Turning Toward Intimacy
October 24th, 2009
By Kayla McClurg
Over 1 million children under 18 will experience divorce this year. Even when it’s handled with love and care for the children involved, the divorce of their parents is a traumatic and life-altering event. Perhaps less stressful than living with two parents who can’t get along, but stressful nonetheless. Throughout our lives we are faced with situations that are painful and in which we feel overwhelmed and powerless. Sometimes we are left by someone we love. Sometimes we are the one who leaves. Sometimes we are neglected or abused, and sometimes we are the one who neglects or abuses another. We live out our childhood losses again and again. Jesus had his own “issues,” you know he did. Small towns talk, and the story is, maybe he’s not even Joseph’s son. I mean, it doesn’t take much detective work to count up the months between marriage and birth … I’m just sayin’….
Jesus understands what we’re going through; he loves us regardless; AND he is no fool. He sees how we use each other and blame each other and hide out from each other, using our starting stories as an excuse. And he keeps calling us to another way. Not a way based on legal systems or social customs, not a way based on denial or casting blame; but a way based on the lofty ideals of down-to-earth love. So whether he was talking to adults about divorce or blessing the children of parents who might be together but were probably struggling as much as any others, he kept reminding whoever would listen to stop going the direction they were going and to turn toward what matters most.
To repent is to turn—and so is to bless, to turn toward instead of away. In Hindu tradition, when meeting or departing, one turns toward the other, bows, hands together at the heart chakra, and says, “Namaste,” which means “I bow to you.” Bowing isn’t the same as, “I give in to you.” Or, “I give up; you can have things your way.” Rather, it is a recognition of the spark of the divine in you. It is bowing to that part of you that, regardless of how we might be at odds, regardless of how differently we see the same thing, regardless of how much you annoy me, reminds me that we are connected. [“The Spirit in me greets the Spirit in you.”]
“To bless” means that when the relationship is breaking down, we choose to believe in the possibility that, actually, deeper connection might be “breaking through.” And so we make a commitment to turn toward one another at the most difficult junctures, not away. When you hurt your spouse or your close friend, or have been deeply hurt by them, when you have been failed by the community of people who have promised to journey, together with you, as members of something bigger than all of you, and in your hurt you turn away—and that might be the right response initially—at some point, turn back. See the ones who have hurt you for the struggling humans they are. Turn toward each other, instead of away.
When you’re not the one hurting, but others are, turn toward that hurt. Go to the Festival Center when Jubilee Jobs has its next orientation—or wherever hurting people gather in your part of the world—and look into people’s eyes and see what hopelessness & hope look like up against each other. Don’t be afraid or angry or resistant to the person begging on the street. Turn toward her instead of away. When children are frightened by the fighting in their home, or other things that are out of their control, turn toward those children, not away. Powerlessness comes because we turn away from each other; empowerment comes when we turn toward each other and toward the God in each other.
This sounds like a lovely exercise until you try it on a daily basis. As humans we yearn for closeness, but don’t know how and are scared to confess even that little bit of self-revealing information. Isn’t it interesting that we are capable of doing all kinds of daring things—visit someone in prison or join a protest where we might get arrested ourselves or swim out into a lake to help get someone to shore or simply face the daily grind of being a responsible person in the world—but we can’t imagine looking someone in the eyes and saying, “I would like to know you and to be known by you, but I’m afraid because I don’t know how.” Our yearning for intimacy is matched by our fear of it … and our fear of admitting our fear.
For many of us the fear goes back to childhood where we never received the blessing we needed from family and the wider community. Did we have a circle of love where we were blessed as Jesus blessed the children, or did we feel more often in the way, scolded for taking up too much space and time? When we went to school, we weren’t taught intimacy like we were taught to read or do math or even like we were taught to share and be polite. Intimacy is caught more than taught. It’s a way of being that is nurtured in simple gestures. I remember a moment when my kindergarten teacher created space for intimacy simply by looking me in the eyes one cold day as she tied my hat on my head. She said, “I think I’ll tie the bow over to the side today because that’s how my little girl likes to wear her bow.” That’s all it took for me to feel the closeness of being as dear to her as her own daughter.
This is what we were created for—small tender gestures, gentle moments of being seen and known and, as they say, loved anyway. And yet we are as clumsy as toddlers who are just learning to walk. We stumble all over each other trying to figure out how to do it. It’s been called the “dance of intimacy” but should dancing cause this many bruises, this many hurt feelings? Rarely are we able to be honest and say we don’t know how but we want to try to learn how to be open and honest and loving … and so we just lumber along, smashing into each other’s feelings and opinions until, exhausted, we conclude that indeed we ARE NOT able to do it, this dance called healthy relationship. We decide the best thing for this turtle to do is to pull in and live inside the shell. Make a cozy little nest there. Permanently.
And maybe that will work out for you; maybe you’re one of the few who can do life alone, but I for one am not. I might not know how to let you get close to me, but I know it’s what I’m made for. And I choose to believe in One who says it’s never too late to be on this path … because it’s really the only path. Not to constantly relive the past and cast blame on those who have hurt us and didn’t teach us well how to open our hearts, but to live NOW as beginners, each moment like children just starting out.
