of befriending people who were attracted to my friendship because of a need for some kind of comfort or help, and because I really needed to be needed, I participated in deepening those connections until such time as the friendship would sort of run its course, and I noticed a very dissatisfying lack of reciprocity when I myself needed help, leading me to a place of being a little bit shy or hesitant in investing deeply in other people as friends. Was about this time that a very similar man entered my life with a lot of overlapping characteristics. He also was relatively early in his marriage, maybe seven years. I forget exactly. Had three small children, and we had, honestly, very little in common. We had a few social obligations in the community in common, but in terms of interests or beliefs, etc. I think that it was fair to say we would be unlikely companions in the world, and yet, for some reason, energetically, we just really connected. So I took a chance and started to invest in cultivating this relationship in Little Prince terms, we were taming each other and in reciprocity, tending to one another. And I think that was the clincher for me, because from pretty much the get go, I noticed for the first time a high degree of reciprocity and investment and a willingness to be as emotionally connected and honest and vulnerable and caring toward me as I was toward him over the course of five years, we became like brothers. In all honesty, we spent the little free time we had together. We

would take weekend fishing trips together or camping trips, exploring the Northwest hiking just really enjoying each other's company, deep conversations, lots of caring, lots of ups and downs between each of us, where we would rely on the other person for comfort or wisdom or advice or just support in a listening ear. I'm hopeful that as I'm telling this story, you can relate to it, that you've experienced that kind of friendship, and know the value of it, and know how much such a relationship can mean to you in your everyday life. What was also true of this man was that while we were the same age and had, you know, the same life context between us, he had some very significant behavioral health problems that I did not have, and in that when those behaviors were really being activated in his life, I really did step into a care giving, care taking, mentoring, role modeling, sort of role for him on one particular night about five years into our Relationship, he reached out by the telephone and explained that he was in a really bad place, and that his wife had left the home and taken the children, and he just wasn't sure what he was going to do.

There was something about the way he said that that made me concerned that he might be experiencing some kind of thoughts about self harm or other, some other dire potential behavior. And so I went, you know, when you get a call from somebody you you love like that. You just take the call and you show up for them, at least. That's what I believe. And so I did. And over the course of that night, something very surprising happened in that he. Invited me to join him in some of these very unhealthy behaviors, and I froze in my body. I did not expect that. I didn't know what to do with that, and I wasn't sure what it would mean to my life, other than were I to go down that path with him, I would irreparably damage my life, my family, my community, and I just, I just couldn't do that. So after one of the longest nights of my life in my 20s, still at that point, I got him through to the morning in a healthy state, and within a few days, I ended the friendship because it did not feel like it was safe for me any longer. It took me, frankly, several years to unpack all of that, but the first big stage of trying to understand it, of course, came in the days after, in the weeks after, and what really happened for me was it exposed a number of my own edges, edges I didn't really know were there, edges, some of which I knew were there and didn't want to deal with. And it nearly brought me to a place of being undone. I realized that this situation and this friendship brought me to an edge of my personal moral boundaries. It brought me to an edge that exposed parts of my own identity I was really unwilling to face. So this is what I mean about exploring the edges within the various circles of friends and friendships. These companions come into our lives. Some of them stay, some of them go. Some of them bring to us gifts of presence and awareness and challenges and enhancements and comfort and dilemmas. They take us to the edge of learning how we practice reciprocity, clarifying

for us what our values are, helping us learn to walk a path of inclusion in the face of difference, and negotiate what all of that means. They can bring us to the edge of joy or the edge of grief.

And through all of that, we have to constantly revisit and renegotiate who we are in our friendships and how the friendship can hopefully change with us as we grow, or else we have to differentiate between this idea of loyalty or familiarity and inertia and growth friends can take us to the very edge of understanding what we believe can be forgiven and how that can be repaired. They also teach us the difficult edge inherent in all circles, which is that there's, at times, a cycle of friendship. Sometimes that cycle of friendship, over a very long period of time, is periods of closeness, while also knowing that there might be a space of distance coming, we have to move through the seasons of our friendship, or friendships, as we grow and develop and age, as we move and relocate and figure out how to live as stewards of our relationship when the circumstances change, friends also, at times, challenge us to find our own voice and speak our own truth when we discover the edge of their influence, and whether or not that influence is adding to our joy or our growth, or whether it's keeping us in some former version of ourselves that we're desperately ready to leave behind, I think, in a way that is different from our families friends help us learn to be better witnesses of suffering, because these are people we elect to have. In our lives in a way that's different from a way we choose to maintain or sever ties with our families, because, as I sort of said earlier on, friends are our companions and witnesses of our emergence. We're also witnesses of their emergence, and that forces us to learn to become more intentional companions, learning how to better show up, how to better be truly present for people,

how to learn to tell the truth and do it without blame or judgment, how to pay attention to what has heart and meaning, and also how to be open to outcome and not attached to outcome. These four beautiful principles were articulated by the cultural anthropologist Angeles Arian who studied communication, presence, leadership, community and those qualities that are shared among all humans in their relationships all over The Globe, this four fold way she talked about in her work is a wonderful way to understand the edges that are exposed in us as we live through the circles of our friendships and our deepest chosen connections, and as we practice All of that, as we practice tending what we've tamed, we get to discover the joy that friendship is not just about belonging, but also about becoming. So given that I've spent a great deal of time talking about this personal story and how it helped me start to see both the circles and the edges of friends and friendships in my life. I just want to turn my head over toward you and ask you about the edges your friends and friendships have brought to you, you may be in a place right here and right now where one of the biggest dilemmas in your life is to negotiate a new path for yourself while facing the fear that the friends and companions that are closest to you might reject, that you may be in a place right now, alternately, where you have served as a witness to a friend of yours that has been there through thick and thin and up and down and every season of your life, and as You're considering the circles and edges of all of this, all you can feel is joy and gratitude and humbled by the fact that the two of you have been so close and have made it so far across all of the cycles of your own friendship, of the cycles of drawing near a fracture of repair, forgiveness, coming back together, renegotiating your normal and moving forward. Obviously, there are probably an infinite number of things that you

could be experiencing, but I do want you to hold and reflect on these people in your life that you call your friends and ask yourself if you are truly in a space of reciprocity with them, if they are supporting your becoming, if you are truly supporting their becoming, if You're able to practice the kind of friendship that that little prince seemed to be seeking in the story. Wherever you are in this journey with the circles of your friendships and the edges they're exposing, I want you to know that in as much as you're here listening to this becoming a part of this community of the circle's edges. Radio program, becoming part of my circle of friends. Wherever you are in that journey, you're in the right place, however you want to practice friendship and get better at it, I'm here to support you.

I just want to thank you all for becoming part of this community, for tuning in, enjoying these late night broadcasts with candlelight and relaxation, to consider how to become a more elevated version of yourself in the world. As we navigate all of these circles, every single one of you listening while I don't know all of you, and I can see only that you're tuning in from places all over the world, please know that I consider you part of my extended circle of friendships, and I hope over time, you will reach out, that we will find some way to make our connection more than just the silent spaces between us as I'm whispering into your ear at whatever time of night or day you might be listening, I truly believe this circle of friendship has so much to offer the world if we just slow down together and hold each other in closeness and esteem and with generosity and with empathy for the edges each of us is individually experiencing. I'm here for you, as you are showing through your listenership that you are here for me.

Well, it's that time in the evening where we will circle back a little bit to feedback and communications insights from you all that have come forward to me through the generosity of your connections. For those of you who are new, or if I can repeat this for my listeners who tune in for each episode, you can reach out to me directly at the email Aaron, that's double A R O N at circles edges.org This week in my virtual Mail Bag, I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge some of the friends who have reached out to share the depth of their their feelings that are coming from listening in To circle's edges radio I was so grateful to hear from my friend Kevin again, who was truly beside himself with my reflections on the origin stories episode which he felt so personally spoke to him and his experiences with his own story and how it has affected him across his life, and how he has learned to become aware of it and question it and grow beyond it, while at the same time honoring it. I was so grateful to hear from one of my very dearest friends over the past 35 nearly years, who brought his son recently to stay in my home and connect and share just how meaningful he felt that circle's edges is and the impact it's having On the world. I'm so grateful to Amy and Carrie, my very dearest friends, Joe and Eric and also Jason, people who have reached out to share that hearing these episodes of the radio program is deeply affecting their nervous systems, helping them to feel calmer, more connected, safer, all the while really giving them a chance to think about things deeply in a way that right now the world is not allowing us to do this Show is very obviously not built for the Tiktok platform or the short form 240 character social media post. It requires the commitment to invest. And I'm so grateful to every single one of you who is doing that. To that end, I noticed that I had hit a milestone recently, and that the very first listener from Kenya, the

very first listener from Africa, has tuned in to the show. And I hope that whoever you may be, you know that I am thinking about you, and I'm wondering about your life, and I am sending you so much positive energy. Likewise, I had a brand new listener join the audience from Chile in South America. I'm so grateful. To friends, listening near and far, every single one of you is so meaningful to me.

And given the nature of this show and the nature of this episode, I actually want to ask you something, would you please thinking about this episode, identify someone in your heart that you consider a friend you cherish, and invite them to listen in, send them a link. Use this as a way to message to them how much they mean to you, how grateful you are for the way they have been with you in your circle and through the circles of your life. Use this as a time to say, I see you, and I thank you, and I'm so grateful that we are tending one another in this friendship, because it's invaluable to me, if you would do that, we'll find even more of our people here who are looking for that late night comfort and peace and safety and friendship that can be found in a fellowship like this One we have created here in circles, edges, Radio.

Well, dear ones, we have time for one last light tonight before I blow out these candles and say good night to you, until I return to the virtual air waves for our next episode of circle's edges radio. I usually will share a thought or a quote, a passage, something a little inspirational that kind of goes along with the theme, or maybe something that looks ahead to the next show today, I couldn't help but think about one of the friendship stories that has really deeply impacted My life as a person. It's been instructive to me in so many ways over the years, and those are the books collectively known as the Lord of the Rings by J, R R Tolkien. Of course, the entire book and all of its characters are about friendship, but so much more than friendship, right? It's it's about fellowship. Fellowship is very different. In preparing for this show, I did a little bit of a dive into the history of the word fellowship, and was surprised to learn that its earliest roots in Western culture come from Old Norse, and those root words identified investment and caring. Now I don't speak Old Norse, so please be generous with me, but the two words that are compounded to mean fellowship in its earlier origin are fi lagi fe, which meant cattle or property or capital of some kind, and then lagi one who joins or lays down him or herself or themself, and invests so this is not just like a social friend or some sort of superficial connection, but someone who shares deeply what sustains us. That is the root of where we come to this understanding of our modern word fellowship, someone who wants to share the risk with you, share the resources, share the emotional investment, share the journey. And so, of course, its use in Tolkien's books as part of the titling makes perfect sense, because that's exactly what happens in the story. And before I say goodnight, I just want to evoke one of the passages that is incredibly famous in the books, of course, was equally famous in

the movie versions as well, but it's where Frodo and Sam are on the last legs of their journeys to destroy this object of evil that is so powerful in the world. This this dark ring and Frodo co. Lapses, and he's simply not able to go any further. And he says to Sam, I just can't I can't do this anymore. I have nothing left to give. And Sam responds, trying to be supportive, knowing he can't take the ring and finish the task. He turns to Frodo, and he says, Come on, Mr. Frodo, I can't carry it for you, but I can carry you and the ring with you. And he picks Frodo up and takes him further toward their final destination. What an incredible act of fellowship that is to be so invested in our journey that they walk it with us. Of course, later, when all was said and done and they were both collapsing together, not knowing if they would ever survive having disposed of this ring. Frodo looks at Sam and says to him, in return, I am so glad to have you here with me at the end of all things, that is my wish and prayer for all of you, that you might know that ring of fellowship in your life, that in reciprocity, you feel grateful

that there would be some very beautiful, specific, wonderful and strong human that is invested in you so deeply that you would follow them to the very end of all things. With that, dear ones, I will offer you good wishes and a good night. You.