LOVE IS

This is not because of Valentine’s Day as I hope it offers a little more than flowers, cards, hearts and candy. However. those are good too.

Those of us limited to the English language have this word, love, which we use for loving everything from ourselves to love for another person, for our families, for our work, for our dogs, cats. horses, chickens and donkeys (yes, we had two). We even have the audacity to attach love to material things on occasion. I “love” my new, Ballarini, non-stick, thermo, granitum finish, skillet.

For me, love is the essence of our nature. Love is how I got here, what sustains me and what I believe helps and heals our needs. We get it and we give it and when we don’t get love or don’t, won’t or can’t give it, we’re missing out and we know it. It sounds more simple than we make it out to be. If I have to explain how or why I love myself or someone else you might or might not understand, but that won’t keep me from trying. We see love, we know love and feel love or we don’t and this is where conflicts arise, especially in relationships.

There is a religious or faith dimension of love expressed in various world religions and among indigenous and native people. Love in that context most often refers to a higher power beyond ourselves, different names in different cultures for that creative force that has loved us into being. Yahweh, God, Allah, Shiva or Vishnu, Kami, Shen, Ngai, Jah, Biame, Wakan Tanka, Gtiche Manitou, Waheguru and Zeus, among others. The native people who live in and with the natural world seem to grasp the essence of our being as much or more than most which is why many of us find a measure of peace and joy immersed there.

Greek is a language that has at least 4 different words expressing love, a different word describing different kinds of love we express and experience. Here’s a brief “description” of each of these experiences.

Eros (Ἔρως) – most easily translated as erotic or physical love characterized by deep emotions of attraction and desire, expressed in sexual behaviors and sensual experiences.

Philos (φίλος) – Filial love seen as “brotherly” or “sisterly” love, used for love between family members, between friends, and a desire or enjoyment of an activity.

Storge (στοργή) – that strong bond of love from parents to their children, and vice-versa.

Agape (ἀγάπη) – unconditional love, powerful redeeming love, empathic love and acceptance.

Spanish also has different words and first you have to decide, in context, whether you are using the word as a noun, verb or adjective for each one is applied differently. I prefer an active, dynamic verb rather than a static noun. Here’s a list of Spanish words and their meanings:

amar. =love

querer = want, love, wish, will, like, cherish

encantar = love, enchant, delight, charm, captivate, be

gustar = like, taste, love, please, appeal, appeal to

apetecer = crave, desiderate, love, lust for, attract

ser aficionado a = be fond of, love, have a taste for, be partial

tener cariño a = be fond of, love

dar encanto = love, delight

One well-known Biblical description of love appears in Paul’s first letter to the relatively new church community in Corinth. The church was struggling and in conflict and Paul wanted to urge them to come together around this common bond of love as he understood it. The letter was written around 53-54 c.e.

Among the myriad problems in the Corinthian church were: claims of spiritual superiority over one another, suing one another in public courts, abusing the communal meal, and sexual misbehavior. (History does repeat itself!). Paul wrote to demand that the early church community in Corinth step up to higher ethical and moral standards. In the Greek language of the New Testament, the word for love used in this letter is agape. I wonder if there’s a way we can urge or demand our communities step up to higher ethical and moral standards? Here’s the Scriptural reference:

“If I speak in the tongues^[a] of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast,^[b] but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (I Corinthians 13:1-13)

Here is a quote from one of my “mentors” whom I followed for years and finally met in 1968 in Detroit, less than a month before he was assassinated in Memphis. He was 39 years old. I was 31. For a reference, see my previous post, “MLK and ME.”

“I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality.”

.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

And, how about this which appeals to me very much?

“The act of love is the surrender of self into life as it is. This is a love larger than our word “love” can contain or express. It embraces all of life and does not judge: tragedy and war, suffering and joy, creativity and destruction. Beauty. Death. The Other. Within this embrace of life as it is, lie acceptance, forgiveness, healing.” Anne Hillman in “The Dancing Animal Woman.”

We are loved into being and becoming who we are. We seek to love and be loved for it is all that really matters most. And why not?

Love is what matters most.

How many remember this? “Make love, not war.”

It was an anti-war slogan that emerged in during the war in Viet Nam which I opposed. What I learned through those years, and in the years since then, is that if people spent more time and resources loving instead of hating and dividing we would be closer to peace, personal and world-wide.

John Lennon was right, “All You Need Is Love.”