Richard Rohr – What Is Intimacy?

intimacy

Intimacy could be described as our capacity for closeness and tenderness toward things. It is often revealed in moments of risky self-disclosure. Intimacy lets itself out and lets the other in. It makes all love possible, and yet it also reveals our utter incapacity to love back as the other deserves. None of us can go there without letting down our walls, manifesting our deeper self to another, and allowing the flow to happen.

True human intimacy or divine intimacy is somewhat rare and very hard for all of us, but particularly for men and for all who deem themselves important people, that is, those who are trained to protect their boundaries, to take the offensive, and to avoid all signs of weakness or neediness. God seems to have begun thawing this glacial barrier by coming precisely in male form as Jesus, who exposes maleness itself as also naked, needy, and vulnerable. The transmission of the inner mystery of God continues in space and time primarily through what Jesus calls again and again “the little ones” and “the poor in spirit,” which he himself became.

I think that many of us are afraid of intimacy, of baring our deepest identity to another human or even to God. Yet people who risk intimacy are invariably happier and much more real people. They feel like they have lots of “handles” that allow others to hold onto them and that allow them to hold onto themselves. People who avoid such intimacy are imprisoned in a small and circumscribed world. Soulful intimacy is a gateway into the sacred realm of human and divine love.

Therapists Jett Psaris and Marlena Lyons have found that our longing for intimacy can only be met when we soften the guardedness around our hearts:

We long to love from the fullness of our undefended hearts and we long to be loved unconditionally and without reservation. . . . The dual yearning of the human heart finds its satisfaction in the struggle to know ourselves at our most vulnerable levels. The deeper we know ourselves, the deeper is our capacity to know others intimately. . . . It is our deep hunger for this level of loving that moves us beyond our resistance, fear, and shortcomings to see what is special and unique about us. It allows us to see the profound core of another and to have that core be fully seen in ourselves. [1]

Father Richard concludes: We all desire true and intimate love. This longing seems to be hardwired into our beings. We have to want very strongly to love and to be loved—or we will never go to this strange place, and we will never find our True Selves. So, God obliges and creates us in just that way, with a bottomless and endless need to be loved and to love.

Richard Rohr – Naked Before God

God is giving you the broadest and deepest permission you can receive: to give back to God who you really are—warts and all. And your willingness to offer that, knowing it will be received, brings you to tears on at least two levels. First for your own incapacity—I can’t do it! Lord, have mercy on me. That’s the only honest way to begin to pray: I don’t know how to pray!

Then there’s a second level of tears, which is total gratitude. I hope you’ve had that moment from one beloved partner or friend: when you know you’ve just done a really stupid thing, but they don’t judge you and they don’t dismiss you. They just look at you with soft eyes and receive you. It’s the tears of immense release and joy and happiness—that there’s a heart out there big enough to receive what I can’t receive, to forgive what I can’t forgive. That is what makes you fall in love with God. If you’re on the spiritual journey, that will happen many times.

Richard Rohr – The Dance of Intimacy

A relationship demands two. So the first step in the dance of intimacy is an appropriate sense of self. We all know stories about teenagers or even older people who give themselves away to another person in the hope of finding themselves. It never works, of course, but it’s not their fault. They must not have gotten those mirror neurons from the gaze of love to know who they were. So they think this handsome man or this beautiful woman is going to take care of me and is going to give me my identity.

In the story of Moses and the burning bush, there is first of all an allurement, a seduction and attraction, a fascinating experience (the bush that is burning but not consumed). Moses is attracted to it. Then Yahweh says, “Take off your shoes. Come no nearer.” God is not calling Moses to enmeshment or loss of his own self. Yahweh is telling Moses, “I know who I am, and you are about to enter into an experience of the sacred with me, but stand your ground. Come no nearer.” God honors the other as distinct. So love is not absorption, love is not a martyr complex where you let other people use you. When you know your inherent divine identity, you are truly ready to participate in the sacred dance of intimacy. And in the dance of love there must be at least two.

Adapted from Intimacy: The Divine Ambush , disc 2 and 4
(CD, MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:
The gaze of God receives me exactly as I am.

Fr Richard Rohr – Intimacy

Sunday

Intimacy could be described as our capacity for closeness and tenderness toward things. It is often revealed in moments of risky self-disclosure. Intimacy lets itself out and lets the other in. It makes all love possible, and yet it also reveals your utter incapacity to love back as the other deserves. Intimacy therefore encompasses a loneliness, but a sweet loneliness. In intimate moments, you have been touched by something you cannot yet endure or carry, but you still love the touch and the invitation to carry. You are always larger after any intimate encounter; in fact, it might well be the only way to enlarge spiritually. It is always grace.