by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

a sermon given on Sunday, Jan. 30, 2000

First Unitarian Church, Portland, OR

Last Sunday my sermon topic was "The Death of Intimacy," and in that sermon I explored the many reasons that make intimacy difficult for us in this culture. And if I’m not mistaken, at the end of that sermon, I promised you that this week I would give you the answers—how, in spite of all the obstacles, you can, even so, achieve intimacy in your life. Well, hey, that was just the ad. The truth is that you can’t find intimacy through a self-help sermon. It’s not like a grocery list that you can take to the store and fill up your basket and come home with the goodies. No, you can’t achieve intimacy, but you can invite it, be open to it, and by the grace of God receive it into your life.

For those of you who were not here last week, I defined intimacy as "sharing what is inmost, (intimus, inmost) with someone else." I am not confining my remarks to romantic love or sexual intimacy, for there are many forms of intimacy. You may have a friend with whom you can unburden your soul without fear of judgment, and what a blessing that is. One very potent form of intimacy for men is the closeness they share when they are in battle. I have heard men say that they know their fellow soldiers in a way they know no others—never have they given such trust, never have they had to depend absolutely on another for their very lives.

It should be said as well that the way we express these closest of bonds is very much culturally determined. One of our congregants who is a frequent visitor to Africa tells me that for many people there, intimacy comes from being at life-cycle rituals—mourning together at funerals, for example. The mourners are connected through their physical and emotional presence. Deep intimacy can emerge simply from walking together to and from the well each morning and going through ritualized greetings each day for years on end. In our particular culture, being less physically demonstrative, we are more dependent on words. And having forgotten, in our isolation, much of our tribal instinct, we can become far too dependent on the one person with whom we may choose to partner. This one we expect to be lover and parent (right there you have a significant problem), breadwinner, companion, and confidant.

Sobonfu Some, an African author who lives both in Africa and in Oakland, CA, emphasizes the importance of community. She says in her country the word "our," as in "our relationship" is not limited to two, but refers to the whole village—in our culture we are forced to limit it to two. When couples get married in her village, the whole village gets married—in fact, one person may say to another, "I’m getting married on such and such a day," referring to the coming wedding of another. All in the village contribute to the well-being of others. For instance, if a woman has a baby, she can breast-feed any child, and often does.

Contrast this village life with our own. Not only do we fail to see our interdependence, but with our wealth and freedom, no longer are our marriages based on economic and family ties, but based rather on the intrinsic quality of the personal relationship. This change has occurred in just the last few generations—we should understand how new this concept is—that each couple is on their own to form a strong and enduring relationship. So we are, you might say, pioneers in this unexplored territory of the heart. We are now in a period of trial and error—mostly error, it sometimes seems.

Last week I spoke of other formidable cultural barriers to intimacy—the technology that keeps us connected, but mainly by wires; the built-in assumption that one person’s loss is another’s gain and so we have to compete with one another; an economic system that turns its people into agents of production and consumption. All this is against us, from the get-go.

Besides these societal obstacles, we bring our personal histories--the kind of nurturing we did or didn’t get in our family of origin, and then the subsequent relationships that we have entered into, sometimes good and sometimes not so good—in other words, we bring who we are, who we have become, into any new relationship. We bring the fear that comes after loss, the hard knot of anger that comes with betrayal, the inability to forgive ourselves and others. If we have been abused or neglected, we bring strangely enough, self-blame. We come to believe that, since we have not been loved, we are not lovable. We fail at important relationships, and we fear we will fail again. This kind of emotional baggage is a heavy load to carry, and sometimes it leaves us without the strength or confidence to love. To need, yes, but not to love. Sometimes we feel like the old country song "I’m Down to My Last Broken Heart."

I might say just in general that when we are full of our own "stuff," no matter what that stuff is, we cannot be open to intimacy. Maybe it’s the old baggage I’ve mentioned that we need to tend to. Maybe it’s ego stuff—maybe a person just gets too full of himself. There’s a wonderful cartoon that shows a man and a woman sitting together, having a drink, getting acquainted. He is smiling at her and he says, "There, that’s enough about me. Now, what do you think about me?"

Which brings me to the amazing and wonderful differences in men and women. The fact that we ever get together is a minor miracle, when you consider how different we are. As linguist Deborah Tannen points out, it is as though we are from different cultures, with different understandings and different expectations. Perhaps this situation makes same-sex relationships a bit easier than opposite-sex—at least a woman knows something about how another woman is likely to operate, and the same, man to man.

Dave Barry brings these differences into sharp relief in one of his columns:

"Let’s say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later they go to dinner, and again enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

"And then, one evening when they’re driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and without really thinking, she says it aloud: ‘Do you realize that, as of tonight, we’ve been seeing each other for exactly six months?’

"And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Geez, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he’s been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I’m trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn’t want.

"And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

"And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I’m not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space. I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Do I really even know this person?

"And Roger is thinking: . . . .so that means it was. . . let’s see. . . February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer’s, which means . . . lemme check the odometer. . . Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

"And Elaine is thinking: He’s upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I’m reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that’s it. That’s why he’s reluctant to say anything about his feelings. He’s afraid of being rejected.

"And Roger is thinking: And I’m gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don’t care what those morons say, it’s not shifting right. This thing is shifting like a damn garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieving cretin creeps $600.

"And Elaine is thinking: He’s angry. And I don’t blame him. I’d be angry, too. I feel so guilty putting him through this, but I’m just not sure.

"And Roger is thinking: They’ll probably say it’s only a 90-day warranty. That’s exactly what they’re gonna say, the scumballs.

"And Elaine is thinking: Maybe I’m just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to coming riding up on his white horse, when I’m sitting next to a perfectly good person."

"And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I’ll give them a warranty!"

"’Roger,’ Elaine says aloud.

"’What?’ says Roger, startled.

"’Please don’t torture yourself like this,’ she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. Oh God, I feel so. . . . (She breaks down sobbing.)

"’What?’ says Roger.

"’I’m such a fool,’ Elaine sobs. ‘I mean, I know there’s no knight. I really know that. It’s silly. There’s no knight, and there’s no horse.’"

"’There’s no horse?’ says Roger.

"’You think I’m a fool, don’t you?’ Elaine says.

"’No!’ says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"’It’s just that . . . It’s that I . . . need some time,’ Elaine says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one he thinks might work.)

"’Yes,’ he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

"’Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?’ she says.

"’What way,’ says Roger.

"’That way about time,’ says Elaine.

"’Oh,’ says Roger. ‘Yes.’

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"’Thank you, Roger,’ she says.

"’Thank you,’ says Roger.

"Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechoslovakians he never heard of."

So, if intimacy is all that hard, why try to do it at all? Why not just lose ourselves in work, or play with the computer for hours a day, or drink until the pain of loneliness goes away? We continue trying because we know this is where life is. These relationships will take us into uncharted territory, and we will be forced to open deeply into our own questions. "What is the beloved?" says D. H. Lawrence. She is that which I am not." Entering the realm of the "not I," we can no longer think of ourselves as the measure of all things.

We feel safer when we have all the answers, but intimate relationships are not safe—they unmask, they expose us. We become vulnerable, which means literally, "able to be wounded." We will be faced with dimensions of ourselves that we never knew were there. Though intimacy does comfort and console, it does not function chiefly to soothe our insecurities. It is not a shield against impermanence, nor does it address the dilemma of our existential aloneness—we do live and die alone.

We will follow a path that ends we know not where. Wendell Berry speaks of this process in his essay "Poetry and Marriage." He writes: "The meaning of marriage begins in the giving of words. We cannot join ourselves to one another without giving our word. And this must be an unconditional giving, for in joining ourselves to one another we join ourselves to the unknown. We can join one another only by joining the unknown. . . . . no one party . . . can be solely in charge. What you alone think <marriage> ought to be, it is not going to be. Where you alone think you want it to go, it is not going to go. It is going where the two of you—and marriage, time, life, history, and the world—will take it. You do not know the road; you have committed your life to a way."

Intimate relationships will not allow us our secure hiding places, and in that sense, they are costly. They will cost us the image of the person we imagine ourselves to be. But this is the pay-off—they will inevitably bring forth more of who we really are and make us more fully alive, more available to the world. Intimacy has the power to transform us--not change us into something we are not--but to bring forth the strength and goodness and beauty that already reside within.

What makes us able to travel this path, what keeps us from giving up? Love and commitment will accompany us on the journey, and will form a container of safety where we may experiment, fail, return, and try again. We will find an open space, and we will begin to stand taller and breathe more easily. At times we will feel stuck and we will even feel that we have lost the thread completely. But no, we will find that we have not.

Single people often complain of the difficulty of "finding the right person"— women say, "There just aren’t any good men out there," and men say the same about women--or as I once observed a gay man slam down the phone and said petulantly, "Oh, men!" But I think those statements say more about the speaker than about the odds of finding a partner. I think what the individual means is that "I’m just not ready for a relationship." We can run from relationship in ways too numerous to count—"Get on the bus, Gus; drop off the key, Lee." We tell ourselves that "I am just not lovable," or "something is wrong with me," or "everybody else except me is able to do intimacy." These are things we say to keep ourselves safe, these are your basic risk-aversive thoughts. You would be wise to dismiss them.

When you are ready for a relationship, genuinely open--when you don’t need a relationship, but really want one, that’s when one appears. I have my own story to tell about this. My travels and my studies have taken me many different places over the country, and I was glad to settle down at last in Portland. That was eight years ago. I said to myself, "Well, now I’m ready for a relationship." But the fact is, there was no way I was ready. The church grew 40% the first year, and shot up to around 900 members, and I was the only minister. We were sorely understaffed. I was trying to get adjusted to a new city, and I was working morning, noon, and night. Knowing not a soul in Portland, I was very, very lonely. But I remember when a man asked me out for coffee once, I looked in my date book and couldn’t find an opening for two weeks. He said to me, "Are you sure you have time for a relationship?" I had to think about that. I didn’t want to date anyone—I just wanted a relationship. I wanted somebody to come and knock on my front door, and when I opened the door, he would say, "Hi, I’m Joe. God sent me. I’m your relationship." Well, it just doesn’t work that way.

Being ready means having your heart open—sometimes that means having it broken open. I don’t mean the breaking of the heart itself—the heart is soft and pliable—but the breaking of the hard shell around the heart, the part that protects the softness within. Sometimes fate and circumstances break our hearts open and give us a kind of window to wisdom, and we become more compassionate and caring, in spite of ourselves. We shed some of our ego and gain a kind of humility that lets us see as we have not seen before. Or we can take the approach of Maggid of Mezeritch, the Hasidic leader who said, "If your heart is not open/ Treat it like a door/ Break it open."

I myself have been working at this for years. In my yoga practice, I asked my teacher for poses that open the heart center. Every morning in my prayers, I end with the petition, no, the fervent desire: "May my heart open like a flower." Oh, I understand that if I allow the opening of my heart that I might have to change my life, and so my request for this blessing is always tinged with fear. What will I have to give up, if I love more deeply? Privacy? Privilege? Money? Surely not money! Will I have to look where I don’t want to look? Will I have to dirty my hands? But the truth is—and I said this last week, and it’s still true this week—life is about loving. That’s really all it’s about. Our work should be a gift of love. If it is not, give it up. Our civic life, our political action—more gifts of love. Our respectful care of our own body and emotional life and spiritual life—this is the most basic form of loving. Thankfulness upon arising, for the miracle of day. Once again the sun has come up. Once again we see the blue of the sky, the gold leaves of the winter willow; perhaps if we’re lucky, the mountain. Thanksgiving upon bedding down for gifts given and gifts received throughout the day.

I could give you a formula for making a good intimate relationship. Do you want that? Well, let’s get it over with then: (1) Don’t try to change the other person;. (2) Ask for what you want; (3) really listen; (4) never, never lie; (5) allow yourself to feel what you’re feeling and share that. Blah, blah, blah. What do you have when I’ve told you that? A synopsis of a self-help book. Save your money. Because you see, I think—given the way the deck is stacked against us in this intimacy thing—I think we need to go much deeper, to rest in something more dependable.

One time I made a pastoral care call on a woman who said she was longing to develop spiritually. She presented me with a stack of books and said, "Which of these are the best? Which should I read?" And I said to her, these books will get in between you and what you so desire. Let them all go and be with the silence. You will find, then, what you already know, and it will be enough." We need to start with the "I don’t know," or as the Buddhists would say, with beginner’s mind. In beginner’s mind there are many possibilities; in the expert’s mind, there are none. Experts give answers which may not be your answers; with beginner’s mind, your own wisdom will take you where you need to go.

If you really want to know what I think—this is what I think. I think, given all of the barriers to intimacy that we have, we’d better find a ground to come from, a place that will keep us steady when the earth trembles, a home for our soul. Otherwise, we are likely be buffeted about by forces within and without. Personally, I wouldn’t consider entering a relationship of any consequence without inviting the Spirit as a third party. Yes, it has to be a menage a trois, really.

How do you do that? I can’t tell you how to find God—I can’t tell you what God is—I can’t even reliably say there is a God. So, you’re on your own—that’s what it means, I guess, to be a Unitarian Universalist. I’ll go with you as you search, and the rest of us here, we’re pledged to be with you, but this is your baby. You have to find God anyway you can. And good luck to you.

I can only tell you what I do. In the first place I know I don’t belong to myself. I’m just passing through, just here in this world for a while, and while I’m here I’m in service to something much larger than myself. I know that. In the second place, I know that when I try to do my life without inviting the Sacred in as a partner, I invite disaster—I’ve proved that more than once. In the third place, I know I have to keep recommitting myself to this unknown One, lest in the midst of the noise and confusion of life, I forget what I’m about.

Now about intimate relationships. God wants us to have them. Really. Because you see, the Holy Spirit doesn’t really manifest itself in burning bushes or doves most of the time—at least these days. No, the Holy One comes to us most often through the hearts and hands of those who love us. Intimacy, including but not exclusively sexual intimacy, has a mystical quality about it, because it is through this union that we begin to feel a greater oneness with All That Is. Love will drive out fear, and as the fear goes, compassion can enter. Furthermore, when the intimacy between two people is dedicated to some higher purpose, to values they both believe in, their union will be stronger, because it’s not just feeding on itself—it is regenerating itself in the world. Not only does this devotion to the good strengthen their relationship, but it will raise a healing energy to all around them.

I’ve learned not to be angry with God when, for a very long time, I’m not in a special relationship, or when I lose a friend I love. After all, that’s just the way things are sometimes. And I’ve also learned that the universe yields up so very many sources of loving—I just have to take off the blinders of my fear, to be careful about my need to revise reality. If I can just really be present with another person, just see the beauty, listen for the nuances of voice, watch the characteristic gestures, I’ll begin loving. And then I’ll feel loved.

One last thing. I’ve already said this, but I’m going to say it again: don’t forget to be thankful. Every day, for the love in your life. It really is a kind of miracle, you know, the way we can give ourselves to another. And thankfulness just opens your heart all the more, and peace settles upon you, and joy is the place you will spend your days.

So be it. Amen.

PRAYER

Beloved, hear our prayer. We would be given over more and more to love, and we find that not an easy thing to do. Help us with our loving. Guide us, as we reach through our fears, for we remember our failures. Give us the courage to keep trying, to keep stretching our hearts. Partner us, we pray, as we love and take us ever deeper into the circle of your being. Amen.

BENEDICTION

May love call you by your true name, and may it take you where it will. Go in love and peace. Amen.

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning. As we gather in community together, may we more deeply know the love that connects us all. Come, let us worship together.

Copyright © 2000 by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.