Nearness, Intimacy and Communion!

 

I realise more and more than ever before, since I got into serious photography about 25 years ago, that bird calls, movements and behaviours, speak,  touch and revive my inner world. 

Watching this pair of Bulbuls gave me an entrance into the way they build a belonging between themselves by habitual exercises. 

These two Bulbuls come to our rear veranda in the evening searching for food and stay there till they are offered food and water. In the mornings I find them hidden in the foliage often in the same site in the Bell fruit tree in our courtyard. 

I find both these times as special times for this pair of Bulbuls. 

Watching them remain silent, behold each other and stay close to each other give me a sense of the comfort and communication they share between themselves.

I know a friend,  who during a recent holiday with the family found a new experience of intimacy and communion with parents. 

Listening to that story gave me an insight into the longing with which we live to experience intimacy and communion in our relationships. This is the longing of couples, families, friends and people at work places. 

We are used to see and receive each other based on how much we feel near to people with whom we associate. It is when we seek nearness through appreciating and upbuilding, the inner awareness of intimacy grows within. When we feel near and intimate to each other there is a collective warmth that creates an ambience of self giving and mutuality where others become neighbours whom we can love naturally and effortlessly. When giving is the norm and the natural habit in a relationship, then the journey in that relationship is towards  intimacy and communion.  

To transcend beyond suspicion and reservation, we need to relate to others truthfully and confessionally. This is next step in building relationships. To give without using that as a bait to receive, is a habit that sets in, when we feel secure in a relationship. That is when giving in itself is so fulfilling that a desire to wait for a response or reciprocity fades away. 

It is when we notice a mother breastfeeding her baby, we get familiar with this habit of giving. Every three hours in the first six months a mother gives herself to the baby while breast feeding. The mother is the source of growth and development of that infant. This is what develops into an attachment behaviour between mother and an infant. No wonder most babies make their first word utterance, to address the  mother!

I have struggled with this question in my own relationships with people. I have had many cordial relationships. I have had broken relationships.  I have had intimate and distant relationships. I find Anna and me experiencing a new level of intimacy as we grow older. I can sense a longing for being in a giving role in our relationships with our children. I find sometimes relationship with people at work place distant and peripheral. 

In my attempt to reach out to people in the recent months, with whom I have had lot to do, I realise how much they too long for conversation and trustful communication!

People live reduced lives because they do not have intimate relationships of trust, regard, and communion. I measure the quality of a relationship with a question: How do I feel at the end of a conversation! When you give, you feel empty. When you receive you feel full. A relationship has this dual dimension. Feeling empty and filled!

When self giving is normal in a relationship, just because that in itself is the only dimension we can be responsible for, we live free and joyful in having been able to be our true self to another person!

This Bulbul pair has had a lot to tell me through their silent presence to each other, about nearness, intimacy and communion!

M.C.Mathew(text and photo)