in my quest for the best pop-video clip to illustrate a point i wanted to make about the way people interact spacially with each other, i stumbled upon pure gold... the close talker bit from seinfeld's the raincoats (episode 5.18)
George then tells them that Frank and Estelle (who is making paella) want them over for dinner before they leave, but they claim they have plans for the night. Jerry is frustrated that they have lied about having plans because now his parents will be home and he can’t have Rachel over. Elaine brings her new boyfriend up to the apartment, Aaron, played by Judge Reinhold, who is a close talker (a person who stands unusually close to others when speaking ... in essence disrupting the person's personal space), he then takes out Jerry’s parents to a behind the scenes tour of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which Jerry and Elaine find quite weird...
( thanks to the good people at wikipedia for the synopsis... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raincoats,_Part_1)
sitcoms are great for providing us with examples of human behaviour which are familiar enough to us that we recognize the truth within the hyperbole.
aaron, the close talker breaks all the rules of personal and social space, but somehow manages to 'connect' naturally with jerry's parents (who, by the way, do not connect well with george's parents, even though they've known each other since the baby boom fuse was lit). although representative samples of entirely different demographic populations (certainly racial, generational, educational etc) aaron and jerry's parents just 'hit it off'... a great example of how we are just created to belong with others.
now deciding what to do with these natural affinities is an important part of finding our place in this world that is so full of people.
People are strange, when you're a stranger
Faces look ugly when you're alone
Women seem wicked, when you're unwanted
Streets are uneven, when you're down
When you're strange- faces come out of the rain
When you're strange- no one remembers your name
When you're strange. (Jim Morrison)
Jesus demonstrates, in his life and ministries that there might be some truth to edward t. hall's theory of proxemics (as cited in joseph myers' book The Search to Belong) if we are endeavouring to be ‘Christian’ or ‘Christ-like’ then perhaps we can learn something here about how to manage our people spaces- and the relationships entrusted to us within them- to reflect the warmth, grace and love of God in a natural, rather than well-intentioned but nonetheless artificial way. consider a couple gospel examples of each proxemic zone...
- Public Jesus: (Matt 8.5-13, 16-17) Centurion; Masses requiring healing and release
- Social Jesus: (John 2.1-10; Luke 5.27-32) Wine at the Wedding; Dinner with Levi
- Personal Jesus: (Matt 8.14-15; John 13-17) Peter’s Mother In-Law; The Last Supper
- Intimate Jesus: (John 13.21-26; Matt 16.15-23) 'Jesus loved’; Jesus named…
within the life of Christ, as well as within our own lives, space and grace seem to be in relationship: you get the sense that not just anybody could call peter 'satan' without getting punched, but Jesus could.
see, we all have these unwritten, unspoken rules which govern our relationships. they have to do with the way we were raised, our personal experience with people and our personality… and yet somehow amidst all this chaotic, interpersonal disorder, we can see and hopefully learn from some predictable relational patterns... it is impossible to give the same amount of yourself to everyone, and likewise it is impossible to extend the same amount of grace to everyone…
the challenge is to mutually understand and value the relationship we share with another, not to demean this relationship by applying pressure to move into another space before its time- to allow our natural affinity to draw us into deeper relationship with some, while remaining comfortably casual with others.
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