My grandfather had a particularly efficient way of dealing with unwanted people who turned up on the doorstep.

I remember his response when some people knocked on the door one day and tried to sell him a copy of the Watchtower.

“We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses...” they began.

“Well, I hope he wins his case,” he replied and shut the door in their faces.

His rudeness was ecumenical. When the Baptists turned up to tell him about their Old Style Tent Mission, he listened to them impassively for 10 minutes and then said, with impeccable diction and with Radio 4 chirping happily in the background, “I’m terribly sorry. I’m afraid I don’t speak English.”

I’ve always admired his sang-froid but sadly I don’t share it. I’m much more inclined to grab the dog and hide behind the sofa until they go away.

I was thinking the other day about this habit of avoidance. I suspect at the heart of it is an unwillingness to engage in conversation which might get more intimate than we can deal with.

We hear those looming questions about eternal truths and feel compelled by some residual good manners to answer them. Meanwhile, we get more and more uncomfortable.

Intimacy is a difficult thing, and it’s surprisingly rare. I would define it as the ability to share mutually one’s needs, one’s wounds, or one’s weaknesses with another person.

The sharing of our inner or interior world (“intimus” in Latin) is always a risk, usually a fear of rejection, and thus many of us never go there. It might change our self image. It’s deeply risky.

But people who take the risk seem both happier and much more real. They have lots of “handles” that allow others to hold on to them, and that allow them to hold on to themselves.

People who avoid intimacy seem to be enclosed in increasingly claustrophobic bubbles.

I wonder how you would know how to be intimate with God if you have never practised risky self-disclosure with at least one other human being. 

Perhaps it’s time to get out from behind the sofa.

Ven Lynda Patterson is Acting Dean of ChristChurch Cathedral.