“Our relationship lives in the space between us – it doesn’t live in me or in you or even in the dialogue between the two us – it lives in the space we live together and that space is sacred space.” –Martin Buber
Such a beautiful quote by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, who is probably best known for his amazing work I and Thou.
But what is that space between us?
It’s hard to wrap our hands around it, and to really grasp what it is.
I feel it in therapy sessions when a client shares something so personal, or has a new sense of awareness, that you can’t help but stop and just honor what has just been said or has taken place. Honor that sacred moment.
I feel it in those connections with my wife when we are able to be two completely differentiated and free beings, in a mutually reciprocating relationship.
It’s most elegantly and perfectly found in the sacred space between members of the Trinity–Father, Son, and Spirit. I like how theologian Miroslav Volf writes of this concept:
Perichoresis refers to the reciprocal interiority of the trinitarian persons. In every divine person as a subject, the other persons also indwell; all mutually permeate one another, though in doing so they do not cease to be distinct persons. In fact, the distinctions between them are precisely the presupposition of that interiority, since persons who have dissolved into one another cannot exist in one another. Perichoresis is ‘co-inherence in one another without any coalescence or commixture.’ (After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity, pp. 209).
It’s hard to define as you can see. But think of the implications of this concept in our lives if we truly believe we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26).
I think it’s so hard to define and see because we haven’t done the personal work to enter into those spaces with others. Or we perhaps “pollute” that space with things as clinical psychologist Hedy Schleifer points out in this wonderful TED presentation, The Power of Connection.
This video is worth your 20 minutes as she talks about how to encounter the “other” in that “sacred space.”
haha you;re going to love this…
http://nwesc.org/Documents/10-%20EFP%20article%20from%20Eric%20Mueller%20PhD.pdf
“But did you know that it was a broad dapple-grey horse, who he (Martin Buber) affectionately referred to as „my darling‟ that taught him to distinguish between a connected relationship (I-Thou) and a disconnected (I-It) one.”
i.kid.you.not.
It’s relatively easy to find the sacred spaces among our own tribe. Perhaps Jesus’ “love your enemies” speaks directly to holding a “sacred space” for those we least desire. I’m especially challenged by what Phil Clayton had to say recently about “othering” — in context of his experience with the Jains,
“Who are my brothers? Before my new Jain friendships this summer, I assumed that my brothers and sisters were those with whom I am most familiar. But Jesus’ same topsy-turvy set of values applies to religious difference as well. Brotherhood and sisterhood, I now realize, applies in inverse proportion to familiarity.”
…which strongly echoes both Bonhoeffer’s various confessions from prison and Volf’s thesis from “Exclusion and Embrace.”
p.s., one of my favorite Rilke sayings: “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” Holding a sacred space for those we least desire is, at least for me, one of the hardest practices. Your post reminds us that retreating behind our barriers (denominational, nationalistic, sectarian, academic, psychological..) is too common a defeat. We need far more difficult defeats
p.s., one of my favorite Rilke sayings: “the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” Holding a sacred space for those we least desire is, at least for me, one of the hardest practices. Your post reminds us that retreating behind our barriers (denominational, nationalistic, sectarian, academic, psychological..) is too common a defeat. We need far more difficult defeats
+1