We came from a garden, bathed in intimacy from the very beginning. Evil is essentially a barrier to intimacy; anything that breaks covenant connection. Intimacy & connection. Is that not our deepest desire? Is not Divinity simply intimacy & connection incarnate? Why do we enjoy closeness, the safety of a lover’s touch, being held tightly, consumed by the weight & pressure of another’s presence? Are not some of our most magical, wonder-filled moments we experience rooted in our sexuality? Kissing, touching – communing? 

Why do we embrace one another in greeting? Why do young children wrestle, grab & hold each other? Why do lovers & friends chose to sit near one another, wishing to be close? Why is face to face so much better than phone to phone? Could these longings be a psychological reaction stemming from our first nine months of life, sequestered safely in our mother’s womb? The comfort, pressure, tightness…the sheer warmth of her, heartbeat sounding close by, floating blissfully in embryotic fluid. Utter encapsulation, an initial embrace from our mother’s body embedding in our psyche a memory of perfect love. 

Is not every embrace by friend & lover to some extent an attempt to return to that embrace we first knew? Literally connected to our mothers by a cord of blood sustaining us – sharing her very heartbeat. The intimacy of sharing blood & breath, pulse & presence. Is this not what lovers long to share? To absorb one another in deep connection? Not only to be inside one other, but to exchange blood & breath, pulse & presence? To feel the weight & pressure of each other, to be wrapped in love once more? 

I suppose even before this we were in the loving embrace of the Divine – true rest & peace in the mind & heart of the Divine, a thought cherished & imagined before we found a home within our mothers. We came from perfect connection & perfect presence of love, made after the image of love itself – why else would we crave it? If our most primal and impressionable experience is intimacy & connection through love, of course we’ll pursue it all our days! 

I wonder why nudity in various bodies of water is so appealing & it strikes me that the root desire is once again connection – to be one with nature & our surroundings, to remove all barriers preventing our bodies from being as close as possible to earth. I believe the vulnerability of being fully nude in a natural setting is a heart cry to return to the garden we came from – to be naked & unashamed. To be the iconic Eve in her garden, regaining some of that innocence, that longed-for un-woundedness our hearts tell us we once knew. 

Being naked in a body of water is an even more primal instinct, a desire to return to the very substance that shaped all we see & gives form to the very dust of our bodies. In the beginning the Spirit was dancing over the formless & void waters…life & creation were but a combination of the Spirit animating water through the call of the Divine. There is something deep within us that craves connection to that moment once again & somehow being naked in a body of water call us home. 

Is not the privilege of vulnerability that I get to undress my heart before you & you before me, my body too if you’ll let me? To be seen by each other the way the Divine sees & knows us, to be wrapped in the embrace of eternal connection. This is the wonder of connection & intimacy…somehow by sharing it with one another we return to the heart of perfect love. No wonder we crave it! 

Is not evil an active hiding from perfect love, a divorce from its embrace & knowing presence? When we realize our vulnerability, we hurry to erect barriers between each other, nature & ultimately the Divine. Evil promises us intimacy & connection while simultaneously snatching it from us ruthlessly because it’s handed us a counterfeit feeling, it’s sold us a lie. Each attempt to crawl into the bosom of a lover or friend, to crawl into the heart or mind of a loved one is ultimately a desire to crawl back into the arms of everlasting, Divine love – to be consumed by love’s eternal flame.