Hugged Upon: A Social Commentary

Yesterday I went to Mass before going to work. It was only a weekday Mass, even if it was the feast of the Presentation, so the church was mostly empty. One of the things about this parish that I don’t particularly care for is that at the sign of peace, everyone leaves their pew and walks all over the church to shake hands with everyone. It’s not wrong, as far as I can tell, but it rather distracts from the real focus of the Mass. After all, at this point in the liturgy, the Host is consecrated and Jesus is sacramentally present on the altar. That is the focal point of the entire universe! It’s not really the time for a social event.

However, as I said, I don’t think it is wrong, and I certainly don’t think those who do it mean any disrespect by it so I did what I usually do. I shook hands with and asked God’s peace upon those in my immediate vicinity, and any others who wandered over from other parts of the church, and then turned back to the altar to get back to the Mass. Upon turning back, however, I saw someone moving towards me from the front of the church. She was a largish lady, in her fifties I would guess, with a look of intense focus on her round face. She had me in her sights, so I prepared to shake hands with her as well, but as she bore down on me (she had to cover enough ground that I had time to size her up) her arms stretched out wide. My thoughts were not coherent, but they could be translated, “That looks like… but no it couldn’t be… but it really… no…”

Then she said loud enough to be heard through the building, continuing to advance at a high rate of speed, “Can I get a hug?”

She was close enough to be breaking the comfort zone, you know that little personal bubble area in front of you where someone is just too close for conversational purposes? As she broke it I retreated half a step back into my pew, and held out my hand, mumbling something stunned and lame under my breath. I didn’t register her reaction, except that she shook and walked back to the front of the church. In retrospect, I suppose it might have embarrassed her a bit to be so obviously rejected. She’s fortunate I didn’t have time to collect my thoughts or I would have just said “No” in the driest, most end-of-story tone I could muster. No doubt many would consider my reaction rude enough as it was. I wish I knew how she viewed it, since at the moment she represented a mindset almost entirely alien to me and I would like to understand it better.

Since I couldn’t figure out her reaction, I spent part of my drive into post this morning trying to analyze mine. I was surprised, not only by her action, but by the fierceness and strength of my reaction. It took a while for me to bring my thoughts back into the realm of charity. You see, I hate being hugged upon by strangers. I don’t even like having my space invaded (with some exceptions), and my initial reaction is always defensive, but when someone I don’t know tries to hug me (it happens very rarely) my first instinct is to shove them back, create some space, and just say “Whoah, hold on. Back off, I don’t know you.”

She obviously had no such reservations, and I had to question my reaction. After all, she just wanted a hug, right? Aren’t we supposed to love one another? Well, that wasn’t a very loving thing to do, now was it? Isn’t that what the sign of peace is all about, showing the love of Jesus? Doesn’t Saint Paul tell us to greet each other with a holy kiss?

I suppose she must have decided I just didn’t like hugs or something, and it was this supposition that gave me an insight into why my reaction is always so strong. You see the fact is I actually don’t hate hugs. I love them in fact. I hug the heck (literally) out of people I know well, family and really close friends. In going through the list I realized that there are people that I love well enough to take a bullet for, but I would never hug. Most of my patients have been like that. Even that lady in the church, I certainly wouldn’t say I didn’t want to have some charity for her. But a hug is still unthinkable, even repulsive. It isn’t the person that repulses me, but the act of hugging someone I don’t know.

And right there is the crux of the matter. There are some people who say that a hug or a kiss is a statement of love, and therefore to be expected between Christians united in the Love of Jesus. After all, you don’t have to know the person to know that Jesus loves them. Very true, and yet that doesn’t call forth the hugging instinct in me. To me, hugging is not so much the language of love, as a language of intimacy, to one degree or another. Love may be possible without knowing the person. Intimacy is not. Charity is guaranteed, or should be, simply on the basis of the shared love of God. One of the results of charity is that it should encourage us to seek to know the people that God loves so much, but it does not change the fact that we are human. We don’t know people right away. It takes time and patience to get to know a person, and this “knowledge” is not simply awareness of facts about that person. It is a matter of trust, a mutual exchange of part of the soul of each. It is a mystery how one person can “know” another at all, but one thing I do know: intimacy exists only in relationship. There must be giving and receiving, gift and regift over and over again. The longer this has been going on the deeper that intimacy becomes. If it hasn’t happened at all, there is no intimacy. You don’t know that person.

This is what “knowing someone” means to me. So I realized that it isn’t because I hate hugs that I recoiled so profoundly from that lady’s well-meaning gesture. It is because I love the act of hugging rather jealously. I want it to have some meaning, not just be a flippant thing we throw around to whomever happens to be within arm’s reach. It seems dishonest. It is lying with your body, pretending that something is there which isn’t there at all. Like a man who vows undying love on the first date, it means nothing.

I guess this is just one symptom of my overall critique of our culture’s approach to social interaction. We tend to be so very friendly and open and “frank” and we tell people just exactly what is going on in our minds. Our heartbreaks are emblazoned on the shifting sands of our facebook walls, there to be pawed over by the crowds for the few hours or minutes or seconds it takes to work its way to the bottom of the feed. Our every thought, emotion, action, and relationship must be dragged out into the cyber streets and vivisected. And what of those thoughts so casually thrown around on twitter? Did that thought even have time to grow up before I stuck it out there? What happens when you put the hops in the still, and then pour out the juice before it has time to ferment, let alone age? Can we even think for more than 140 characters at one time anymore?

I applaud the willingness we have to lay our cards out. The ability to be vulnerable is a prerequisite for relationship, but I wonder. Do we really gain anything by it? Have we increased the breadth of our attachments, but sacrificed the depths? If you try to be intimate with everyone, you end up losing the ability to be truly intimate with anyone. That seems to me something too precious to give up.

 
One Real Hug is worth about five and a half bazillion fake ones.

Generations

Generations


For I, the LORD your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:5-6

The phrase “Jealous God,” is one of those knee jerk phrases, and this is one of those knee jerk verses. Automatically it puts a sour taste in the mouth of modern Americans. We have a problem with God being jealous, and we have a problem with God punishing children for the sins of the parents. How can a loving, merciful God punish an innocent child for an infraction of His cosmic preferences that he did not even commit? How can this be the action even of a just God? And yet, the people who hate this verse tend to hate it on face value without considering the context, and in this instance I am not talking of the context within Scriptures. I am talking about the context of real life. People who hate this verse (myself included, since I wrestled with it a bit at one point in my life) hate it without pausing to think about what this would look like in the world we live in.

In life, actions have consequences. This is how God designed the universe. When I act, that act ripples outward and outward, both in the results I expect and in the unintended consequences. There is no way human wisdom and foresight can predict all the consequences of an action, or a series of actions, or a life.

So what does that verse look like in real life?

A week ago, my maternal Grandfather died. He was 74 years old. He was born in 1937 in a state mental institution. His maternal grandfather was committed to the violent ward of a state mental institution following a head injury that left him with a complete and dangerous personality change. His mother had suffered a mental breakdown following some months after her divorce and was also committed to a state mental institution. There is no way of knowing at this point who his biological father was, but Grandpa was born in that institution about eight months after her commitment, and immediately turned over to state custody. Before he was 18 months old he had been scalded with boiling water and struck by a car. He never knew his biological parents, and was never adopted, though he eventually spent his childhood and youth with a single foster family. On face value it would seem that Grandpa was dealt a bad hand right from the get-go. The choices of his parents and their parents had consequences in his life, real consequences that really hurt him. That is real life. Our bad choices hurt people who come after us.

But, fast forward 74 years to the day of his death. Grandpa died, beloved of his family, a faithful member of the church, wise, at peace, ready. He served in the Air Force during the Cold War, he remained a faithful Catholic, married in the Church, raised his children in the faith, designed and built electronics, made furniture, fixed cars, followed the fortunes of our nation through good and bad, with prayer and work right up to the end. His 8 children, 42 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren are all souls that would not have existed otherwise. The life of faith, family and country are our life blood. We have soldiers and sailors, artists and business men, actors and students, movie makers, activists, entrepreneurs, farmers, mechanics, designers, husbands and fathers, wives and mothers, teenagers, children, and babies.

Think about that for a second. In some ways he was dealt a bad hand. In fact, if Grandpa were conceived under similar circumstances today, there is a large segment of the population who would consider it an act of mercy to abort him. He was reaping the consequences of the choices of those who came before him, but God was also working. Grandpa was put in good foster homes, and allowed to grow up in one home for his whole childhood. He took what he was given, and he made his own choices, and now we reap the benefits of those choices.

That is what I see when I read that verse from Exodus. God is not sitting up in heaven trying to keep bad things going for three or four generations. He doesn’t need to. Bad things keep going by themselves. That is not a threat of vengeance, but a promise of mercy. It is only because of God’s intervention that the consequences are limited to those few generations. On the other hand, no one can know, no one can even begin to imagine the good that will come from one life lived well. God longs to pour out blessings, good things, life to the full, if only we would cooperate. A life lived with faith is an open door. Through that door God is allowed into the world, and runs riot with good things for everyone, until other doors, closed and shut by selfishness or ignorance or fear, stop Him.

Mercy is the fundamental reality, or to put it another way, Love is all there is. Live that reality, and let God into the world. You have no idea what will come of it, but it will be good. It will be greater than you can possibly imagine.

Naked Under Your Skin

Let’s take the idea of nakedness a little bit further, by taking a look at the history of clothing.


The first garment ever modeled by humans was a fig leaf, or several fig leaves, sewn together by Adam and Eve to cover themselves after they ate the apple. Shortly after that, God made them clothes out of animal hides to cover them better. You don’t get a lot of wear out of fig leaves, apparently.

At the same time they were stitching their fig leaves together they were also listening for God coming to them in the garden, and when they heard him come, they hid themselves.

What changed? Before they ate the apple they were naked together without shame, and they conversed with God face to face without fear. What changed? How did they suddenly become ashamed of themselves? To answer that, we follow the two trends, for they continue to this day. We are still making clothes to hide from each other, and we are still trying to hide from God. The reason for both is the same.

Nakedness is an expression of vulnerability. This may seem self evident, but take a moment to think it over. When you were an infant people changed your diaper, bathed you and dressed you without your consent, but as you grew older you learned to do all these things (except, perhaps, change your diaper) for yourself. “I can do it myself, Mommy,” is an expression of both maturity and of control. It is now possible for you to set boundaries. Privacy is introduced. Some children have more trouble learning this than others do, but eventually most people develop a sense of modesty, which is the ability to say to the world, “This is private, none of your business.”

Why do we teach this, and why is the instinct learned so readily? Because on some level we all learn fear. The nakedness of the human body was designed for a purpose, the purpose of affecting a union. The union is to be a union of free choice, and total self-surrender, which is why it is so beautiful and powerful. It is a gift. The essential ingredient of a gift is freedom, both freedom to receive and freedom to give. What Adam and Eve did was to reach out and attempt to seize a gift (“you will be like God, knowing good from evil”) that was not given them. They violated the freedom. As soon as they did that their “eyes were opened” and they saw each other in a new way. Adam saw Eve and saw that, if he didn’t want to, he didn’t have to wait for her to give herself freely to him. He could take her by force and dominate her, physically and emotionally. Eve saw that he could do this, and she saw that she could control him more subtly by charm and seduction. Each learned, all in a second, that it was possible to use the other, rather than wait for the freedom of gift. Did they really think it out that far? I doubt it. I very much doubt they could see in an instant all the long history of abuse and domination, manipulation and rape that they set in motion. They could not see the horror of depression, self-mutilation, suicide and sheer emotional and spiritual pain that they had unleashed. All they knew (I would guess) was that the other was no longer fully trustworthy. Each feared, where fear had been unknown before, and they created barriers to hide behind.

The relationship with God was much the same. After trying to snatch out of His hand something that He had not yet given them, they realized they had betrayed His trust and love. Unable to stand the guilt and shame they hid. I wonder if they didn’t project their own selfishness on Him and fear that He would take from them and use them. They certainly tried to shift the blame, Adam shifting it to Eve, and through her to God. Eve blamed the serpent. But they feared God, and they hid. Foolish gesture, of course. Nothing and no one is hidden from God, but God is not like us. He will not Lord His power over us. He wanted Adam and Eve to lay their souls completely open and free before Him, but if they wouldn’t consent to be naked before Him (spiritually) He wouldn’t force them. He allowed them to hide.

The rest of salvation history has been His coaxing, His wooing of us. This is symbolized in human courtship. We talk of smooth lady’s men who can “charm the pants off” the women they want, which is a perversion of the gift. A profound and deeply right symbol of that gift is a husband slowly wooing his wife’s heart until she has no fear of giving him her body. She feels comfortable and safe with him because, as John says in his letters, “There is no fear in love for perfect love casts out all fear.” We are all still trying to hide from the God who loves us. We clutch our dirty rags of vanity and self-delusion around the nakedness of our souls and scream in fear at the slightest hint of being asked to strip them off. We fear God using us (for we use each other and ourselves) but He never will. He will spend our lives slowly teaching us to be comfortable with Him and feel safe with Him, but He will not be satisfied until we shed every last stitch of our pitiful scraps of covering and allow Him to wash us clean and dress us in robes made white in the blood of the Lamb. He wants to marry the Church, His Bride. He Himself will provide the wedding garment, but it will be to adorn the beauty of His Bride, not to hide her shame. She will have no shame left.

She will be perfectly willing to appear before Him naked, seen through and through by His piercing gaze, and she will not shrink. Perfect love will have cast out all fear.

We are that Church.
I am that Church.

Naked Under Your Clothes

A few weeks back I posted as my facebook status “Naked I came into the world, naked I shall depart it. One could say that a truly wise man spends his entire life naked.” It got some laughs and some semi joking agreements, and at least a couple of people thought it was a disturbing image.


The truth is that it was half a thought. It came into my head for some reason on the tail end of an ER shift that was winding to a close. Something suggested the well-known quote, “Naked I came into the world, naked I shall depart it.” I’m not sure what brought it to mind, but it came into my head. At four in the morning my thoughts are often rampant flights of association and immediately I thought of the phrase, “naked as the day I was born,” and switched it to “naked as the day I will die.” I brought in the old story of the samurai who practiced death every night by hanging his sword over his pillow and staring up at it until he fell asleep. I remembered the story of Saint Francis when his father disowned him, how he stripped himself of all his fine clothes in the middle of the public square and went on naked to beg for his food and clothing for the rest of his life. As I say, these are all flights of association. They went through my mind in less time than it will take you to read the period at the end of this sentence. In fact, you probably wouldn’t even read the period unless I reminded you it was there, but you would grasp the significance of it nonetheless. My mind works somewhat the same way in moments like that. Things come together faster than I can watch, and I grasp the significance without seeing the moving pieces. So as soon as I thought “Naked I came into the world, naked I shall depart,” I said, (out loud) “I guess a wise man would spend as much of his life as possible naked.”

It’s okay. My buddy that I was talking to is used to my conversational style. He responded very appropriately, “You’re retarded.”

So now I’ve had a few weeks to allow that thought to percolate and it’s time to look at it more analytically. St. Francis is a good starting point. He grasped the spiritual principle so intimately that he exercised it literally and physically as well. He stripped in the town square and walked off without a stitch on, and for the rest of his life he counted nothing in the world his own. It’s as if he thought, “I won’t be able to take any of it with me when I die. Why lug it around here?” He was essentially travelling light. When God called him he didn’t have to waste any time packing.

I am not recommending a nudist colony, any more than I believe that kind of total detachment from the things of this earth is the norm. St. Francis was a sign. He lived in an extraordinary way to point out to the rest of us the truth, which is that eventually, total detachment must come. In the end, in death, we will be totally removed from everything in this world, so wisdom dictates that we practice such removal.

Now, just as literal nakedness is not appropriate in most situations in our world, so wisdom is not necessarily getting rid of everything we own, but certainly being ready to. Putting our possessions in their right place. A good example is my Dad. After working the farm under his father for thirty years, and then owning it himself for less than ten years, he came home one day to find the barn burned down. His response? He shrugged his shoulders and said, “God has a reason.”

When he had a barn and a herd he worked them into the dirt. He poured his blood, sweat and tears into them, fourteen hours a day, every day, for his entire adult life. When they were taken away he shrugged and thanked God, and we saw where his security truly lay. He has been naked under his clothes for many years.