Sometimes a Little Less Closeness is in Order

Our puppy is a shadow.  Not quite 7-months old she distinguishes herself from the 2 ½-year old “puppy” who also lives at our house by preferring our company.  Tir, the red and white older of the two Welsh Corgis, is as happy napping alone downstairs as wherever we two-legged ones might happen to be.  Nia, the tri-color younger of the two, picks herself up and relocates herself according to our movements.  Move into another room and it isn’t long before we hear Her Puppyness padding along behind us.  

Her attentiveness, however, is not without its limits.  She chooses to be near enough, but with some distance preserved.  She doesn’t, in other words, like to be held.  Invade her “personal space” and this deep, gutteral growl begins to arise from some place within her deeper than seems possible from one so small.  On the sofa she wants her back to be touching your thigh, but don’t even think of lifting her into your lap.

I rather appreciate her boundaries and proclivities -- and view them to be a healthy example.  We don’t have good models for closeness, after all, what with some families and friends and communities becoming so enmeshed as to be indistinguishable or so aloof as to have pathetically little connection at all.  Nia, I think, is onto a better way.  She reminds me of the well-worn wisdom of the Persian poet Kahlil Gibran, author of The Prophet, in his reflection titled “On Marriage”:

But let there be spaces in your togetherness,

And let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Fill each other's cup but drink not from one cup.

Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your hearts, but not into each other's keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

And stand together yet not too near together:

For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other's shadow.

Be connected, in other words, but not too much so.  That might be good counsel to congregations as well as couples.  Faith communities have much to do with one another.  We have, in this world and in this community, considerable common cause.  We need each other’s company, support, encouragement, nurture, and gifts.  It’s important that we keep up with each other -- sharing our respective joys and concerns; keeping current with each other’s “news.”  But as Nia would remind us, it’s possible to get too close.  It’s important to maintain the healthier balance -- on the sofa, in the kitchen, and among the pews.