Rev. Jean Rowe. A good relationship (true friends, marriage, family ties) is one of life's greatest gifts and achievements. A healthy, wholesome, loving relationship is a platform that allows the mysterious process of human growth to happen, through giving and sharing, safely and securely. When you are loved, you dare to be fully and completely yourself. This is the great gift that fosters the full flowering of each person. Good relationships give us the freedom to be our own best true selves.
One might say that good relationships are of the highest religious and spiritual value because they allow transformation to take place, that is, we transcend old bondages, old ways of thinking and being. And as we are transformed, we may help to transform those around us as well. Or as Rabbi Harold Kushner put it, "The ultimate goal is to transform the world into the kind of world God had in mind when he created it."
