Agape love

Agape is a Greek word for love. So is Eros. But they are very different kinds of love.

English has but one word for love, so we must add modifiers to qualify the type of love. Mother-love. Self-love. Unselfish love.

But what is love? In this holiday season, words not frequently used during the rest of the year seem quite prevalent. Peace, Joy, Love. Tidings of Comfort and Joy.

Love is often now defined by mass media - by Hollywood screenwriters and focus-grouped messages finely tuned for their mass appeal. This is unfortunate, as love is so much more paradoxical than could ever be adequately portrayed in movies.

Love, as anyone slain by it can tell you, is a torrent. It is a swirling and unpredictable storm of emotions that - like a tornado - can never be adequately described or recounted. It can only be experienced. Any attempt at a retelling can only be understood by those who've endured or been graced by it.

Love, at its best, is the reason one man gives his life for another. We can see it - even in movies - portrayed by the loving mother who dies to save her child.

And at it's worst distortion, we see it gone terribly wrong by an estranged lover who - so lost or obsessed with another that they cannot release as true love does - and instead kills that woman so wrongly labelled as "his lover".

Or, in another only slightly less destructive form, we see a mother who cannot release her child to become an adult - and forever meddles and manipulates the apple of her eye into a sometimes shriveled version of the lovely fruit of a person that could have been - if only she had let go…

Much is called love. It is often lauded in song and portrayed by the great painters as a luminous landscape or a delicate nude. The rock and roll classic "Layla" - penned by Eric Clapton and as powerful an ode to love as can be found - was a tragic story of love for another man's wife. A love that many would consider a forbidden fruit that should have been a love denied. Instead it was a love indulged that destroyed a marriage and several friendships.

According to Wikipedia:

"Agape (Ancient Greek ἀγάπη, agápē) is 'love: the highest form of love, charity; the love of God for man and of man for God.' Not to be confused with philia – brotherly love – agape embraces a universal, unconditional love that transcends, that serves regardless of circumstances. The noun form first occurs in the Septuagint, but the verb form goes as far back as Homer, translated literally as affection, as in 'greet with affection' and 'show affection for the dead.' Other ancient authors have used forms of the word to denote love of a spouse or family, or affection for a particular activity, in contrast to philia (an affection that could denote friendship, brotherhood or generally non-sexual affection) and eros, an affection of a sexual nature."

So, agape love is the kind of selfless love, possibly even the "Higher Love" longed for by Steve Winwood as he crooned "give me a higher love". I think it is a sentiment with which I can agree. Hopefully, so can you.

If you now or recently have had your life upended and your heart and/or other vital organs ripped out by love - or by unrequited love, then you surely are wishing for some sort of higher love. One that does not leave you bereft and emptied.

But, love is no tame thing. Even if caged and declawed like some old and tired zoo lion, love is at its heart a wild thing. It must be so.

Because anything that can so easily be subdued can also be easily ensnared and slain. Love must be powerful and not easily mastered.

If love were like a kitten and not a lioness, how could newborn cubs be protected from hyenas or alpha males? If love were easily caged, how could it be the force that topples kings and overthrows hard and heartless lugs such as me and you?

At the chronological age of 25, I was slain by a baby girl that was less than 5 minutes old. As a troubled and repressed young man, confused and deceived by both a godless religion and a twisted upbringing, nothing less than this earth-shattering event could have cracked open my closed and childish heart.

At that moment, love was both irresistible and overwhelming. And the work begun in that moment would take another 25 years to truly bear fruit. Because only many years later, did another expression of love wreak havoc on my life that was nearly as devastating and life-altering as that earlier, bookend moment.

After years of destructive and unhealthy love, for the love of my children (as I could not yet love myself), I acted to end a marriage that was wounding and tainting us all.

Now, lest you think me boasting or holding myself up as some sort of godly example, please know that I am not. I was torn, conflicted and confused like any wounded beast. My pain and sorrow was such that my physical body was beginning to break down in sickness.

And yet, in the midst of all of this, somehow love shown through and I acted from what I believed was self-less love. I believed that even if my children never spoke to me again - in my heart I knew - love demanded a martial dissolution for their sakes as well as mine. It was a price I was willing to pay.

I think God that I paid it. As conflicted were my motives - then and many times since - love is so powerful that it can compensate for and overcome human weakness.

In Dickens' "Tale of Two Cities", the climactic scene is Sydney Carton giving his life to save the life of his rival, Charles Darnay. Some have suggested that his motives were impure and tainted with selfishness. But he did understand - in spite of his flaws - that "It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done". He knew this one act of sacrifice might possibly redeem an entire life of selfishness.

Love is like that. It can in a moment transform a selfish man into one forever remembered as a hero. It can begin the long process of redemption for a stunted boy-man who at 25, was really more like an 11 year-old than a father.

So, like Neo, love is like the Blue Pill or the Red Pill. It is a choice to surrender oneself to the unknown and the unknowable. It is like the Greek Myths where the hero pays a great price - one previously believed to be incalculable- for the sake of love.

Once you swallow that pill - seemingly so small and smooth - everything changes and will forever change. Your world heretofore - like the lie constructed by the Machines in the Matrix - will go away.

The reality you see may - at first - be horrid and terrifying. You will be tempted to return to the blissful ignorance of the Matrix Dream.

But, if you persist, like Neo and Trinity - you will find the love for which you always longed.

Love is like that. As the bible writer, Paul (once known as Saul before love enslaved him) has written, "And now, these three remain - faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

And so it is.

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