Eight Words for Love Part Two

 

Previously on yesterday’s Morning Mediation, I introduced you to four Greek words for “love”.  I also invited you to name and claim people who embrace and embody that understanding of love for you.  If you didn’t read yesterday’s meditation, go back, and look at it.  Or maybe you want to review those four from yesterday.

 

It’s okay, I’ll wait.

 

Don’t worry, there isn’t going to be a quiz.  A fifth word for love in Greek is pragma,

this is a long-term love.  This is a like a flame that has been burning brightly day after day or the warm embers of a fire after the initial blaze (or eros love) is done.  This is a love born of ups and downs, twists and turns.  There are similarities pragam shares with phila and ludus type love.  But this is also distinctive and different because of the ingredient of time.  I think of people in our church who have been married for fifty or sixty years embracing what Paul meant when he wrote, “love is patient, love is kind” (1 Corinthians 13).

 

Next love is also going to sound familiar, philautia love.  This is love of self.  And hopefully after the Morning Meditations this year you are thinking, “Wait, didn’t Jesus say something about that?!”  Yes, yes he did in Mark 12 about loving neighbor as yourself.  We have reflected upon this, and I pray you are still finding new ways to care and be compassionate for yourself.  To let your compassion in you be a well from which you share generously with others as God replenished and renews your “morning by morning” with the endless mercies of God’s grace.

 

The seventh love is familial love.  This is the love of be-longing.  For some this can be your family, the tribe who shares your DNA; for others you have a chosen family.  Family are the people we depend on and don’t leave us when the chips are down.  The people we both share care with and receive care from.  Familial love shapes us and forms us.  I believe it is never too late to find people on this earth with whom familial love takes on a face, flesh, breath, and bone.  I believe Jesus, God-made-flesh, came to claim all of us as brothers and sisters with familial love.

 

Finally, last but not least, mania love.  Wait, you think, I thought the Beatles created that!  Or maybe it was Beanie Baby craze.  Or whatever is trending on Twitter today.  But it is good to name and notice that love can go over an edge and become an obsession.  Love can take over our minds and evict rationality from residing there.  Mania can come in all shapes and sizes.  We all can get caught in the craze of wanting the newest book in a series or waiting for the next episode of our favorite show.  Mania is anytime we cannot seem to be apart or obsess over something or someone.

 

Once again, I invite you to name and notice how each of these types of love have been embodied or encountered in your life.  I encourage you to be self-reflective and specific.  It can be easier to name the mania in someone else and miss our own moments when we got too caught up in spending all our resources on something that we thought would bring us love or peace or joy ~ or all three.  Who embodies familial love, how are you practicing philautia love, and who comes into your mind with pragma love?  I pray that as all eight words for love swirl and stir, you can start to see the depth, power, possibility, and promise of love to be a fierce source of strength and guiding/grounding force in our relationships here and now.