Think about the people you have invited to your tea party. As your eyes move around the table, visualize their faces and glimpse the nature of your relationship with each and every one of them. Reflect on each friendship, its history, its dynamic, and how it has helped you to know yourself better. Think about how each friend helps you remember exactly who you really are: your essential self. These friends are a reflection of you: they represent your past, your present, as well as your future.

Then stop to consider whether there are any empty places at your table. Are there any long-lost friends who ought to be there? Now make the affair even larger to include your Ripple Friends. You might want to add another table for your Ripple Friends, or perhaps they are standing at a buffet of tea sandwiches, milling around and conducting a lively conversation among themselves, waiting for you to get up and spend time with them. Who is seated at your table, and who is standing at the buffet? Who are your close friends, and who are your Ripple Friends? Draw up a guest list, and review the roster of your friendships.

GET TOGETHER

Invite your friends for a real tea party. Go around the table and tell each friend what he or she means to you. Have your friends do the same. Consciously celebrate friendship. Take the first step -- an e-mail, a knock on the door, a postcard, a phone call -- and let the reflection of love surround you. Try to find ways to make getting together with a friend a regular part of your weekly or monthly routine. Look up or call an old friend and reestablish contact. Put your friends' phone numbers on your speed dial. Create an e-mail tree, a customized e-mail distribution list of your friends, so it's easy to reach them all at once.

Buffy's sister, Susan, has many friends, close and Ripple, and Buffy is always surprised at how far her sister will go to be a good friend. Recently, one of Susan's friends moved from Mexico City to New York City. Lily was recovering from a back operation when she moved, but her husband's work and her children's school deadlines forced her to move before she had fully recuperated. Susan surprised her friend Lily by flying to New York just one day after Lily had arrived. Susan unpacked Lily's boxes, hung her pictures, laid down shelf paper, filled the bookshelves, sorted out the kitchen. Susan got Lily's new apartment organized in a day and a half and then flew home. When Buffy told her sister how much she admired her, Susan tossed off the compliment, saying that's what friends do for each other.

Are you this kind of friend?