What
is Intimacy?
“When
we use the word 'intimacy' in our daily lives we easily associate it
with privacy, smallness, coziness, and a certain
exclusiveness...Those who have entered deeply into their hearts and
found the intimate home where they encounter [God], come to the
mysterious discovery that solidarity is the other side of
intimacy...the intimacy of God's house excludes no one and includes
everyone.”
Henri
J. M. Nouwen (Lifesigns)
I
had a conversation with a friend recently about the nature of
intimacy. She asked one of her brothers what the word 'intimacy'
connotes to him. He related it to lovemaking—to him sex was the
most intimate of encounters. I suspect many others would agree. When
we are in the act of making love, the barriers come down; we are
stripped, in more ways than one, of pretense. We are made vulnerable to
one another. Sex can indeed be very intimate—or not. In today's
world, sex is almost mainstream. People have sex with folks they
barely know; we make movies about that, it's a running joke. Ask
students on any college campus just how intimate sex is and you'll be
shocked at the answers you get.
Intimacy
is a whole other thing. Intimacy happens when we are real, when we
don't put on a front, when we leave our persona out of the encounter.
Intimacy has to do with being stripped down on the inside. It begins
with being honest with ourselves and then extending that honesty to
our relationships. Martin Buber, Jewish philosopher of the 20th
century, called this the 'I and Thou' relationship; one in which two
individuals (or two nations) come together as equals, and deeply
value and respect the world view of the other even when they disagree. It is opposite of what he termed the 'I and It' relationship
in which each person (or nation) sees the world from their own
particular point of reference, and finds fault with all opposing views. We see a
lot of 'I and It' these days. In fact, we surround ourselves with it. We are submerged in it. It has become our way of life and it is what makes our world so unsafe.
When
we have real intimacy with ourselves and in our relationships, we
feel full, we feel satisfied. Instead of being small and selective,
we become open and embracing. We move away from the 'us and them'
mentality and into the 'we' way of being. Intimacy expands us, extends our true heart, and
makes us, and our world, safe.
In
the spirit,
Jane
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