the voice of intimacy - being

Secretly, I’ve asked, and even in my blog I’ve wondered at why some relationships are draining and others fulfilling. Why, as a teacher, do I want to spend every moment I can helping some student with even the most basic concept that is tripping him up, but avoid an extra moment with another student? It may be most simply understood in the teacher/student scenario. I am interested in helping a student who is participating in the quest to grasp a concept. It has been evident to me, that this can’t simply be explained by writing off the draining relationships as needy friends who take and don’t give. In terms of relationships, there are friends who just want you to be there, but really aren’t interested in being with you, or even in you being with them, or maybe they just don’t know how to be with you.
Friends and I have dubbed this filling and being filled relationship as flow. It’s like electricity, the current finds a return path. It’s a circuit. But even this explanation is not entirely adequate; it suggests that filling and being filled balance the relationship- that one friend doesn’t only take from the other but also gives.
It has been my experience that a friend doesn’t have to give to keep you filled. Sure, a draining relationship only takes, but a filling relationship doesn’t have always to give. With some, one is filled by giving, not only in also being given to. One can give by receiving. I can fill myself by filling a friend. My friend can fill me by receiving what I give. This is a mystery.

Once again, last night’s Peterson reading speaks right into where I’ve been. He explains operating in the middle voice. The passive voice has us being done to or for. The active voice has us doing to or for, but the middle voice, has us participating in something that is being done. This is the voice of intimacy.
You give to a passive draining friend. An active draining friend takes from you. But a middle voice relationship allows the friend to participate in what you are giving him. He doesn’t take, he receives. The giver is given to by the reception of his gift by his friend. The friend doesn’t have to give in return. Ironically, the friendship does usually work both ways, but it doesn’t have to be simultaneously to still have flow.
Intimacy doesn’t come in a “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” relationship. Intimacy comes when we scratch my back together and we scratch your back together.
Can you imagine if we all learned to relate to one another in the middle voice? Can you imagine if we learned to relate to God in the middle voice? To worship?
Intimacy with God doesn’t come from learning to avoid approaching him in worship to experience him, or in “giving” to him through sacrificial obedience to a discipline that we don’t enjoy or that we begrudge even. It comes in participating in his will, agreeing with him, and conforming our will to his.