Intimacy and Reverence

Every relationship...and Love in all its splendid forms...is a dance of intimacy and reverence. This is not exactly the same as closeness/distance although the two polarities are analogous and mutually infuse each other. Mysteriously, genuine intimacy with the other enhances reverence so that proper closeness elicits respect, esteem and even (with God) adoration. The human body...in its fragility, corruption, radiance and bi-sexuality... is the temple of intimacy and reverence. In its sickness it can repel us even as its pain elicits our compassion. In its beauty it can draw us into reverence, or into a false intimacy of use and disrespect. Pope Francis tells us is that we will be judged according to how close we become to all flesh. Clearly he is speaking of reverent intimacy, specifically with the flesh of those who suffer. Our Lord Jesus, in his newly-resurrected body (He is NOT a ghost or a spirit, but emphatically a body, albeit glorified...he shows his wounds, eats fish) pushes Mary Magdalen away ("do not grasp me") even as he draws the distant, skeptical Thomas close ("put your hands into my wounds"). In these contrasting encounters, we see Jesus protecting distance and reverence with the woman and overcoming distance and establishing intimacy with the man. This suggests that the feminine, especially the maternal, impulse is to enclose the Other in an improper closeness; while the masculine is to remain distant, autonomous and indifferent. Clearly, the female psyche is intrinsically open to and accepting of the other where the male ego is discrete, rigid and excluding. And yet, the opposite dynamic is common in the area of romance where the male attraction, insensitive and overwhelming, pushes past boundaries while the womanly instinct (where it has not been compromised by a culture of promiscuity) is to protect her inviolate, precious integrity. And so in romance there is a special responsibility for the woman to protect reverence as the crude masculine longing for a more physical and superficial intimacy requires discipline and correction. And then again, in other contexts the stronger emotional nature of the woman calls for moderation by the male mind with its higher capacity for distance, objectivity and sober judgement. The complexity, creativity, nuance, and fecundity of the the dance of intimacy/reverence, between man and woman but in all relationships, is endless and reflective of the Absolute Intimacy and Distance within the Three-In-One!