February 2, 2016 – Fifty shades of love

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Nearly every Sunday, my folks host a dinner for us – their four kids and our families. My dad plans and cooks – with help from us. And lately, my mom has been making homemade bread and rolls – there’s hardly a better smell, than that of yeast bread baking in the oven. We aren’t all there every single Sunday, but it’s usually a table of at least 10 of us. My family is one of the greatest blessings of this life of mine. We all not only get along, but we genuinely like each other, and the discussion at the Sunday table is often lively and engaged – we are an interested and curious bunch. This past Sunday, my brother Mike and I got on the subject of the different words the Greeks have for “love.” We couldn’t think of all of the three we thought there were, so out came an electronic device to ask Google. The Wikipedia page for the Greek words for love, includes not just three, but four. They are:

Agape – (pronounced ah-gop-ay, nothing to do with having one’s jaw hanging down, as Matt joked!) which is love for everyone, love of God for us and us for God. Its Latin equivalent is caritas, from which we get charity – which could also be metta, loving kindness in Buddhism.

Eros – often seen as passionate, sexual love, it also has meanings that extend to the appreciation of beauty within another person, and even to just an appreciation of beauty itself – as well as an appreciation of truth. Eros is the love of lovers and philosophers.

Philia – means affectionate regard or friendship – usually between equals. It’s the root for the name of the city Philadelphia, and in words like “Francophile” and “bibliophile.” This love includes loyalty to friends, family and community, and involves familiarity.

Storge – the love and empathy felt and expressed in families, especially between parents and children – I don’t have kids, but I can imagine how strong that love is, that it would certainly warrant a word of its own. I do have parents and I know that love. All I need to do to feel the depth of it, is to imagine what life will be like when they are no longer here.

The Wikipedia article says there are at least these four words. I found other pages online that include six Greek words for love – and not the same six. Who knows how many there could be? A chat with my brother and a hunt around the web, has me looking at all the ways we love. Here are more I’m seeing:

The love we share with our pets. The pet food and supply industry isn’t in the billions for nothing. Our pets meet our hearts in a way that other beings just somehow don’t. We love our Bo-doggy something crazy, and though it often takes the form of wanting food or play, I know he loves us back. Around here, our days start with a lick-bath all over our faces and necks. We have a kissy dog!

The love we have for our planet and also that it has for us. It’s evident to see the love we have for the earth – it fuels an enormous environmental movement, but I think our Mother Earth loves us too. Her electromagnetic field protects our atmosphere, from being swept away by solar winds and gravity hugs us close to her, so that we don’t float away. This sounds just like what mothers and fathers do. Add to this the intricate, complex web of life-giving, life-supporting elements that is our Earth. She must have a vast love for her creatures.

There is the love that we have for ourselves – when it comes from higher consciousness – it is what has us know we belong, and are a unique, and precious expression of the “big love” that is all of life. Without it we can’t express love – and in fact it has us be destructive. It can be really hard at times to love ourselves, and I’ve taken on growing it as a practice. I had a really uncomfortable moment last weekend, at the workshop I went to. No one else really knew it at the time, but I felt an icky wave of self-doubt and regret at something I shared publicly, and how it was responded to. I am really thankful to be at this place in my life, that led me to the reaction I had. I reminded myself not to take the response personally, and I appreciated the experience as an opportunity to love myself – all of myself – even in that moment. How do we know we really love ourselves, if we don’t know we can love ourselves in times like these!?

Then there is the love that we can have for our creations. Loving our art can be just as hard as loving ourselves. Our hyper-focused left-brain can take over the response to our work, and all we see is what’s “wrong” with it – it’s a painful place! But if we don’t have some kind of loving relationship with our creative work, it’s neither rewarding nor any fun to do. I’ve come to hold painting as a devotion, one that I come to with reverence. And I have a deep appreciation for my materials. I’m in love with good watercolor paper, and don’t get me started about my love of color!

And… there is the love that that our creations have for us! This is another gem from Liz Gilbert’s, “Big Magic.” Our art, our work, our creativity loves us back! She says: “Why would your creativity not love you? It came to you, didn’t it? It drew itself near. It worked itself into you, asking for your attention and devotion. It filled you with the desire to make and do interesting things. Creativity wanted a relationship with you.” I think it’s really useful to think of our work as an entity outside of us, that cares about our well-being. Ideas come to us as gifts, invitations to create, for us to make manifest. They want to come into form, and they come to us out of an appreciation – a love – of each of us as creators. Seeing it this way, I hold myself as an artist, as a creator in a whole other light. Plus, it certainly helps my capacity to love my creations in return!

A confession: I’ve not read any of the Fifty Shades books, so I really don’t know what I’m alluding to in the title of this post. But, like the myth that Eskimos have a whole bunch of words for snow, it follows that – as creations of love, expressers of love, givers and receivers of love, we’d need a whole bunch of them for love too – the Greeks just got us started. Rather than simply come up with words, though, I suggest we make love. Sure – in the sense that “making love” usually means – sex can be a beautiful expression of human love. But we can make love in all that we do: make art love, make food love, make business love, make politics love, make relationship love, make healing love. When we do, fifty shades just barely scratches the surface.

With my love,

Cara