{"id":428,"date":"2020-08-28T14:03:46","date_gmt":"2020-08-28T13:03:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=428"},"modified":"2020-08-28T14:12:46","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T13:12:46","slug":"intimacy-and-solitude","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=428","title":{"rendered":"Intimacy and Solitude"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"intimacyandsolitude_combo\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Sermon #41 (8th March 2020 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians)<\/strong><\/p>\n

This month at Essex Church we\u2019re considering the theme of \u2018Self and Other\u2019. Sarah kicked us off last week by speaking about our \u2018Relationship with Self\u2019, and today I\u2019m taking us into territory that\u2019s a bit more outward-looking, thinking about our relationships with others, and the balance between \u2018Intimacy and Solitude\u2019. <\/p>\n

Some of you probably know that it\u2019s usually me who makes the orders of service each week, and so part of my job is to find a suitable image to fit the topic, which is often more challenging than you might think, given the abstract spiritual and ethical topics we often talk about. We subscribe to an online image library \u2013 so that the photographers get properly paid \u2013 and I search for topics like \u2018grace\u2019 and \u2018redemption\u2019 and \u2018disappointment\u2019 and \u2018heresy\u2019\u2026 which aren\u2019t well-represented concepts in the world of stock images on the internet! <\/p>\n

But when it came to illustrating this week\u2019s topic\u2026 well, that gave me a slightly different problem. You see, if you go to an online image library, and search for pictures of \u2018intimacy\u2019\u2026 there\u2019s only one sort of intimacy they think you\u2019re looking for. There was a lot of cavorting <\/em>depicted in those images, lots of youthful flesh, and altogether more bums than I had bargained for… <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I suppose I should have been braced for it though. In our society, \u2018intimacy\u2019 is often used as a euphemism for sex, and more generally I\u2019d say there\u2019s a societal bias by which many of us tend to primarily associate \u2018intimacy\u2019 with conventional romantic and sexual relationships \u2013 exclusive \u2018partner\u2019 type relationships \u2013 and prize them more highly than anything else. <\/p>\n

In today\u2019s service I want us to think about \u2018intimacy\u2019 in a much broader sense than that, considering its key characteristics, and yet still honouring its potentially infinite variations. As we heard in the piece by Charlotte Kasl, which Antony read for us earlier, the heart of intimacy is to know and be known, as we are, authentically and without pretence. And that\u2019s not limited to romantic and sexual relationships. It can be present between friends, within families \u2013 with other species perhaps \u2013 in both lifelong connections and brief encounters. Nor is it necessarily limited to just one central relationship \u2013 if we\u2019re lucky, each of us will be part of a kind-of \u2018distributed intimacy\u2019 \u2013 finding ourselves in a whole web of meaningful connections. We don\u2019t have to get all our intimacy needs met by one person (and, in truth, we probably won\u2019t). <\/p>\n

There is risk involved in intimacy. To know and be known, we must first trust that when we are so honest, when we make ourselves so mutually vulnerable with another, that we will be safe, and accepted. That the precious gift of our true self will be received with love, or at least with care, and attentiveness. That this sharing will lead to connection. We need to risk dropping our masks, and telling our truth, rather than putting on a front and putting a respectable gloss on our personality in order to try and \u2018win the other person over\u2019. Perhaps admitting our neediness, our hunger for affection & approval, and \u2013 in so doing \u2013 risking disappointment. Or revealing some of our struggles, our less-acceptable-bits, and risking rejection.
\nIntimacy is a kind of bilateral disarmament; both must take down their defences to some degree, but \u2013 usually \u2013 one of you has to have the courage to go first. To unilaterally disarm your heart. <\/p>\n

There\u2019s another aspect to intimacy which Charlotte Kasl mentioned, with reference to the story of the Fox and \u2018The Little Prince\u2019, and that\u2019s the idea of \u2018taming and being tamed\u2019. This is a slow process \u2013 a process by which someone (who you may have met by chance) shifts from being just one of 7.8 billion on this planet into this unique and irreplaceable one you cherish \u2013 a process of establishing ties \u2013 perhaps even acknowledging some degree of mutual dependence. <\/p>\n

And there\u2019s a third dimension to intimacy that we explored in our \u2018Litany for Becoming\u2019 earlier. There\u2019s something in this closeness, this loving attention, which is potentially transformative. Once we\u2019ve let down our guard with someone, they will help to shape us \u2013 help draw out the true self we are in the process of becoming \u2013 by supporting and challenging and affirming us. We may see something in the other person which inspires us to be the best that we can be. Or they may see some potential in us, which we could not see for ourselves, and encourage it. It may simply be that by being seen and accepted for who we truly are, we just flourish, naturally. <\/p>\n

\u2018The things that matter most in our lives are not fantastic or grand. They are the moments when we touch one another, when we are there in the most attentive or caring way. This simple and profound intimacy is the love that we all long for.\u2019<\/em> So says the popular Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield.
\nAnd that sounds about right to me \u2013 this longing for intimacy of some sort is a close-to-universal experience among humans, I\u2019d say \u2013 and it\u2019s a major source of life\u2019s meaning for most of us. <\/p>\n

But there\u2019s something else I want to mention\u2026 The title of today\u2019s service is \u2018Intimacy and Solitude\u2019, after all. <\/p>\n

This week in the Guardian there was an long and rather juicy interview with the actor (and, as far as I\u2019m concerned, National Treasure) Miriam Margolyes. I wonder if any of you read it? It was tremendously entertaining \u2013 just as naughty as you might hope \u2013 you can still read it online. But one of the things she mentioned in passing was that she and her partner Heather \u2013 they\u2019ve been together in a romantic relationship for over 50 years \u2013 choose to live in different countries. Her career in TV and film is busier than ever and her partner is an active-in-retirement academic. They\u2019ve both got work to do, which they care about, which partially fulfils their purpose in life. So they live in different countries, see each other 8 times a year, and speak on the phone every day. <\/p>\n

I\u2019ve got to tell you: I envy this relationship! This sounds like a perfect set up to me in many ways. There\u2019s that balance between intimacy and solitude \u2013 being known and utterly cherished \u2013 and yet remaining people-in-your-own-right and honouring your own life\u2019s sense of calling. We each have a part to play in the unfolding of the universe, I\u2019d say, some holy work to do. For an intimate relationship to support that \u2013 our process of becoming \u2013 it needs to have breathing room. We should perhaps be wary of merging into the other person, and being lost entirely, sacrificing our own life goals (\u2019d suggest historically this sort of \u2018disappearance\u2019 has happened more to women). <\/p>\n

All this makes me think of some famous words by Khalil Gibran, from \u2018The Prophet\u2019, on marriage (I\u2019ll just share a few lines here): <\/p>\n

\u2018Let there be spaces in your togetherness,
\nAnd let the winds of the heavens dance between you.
\nLove one another but make not a bond of love:
\nLet it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls\u2026
\nSing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,
\nEven as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music\u2026
\nAnd stand together, yet not too near together:
\nFor the pillars of the temple stand apart,
\nAnd the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.\u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n

Words from Kahlil Gibran. It seems to me that this apparent paradox \u2013 these elements which seem to be in tension in intimate relationships \u2013 can be characterised in lots of different ways. Within ourselves, or between us and a significant other, there can be tensions between: intimacy and solitude; closeness and distance; attachment and freedom; dependence and independence; surrender and autonomy; too-much and not-enough. And I suspect we all have different and fluctuating needs along all of these axes! Each intimate relationship is thus likely to exist in a state of slightly unstable equilibrium
\n(and negotiating around these mis-matched needs and preferences might feel awkward). But in a way, even this process of negotiation and re-balancing, is part of our process of becoming.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a quote on the front of your order of service from Esther Perel, a psychotherapist, which speaks to this (and I\u2019m going to read a slightly extended version of it to you). She writes: <\/p>\n

\u2018Love rests on two pillars: surrender and autonomy.
\nOur need for togetherness exists alongside our need for separateness.
\nOne does not exist without the other. With too much distance, there can be no connection.
\nBut too much merging eradicates the separateness of two distinct individuals.
\nThen there is nothing more to transcend, no bridge to walk on,
\nno one to visit on the other side, no other internal world to enter.
\nWhen people become fused \u2014 when two become one \u2014
\nconnection can no longer happen. There is no one to connect with.
\nThus separateness is a precondition for connection: this is the essential paradox of intimacy.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Wise words from Esther Perel which speak to the \u2013 necessary \u2013 tension between Intimacy and Solitude. <\/p>\n

Another dimension of this tension can perhaps be expressed in more explicitly spiritual terms. As Charlotte Kasl said in the reading earlier, through intimacy \u2018we begin to feel a greater sense of oneness with All That Is, and perceive that the river that flows in us, flows through all things.\u2019 <\/em>At the same time, \u2018we remain conscious of our separate journeys\u2019<\/em>, as in intimate connection we may truly see each other as unique-and-unrepeatable points-of-light-in-the-unfolding-Universe. <\/p>\n

And Martin Buber spells out the theological dimension even more directly in the second quote on your order of service: \u2018When two people relate to each other authentically and humanly, God is the electricity that surges between them.\u2019<\/em> <\/p>\n

In this picture we might think of deepest intimacy as \u2018experiencing that of God in the other\u2019\u2026 but don\u2019t forget, in such a view, that the other is simultaneously experiencing that of God in us. God is on both sides, God encountering God, and in the authentic connection between us too. <\/p>\n

As we are intimately caught up in each other\u2019s process of becoming, we are also an indispensable part of the becoming of the universe, and even, as strange as it might sound, a part of the becoming of God. <\/p>\n

So to close I will return to the words of \u2018enfleshed\u2019, and echo that last verse of the Litany for Becoming: <\/p>\n

\u2018There is no me without you.
\nWe shape one another.
\nThe Sacred that birthed us
\nweaves our lives together
\nso that we can only find ourselves through shared becoming.
\nFor my journey and all its winding ways.
\nFor yours.
\nFor all the saints who laboured for what is,
\nall the kin whose lives made ours possible.
\nFor all those yet to come for whom
\nliving our truths today will mean
\nbreaking possibilities open for them tomorrow:
\nWe pause. We give thanks. We acknowledge.<\/p>\n

This is loving and being loved.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Amen. <\/p>\n

Sermon by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n

An audio recording of this sermon is available:<\/strong><\/p>\n\nhttps:\/\/www.kensington-unitarians.org.uk\/pod2011\/KU_jane.blackall_sermon_08.03.20.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sermon #41 (8th March 2020 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians) This month at Essex Church we\u2019re considering the theme of \u2018Self and Other\u2019. Sarah kicked us off last week by speaking about our \u2018Relationship with Self\u2019, and today I\u2019m<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}