This is one of shame’s most powerful characteristics. When it lassos a group of people, shifting from its individual to corporate expression, shame’s energy and intensity expands geometrically, the whole of its presence becoming far greater than the sum of its individual parts. The group’s capacity for vulnerability shrinks, and the notion of being known disappears in favor of the need for protection from the very members that compose it. The community of faith that began in Genesis 2 now devolves, running into the woods.
