Let's Talk About Love, Part 1

I have been working on ideas about love for about a month now, trying to figure out what to say about it, how to frame it, what matters, and how I feel about it. I have something like ten or twelve pages of notes about it, and last week I set it aside to let it simmer a little before I came back to it. Then at church on Sunday, our guest speaker got up and talked about love - in the same way I had been considering it. I figured that meant it was time to get brave and talk about it, so here we are.

I had made a list and called it "To Be And Not To Be". It's a two-column list of words. In the first column are words that are attractive to me - words that I wish to embody. The second column contains words that I would like to remove from my self-reflective vocabulary.
To Be: calm, peaceful, loving, steady, honest, reliable, clean
Not To Be: negative, condescending, stressed, flaky

Why do the "To Be" words speak to me? What am I attracted to them? What overarching quality do these attributes spring from? What's the root?

Love. Everything that I want to be, every trait that I may try to collect in myself comes out of love. Love is the root of all good things. But not the kind of love we're used to talking about. There's all kinds of literature out there on love - from Harlequin romance novels to the five love languages, from Jane Austen to the Bible, just about everybody has something to say on it. I decided to start with the dictionary, as usual.

Dictionary.com
Love (n): a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person; deep and enduring emotional regard, usually for another person.

Merriam-Webster
Love (n): a feeling of strong, constant affection for a person; unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another. Origins: Middle English, from Old English lufu love, akin to Old High German luba love, Old English leof dear, Latin lubere, libere, to please

I considered these definitions for awhile with a sense of dissatisfaction. Why is this not enough for me? Why am I not convinced? "Unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another" felt close to what I was trying to capture, but not quite. Because for me, love is a way of life. It's a moral, ethical code, a relational foundation. In an attempt to go deeper, I went way back to the Greek words for love:

• Philia: a sort of mental love - affectionate friendship. It implies a reciprocal, loyal relationship. It can be felt between family members, friends, and lovers. Aristotle spoke of this as the purest and best form of love.
• Éros: passionate physical love, often equated with lust. It can begin as love for a person, but can end up as love for the beauty of that person, or even for beauty itself. Plato had a lot to say about this form of love, and if you have time, I recommend you read it.
• Storge: denotes a sort of dutiful love between family members or for one's leader.
• Agápe: a sacrificial, unconditional love, given freely whether or not it is returned. Used often to refer to parents' love for their children, or feelings for a spouse. Also used to describe the feeling of being content, or holding in esteem. In the Christian tradition, agápe is used to describe the love of God for his children. Related words: charity, regard. This kind of love is freely chosen, freely given.

I tend to agree, for the most part, with Aristotle. Philia is a good and true love. The love I have for my best friend transcends miles, transcends time. I love her intellect, her heart, and her passion. I love her for all that she is, and for all that I know she can be - good and bad, and I know she feels the same way about me. The same goes for my family; I love and feel loved by my family and I know I can rely on that love. It's a very solid, reliable love and I am grateful for it every day. (I question whether these examples qualify for philia; in a Venn diagram between philia and agápe, these examples would probably fall into the middle)

Éros is probably the form of love we are most familiar with in our culture. We are a culture that appreciates beauty, for better or worse. There are thousands of pages written on éros, so I don't feel especially compelled to delve into it here.

Agápe love, though - let's talk about agápe. I had a tape I used to listen to when I was a kid that had a song about it, and I heard the word here and there in various settings, but I never stopped to really consider it, analyze it, until now. Let's look at it again: sacrificial, unconditional, freely given, holding in high esteem. This is a transforming love. Not transactional, not intellectual. This love is, as our guest speaker on Sunday, "a new way of being human, a new way of being alive." This love is the life that is real life. To love is to be very vulnerable, and it is to be very valuable. To love unconditionally is to be transformed, changed.

Love as a way of life is a radical, revolutionary concept.
"I love my children." "I love my husband." "I love my friends." - this isn't new.
"I love." - this is.

(PS - As for "storge" love, we have to remember, the key is - this is still love. Albert Einstein said, "Love is a better teacher than duty" - rather than acting out of duty, act out of love. It yields better results, in the truest sense - but notice I didn't say easier results. And I'm not talking love of country, I'm talking about love that extends even to those who oppress you, and still allows you to reject the oppression. Love can find that balance.)

Let me tie this back. How does love = simplicity? 

Out of love flows peace, contentment, steadfastness, wisdom, humility, quietness, creativity. 

Out of love flows the components of a simple life. 

So this is me scratching the surface of the kind of life I want to live. My next post will go deeper into the radically transformative elements of love.

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.
Lao Tzu

I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only love.
Mother Teresa

Walk worthy of the calling with which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love.
Ephesians 4:1-2