queuno asked,

Would a “friends sealing” (to a non-member neighbor) mean anything if the non-member didn’t quality for the CK on his own? And if he qualified for the CK on his own, and so did you, then why need the “friends sealing”?

I think a similar question could be asked about any sealings. If you and your spouse both qualify for the CK, why do you need the sealing to have a relationship there? But like ECS, I think I’m not entirely clear on the purpose of sealings in general, though I like some of the suggestions that people have made here.

Kaimi, I can be a slacker friend, too. I agree that email and the internet can help with that (though what can I say when I’m such a slacker that I take forever to respond to comments on my own posts? ) Anyway, I like that idea that eternal relationships will be held together not by ordinance or formality but simply by love. As a kid, I actually felt somewhat trapped by the whole sealing thing–like I was stuck with a certain group of people whether I wanted to associate with them eternally or not. I’m hoping that they’re not quite that coercive.

I also like that verse about the “same sociality” mentioned by janeannechovy, Ziff, and m&m–thanks for bringing that up. And it’s cool to hear about people’s different experiences with friendship. I have to admit that part of the reason this matters to me is that as an unmarried person, it’s easy to get the impression that there’s a sense in which your relationships don’t really matter because they’re not the “real thing” yet, that they don’t have eternal significance, as opposed to those who are building eternal family relationships. But like several others on this thread, I have friends who have been such an integral part of my life that I simply can’t imagine life without them.

I think there’s a lot to be said for friendship. You’re right, that our society does put a lot of pressure and expectations onto a single, sexual relationship. Some of that pressure is warranted, but much of it could be diffused. Not that one shouldn’t be friends with one’s spouse — hopefully, marriage contains friendship. But you’re right, that sometimes emphasis on the spousal relationship leads to underappreciation of friendship.

I wouldn’t be averse to sealing to my friends. It seems that the friend relationship is not just one of this earth. Didn’t Jesus himself say:

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends . . .

If the friend relationship merits that kind of discussion from Jesus, it has to be more than just mortal, doesn’t it?

A while ago Starfoxy wrote something along these lines: The reason we are here on earth is to learn to love other people, and the reason we learn to love other people is because our bonds with other people are what we take with us to the next life. I really liked that description then, and it still strikes me as one of the best descriptions of Heaven. My sense is that relationships after this life will be held together not so much by ordinance or formality, as by our love for other people.

Which makes it especially funny, that I could do a lot of work in the friends category. I don’t really make friends easily. I’m not all that good at chatting socially. And even once I have a friend, I’m not really a good and attentive friend — I forget to write people, I get distracted, I lose track of friends. And then I think, “I haven’t written so-and-so for the last four months. If I write now, they’ll just wonder why I didn’t write earlier.” And suddenly it’s six months, or a year. Rinse and repeat.

Fortunately, e-mail and blogs make it easier (sometimes!) to keep track of friends online. And I can sorta-kinda pretend that it’s good enough. I may not have said anything directly to so-and-so for six months, but if I’m still reading her posts, then I’m not completely falling down on the job as a friend, am I?

Meanwhile, the job of organizing and maintaining real-life friendships, particularly in the ward, typically falls on my wife. (How’s the for ironic? Friendship can remove some of the stress from the marriage relationship, yes. But it can also add layers of extra work!)

My wife is much better with names and faces than I am. She keeps up with ward developments: whose daughter is getting married, and who’s moving out of the ward, and so on. I’m likely to not notice for months, and suddenly ask her, “where are the Jensens? I haven’t seen them for a while.”

Which brings us back to how I need to not be such a slacker friend. Sigh. With my track record, even if friend sealing was available, I’d probably forget to do it, or postpone it indefinitely, or miss the appointment.

We are NOT sealed to our siblings. We share the experience of being sealed to the same parents. None of us are sealed to siblings. Just pay attention to the ceremony, not to some of the mush-headed sentimental comments often made about sealings.

Oh, drat. I’m not usually mush-headedly sentimental, but I admit that during those long high-council talks, the heaven I sketched on the back of the program always involved at least one mass blog sealing. (Although wow, now that I say that out loud, it sounds like a Jim-Jones ritual community binding. Ahem. Pass the Koolaid. But we could ameliorate the Jonestown overtones somewhat by permitting individuals multiple blog sealings. Polysociality seems only just, for us Mormons.)

Hooray ECS! It’s great to see you. And, on a slightly more serious note, it’s interesting to think about what, exactly, we consider the meaning of sealing. I’m sure the more historically accomplished among us can enlighten us further, but my understanding is that people used to have themselves sealed to Joseph Smith as his adopted children (?)–a practice I strongly suspect the Church no longer encourages.

Thanks for your thoughts, Lynnette. The topic of opposite-sex friendship has come up a number of times on the Bloggernacle, and I’d like to see someone treat it systematically, try to consider the gains and risks and ideally offer some practical suggestions for promoting healthy friendships across (embattled?) gender lines.

I’m not one who makes friends easily or often, but I have friends to whom I’ve remained close for nearly two decades now, and I can’t imagine my life without them.

I’m not sure what purpose a sealing among friends would serve – other than the symbolism of binding two people who like each other together. Then again, I wonder about the salvific effect/necessity of other priesthood ordinances (including sealings) as well. Are sealings to reassure us or are they for God?

On a very different tack…
Many of our very best friends don’t live near us. We became friends when we were in the same ward as our families began. These are the kind of friendships that we eternally treasure — ones that sometimes seem as remots as geography suggests, but with whom our connection is so strong that any time we get back together it’s as if we never were separated. Surely the same must be possible for those we encounter later in life, but I confess I have seldom managed it. There’s simply something about sharing those critical moments when a family is just starting to grow.

And I think it is side-splittingly funny the way that we project the way we live now onto the future. We speak of “beyond the veil” and “the next life” as though we actually know what we are talking about. But since that is the only vocabulary we know, that is what we use. And the phrase about the same sociality (one of the lovliest thing about Mormonism, in my opinion) actually does suggest that our circumstances after we die will bear a recognizable resemblance to our relationships here.

The thing that struck me the most about Rough Stone Rolling was how Joseph Smith was portrayed as a man who hated loneliness and separation. He treasured companionship and was intensely loyal, and wanted to bind his friends and family to him even after death.

Sunstone had a great article outlining Joseph Smith’s views on friendship.