The following is not a formal review but rather thoughts arising from a reading of Ed Shaw’s recent book.
The Intimacy Deficit – Fully Enjoying God, Yourself, Others and Creation
by Ed Shaw
My 94 year old father now lives in a care home with a sly, cruel thief-of-a-constant companion chipping away at his mind – Alzheimer’s.
On a recent visit, I found him sitting on the sofa by the window next to an old lady called Norma and draped across both their knees was a brightly-coloured crocheted blanket donated by some relative or another. It was very touching seeing them there together, the only two still ‘up’ though it was not long past 6 pm. Most other ‘inmates’, as my father calls them, go straight to bed after their late afternoon supper. My father, insisting that 5 pm is far too early for an evening meal, has his alone with the television in the lounge later on. Recently, Norma has taken to staying up ‘late’ to keep him company. It’s hard to get to talk to my dad alone these days. These two have, since his arrival last November, become inseparable.
My father’s third wife of 32 years left him aged 92 and went to live abroad with her children from her first marriage. His second wife suffered with alcoholism during their 18 year relationship and, prior to that, he had a short lived first marriage with a fashion editor who divorced him on the grounds that he couldn’t give her children. It transpired that she herself took steps to prevent the possibility. Reflecting on his choices one might say that my father didn’t ‘alf pick ‘em.
And yet, in his 90s I find him forming yet another attachment and I’ve been reflecting on this with some amazement whilst reading two books on intimacy from a Christian perspective – Ed Shaw’s recently published The Intimacy Deficit and Elaine Storkey’s 1995 work The Search for Intimacy. The former was recommended during a sermon and was given to me by a very good friend who knows me well and knows too the very human tendency to try to anaesthetise the pain of life in all the wrong places. Intimacy is a rather abstract and troubling subject. It doesn’t define only in obvious terms but is far more complex. Shaw starts the book making this point clearly:
This is not a book about sexuality and/or sex…:its main point is that your greatest need in life is intimacy, a sense of oneness and connectedness both outside of yourself and with yourself, but not of the sexual kind. (P1)
I once heard the word ‘Intimacy’ used to describe the theme of a piano recital featuring Beethoven’s 24th piano sonata, Mozart’s B Minor Adagio and Schumann’s Romance in F Sharp. ‘Intimacy’ – a word that encapsulated not only the subtleties of the music, but also the human context of each piece and the environment in which it was being presently appreciated. Intimacy as a concept is something so abstract that it troubles and intrigues many, eludes most and yet is also on another level the basis of the drive that ensures the procreation of the species.
Ed Shaw’s The Intimacy Deficit can be summarised neatly as ‘fully enjoying God, yourself, others and creation’ – in that order. I’d have been inclined to treat the subject of God first, then creation, then others and lastly (if at all) the self but I may be lending more significance to the order of chapters than Shaw intends. The idea of intimacy with God and others is not new and came as no surprise; intimacy with creation conjured memories of studying the Romantic poets or walking in the Lakes but intimacy with oneself? Ugh. The suggestion made me recoil and want to look elsewhere to check no one was watching. (No one is watching. You’re alone reading a book for heaven’s sake). My point is, aren’t we supposed to look outward not inward? Isn’t ’navel-gazing’ the worst of psychological and spiritual crimes and one which hails down indictments: ‘With each look within, to take ten looks at Him!’
The key to intimacy with oneself, according to Shaw is delighting in whose you are. Created by and belonging to God, knit together in the womb of our mother, a fearfully and wonderfully made work woven together in the depths of the earth, united to Christ and gifted with His Spirit. It takes a great deal of meditation and prayer to allow these truths to drown out the voices of the world which suggest that our value lies, amongst other things, in achievement, notoriety, attractiveness, talent. Shaw claims that biblical truth provides a ‘solid sense of self’ (agreed) ‘which can provide feelings of success and satisfaction whatever may happen to us’ (hmmm really?). If only it were this simple.
My own view is that if a person has experienced any sort of rejection or abandonment whether through death or family breakdown or other sorts of relational dysfunction at a formative time of life, the result will be a poor relationship with the self from that moment onwards. In other words that person is more likely to reject themselves however subtly this may manifest itself. Elaine Storkey, in her chapter, The Power of the Past, writes,
Scars can heal, bruises can disappear, but the sense of self-worth is far more permanently seared. (p109)
No wonder the concept of intimacy with the self can be so off putting, so abhorrent. Who wants to spend time with someone who rejects them? It takes a strong stomach to explore this uncomfortable strand of the book but it is only one of four areas covered and not to be under or over-emphasized in relation to the others.
I found the chapter on Intimacy with God the most helpful. God is described as ‘Father, Friend and Fiancé’. Shaw argues, as others on the same subject have done before him (Tim Chester, Elaine Storkey, Graham Beynon) that without a properly close relationship with God our Father, we are prone to wander and seek our kicks from broken cisterns. For Shaw this seems to be the endless pursuit of the perfect house to buy – what he calls ‘property porn’ – for many, as any reader of literature will know, the pursuit of validation and worth can lead a person into far darker places in mind or body or both.
Intimacy with creation sounded all a bit pantheistic to me initially but this is one reason why I quite liked Shaw’s writing – a little bit daring in its applications, a little bit controversial. I liked this. Elaine Storkey’s The Search for Intimacy, which I’m now reading, is a more thoroughly researched and academic study of the topic (though quite dated having been published in 1995). Storkey’s book is a more satisfying and broader treatment of the subject while Shaw’s book is pithy, clearly-structured and a catalyst for impassioned discussion of a sensitive topic.
Returning to my father, one of eight children, who lost his own father at the age of nine and whose mother, in her grief, barely spoke for two years, I realise it is no surprise that, despite all that has happened to him, he seeks to know and be known by another at a deep level, even through the fog of dementia, into his ninth decade. Perhaps it is rather a beautiful thing.
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