As we reflect on this lifestyle celebration, we invite you to explore some of our staff top picks from media and resources that deal with intimacy.

READ

Charlie Mackesy offers inspiration and hope through the unlikely friendship of the 4 title characters — The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse.  Written in the vain of The Giving Tree and The Alchemist, Mackesy’s new book is childlike and explores the poignant, universal lessons we learn when we do life together in intimacy. You can look out for the book’s release in October 2019.

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Brennan Manning presents the idea that we tend to hide behind an “impostor” — a mask we put on to show the world and God that we are perfect, believing that this is the only way to be loved. This appears to work when life seems to be going well, but when difficult circumstances arise we are often exposed or left with broken identities. In Abba’s Child, Manning calls us to put away these masks and to be fully known by God and others, positing that such vulnerability is the only way to receive our true identities as God’s children and live fulfilled lives.

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EDITH HUMPHREY offers an authentic Christian spirituality rooted in the Trinity, in the ecstasy (“going out” of oneself) and intimacy (profound closeness with another) marking the relations between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Laced with narratives from her own life and backed with Scripture and texts from the Christian tradition, Ecstasy and Intimacy uncovers the ways in which God’s intimate, trinitarian life informs all human communion.

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OBSERVE

Reflection by Clint Baldwin, WMF Executive Director

The painting “Between Us” by Melanie Weidner portrays heart-shared stories intimately connecting people while weaving heavenward-like sacred incense.  C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves wrote, “Friendship…is one of those things which give value to survival.”  The Celtic church in Gaelic called the deepest friendship anam cara (soul friend).

The Holy Spirit is our ultimate Anam Cara.  Guided by the Comforter and wanting to “give value to survival,” let us seek to cultivate friendships inspired by Jesus’ words in John’s Gospel, “…Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends…”

 

 

CONTEMPLATE

Jeanne Guyon (1648-1717), from “ A Short and Easy Method of Prayer” (1685)

“What is prayer? Prayer is a certain warmth of love. ah but much more. Prayer is a melting! Prayer is a dissolving and an uplifting of the soul. This warmth of love, this melting, this dissolving, this uplifting causes the soul to ascend to God. As the soul is melted, sweet fragrance begins to rise from it. These fragrances pour forth from a consuming fire of love…and that love is in you. It is a consuming fire of love in your innermost being, a fire of love for God.”