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. As I studied accounts of the Resurrection, I came to see what is now completely obvious to me: these texts reveal both the Christ and the True Self as a deep capacity for intimacy with yourself and with everything, probably including life itself.
The True Self is a shared and sharable self, or it is not the True Self. Intimacy is possible only between two calm identities and is not the same as melding or fusing into one. Which comes first? Does feeling safe and held by God allow you to deal with others in the same way? Or does human tenderness allow you to imagine that God must be the same, but infinitely so? I do not suppose it really matters where you start; the important thing is that you get in on the big secret from one side or the other.
The big and hidden secret is this: an infinite God seeks and desires intimacy with the human soul. This is the mystical vocabulary of the saints. When vulnerable exchange happens, there is always a broadening of being on both sides. We are bigger and better people afterward. Those who never go there always remain small and superficial and unconnected to themselves. You would normally experience it as a lack of substance or even reality in a person. People who have avoided all intimacy normally do not know who they are at any depth—and cannot tell others who they are.
Fullness in a person cannot permit love because there are no openings, no handles, no give-and-take, and no deep hunger. It is like trying to attach two inflated balloons to one another. Human vulnerability gives the soul an immense head start on its travels—maybe the only start for any true spiritual journey. He starts with self-disclosure from the divine side, which ideally leads to self-disclosure from our side.
