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02/13/2021 05:00 AM
Sometimes to best understand the answer, you need to know what the question is. A little riff on LOVE here.
With Valentine’s Day right in the middle, many consider February the month of LOVE. So yes, here’s a quick-read blog post about LOVE.
You might think we’re talking romantic love, or Eros. Oh, yes, that figures heavily on Valentine’s Day.
But really, let’s take a quick bird’s eye view of the eight forms of LOVE the Greeks outlined:
It would be easy to go into much detail on each one of these types of love. Clearly, you can see how some of the Greek words influenced English: Eros => erotic, Philia => Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, Mania => mania, manic, Ludus => lude, Pragma => pragmatic.
For an excellent but easily digestible description of each of these loves, please take a look at this well-written article.
Returning to the title of our article, however, I’d like to take the rest of this blog post in a bit of a different direction.
Back in the 1970’s a song hit the airwaves by a more obscure duo, England Dan and John Ford Coley entitled Love is the Answer. ( You can see the lyrics of the song right below the YouTube video.)
Here's the chorus:
Light of the world, shine on me
Love is the answer
Shine on us all
Set us free
Love is the answer
Over the years, many have interpreted this song to be a Christian song, pointing to Jesus as the "Light of the World."
But the composer, Todd Rundgren, explained the song this way: “From a lyrical standpoint, it's part of a whole class of songs that I write, which are about filial love. I'm not a Christian, but it's called Christian love, the love that people are supposed to naturally feel because we are all of the same species. That may be mythical, but it’s still a subject.”
What is it, this love we are yearning for?
If love is, indeed, the answer to that yearning, what is the question?
The question Love answers is this: “What is our most basic need?”
Yes, we will die without water and food, over time. We will die without sunlight, a roof over our head (in time), and without sleep.
But we need something even more, both on the individual and corporate level.
We need LOVE. For without it, we harden. We whither. We die.
With it, we thrive.
We need elements of all the types of love listed at the beginning of this article. All of us experience each one of these types of love at various points in time. They make us human. When we are lacking one, we often compensate for it by pursuing another.
Recognizing that LOVE is the fuel that truly propels our world opens up our understanding:
You could also say that love is like water. Water hydrates our bodies. Love hydrates our hearts. Without water, our bodies dry up. Without love, our hearts shrivel.
Or, maybe an even better analogy is air. Air fills our lungs. Without it, we cease breathing, and eventually die. With it we live, and can thrive. So too, love fills our hearts, without it, we atrophy and often harden. Lack of it is fatal over time.
Extending this outward
On a community level, the answer for us as both citizens of our community, country and world centers around love.
In order to overcome the polarization, anger, hatred and strife that has been on such display, not only in the U.S., but around the world, the solution is LOVE. Choosing LOVE, in the big and small. At all times. Learning to, as Bob Goff writes in one of my favorite books, love Everybody Always.
It may seem like a tall order. But like everything, with practice, we get better at it.
We answer that question, “What is our most basic need (individually, corporately, globally)?” with our lives every time we choose love.
How will you choose to love today?
Have kids in the 12–16 age range?
Consider this resource, written by Dale, a 25-year veteran high school teacher.