I imagine many spent the day or are still spending the day celebrating Valentine’s Day, in honor of the Saint Valentinius from the Catholic Church. Here’s a link to great background on the man who wasn’t connected with romance until centuries after he lived.
https://www.history.com/news/6-surprising-facts-about-st-valentine
As you may have learned from some version of a Sunday School lesson, there are three types of Love: Eros, Agape, and Philos. Eros or erotic love is based on romance. Agape is a spiritual love shared between God and Man. Philos is love for family.
In the past few years I’ve learned how to expand the concept of love greatly, even beyond the three mentioned. Iíve found supportive concepts like acknowledgement, acceptance, respect THEN love. Every time I thought of those concepts in the love construction I thought of violence in domestic relationships or family and friendships ripped asunder by idle chatter meant to elevate one side of the intimacy or the other.
Iíve learned to believe that love is impossible if we canít acknowledge the humanity of another, accept that humanity as something from the Genesis reality, respecting that humanity as something God inspired. If we stand on the edge of the grand canyon of the human condition, we might experience the sunrise that burns away the fog in that grand canyon before us.
We can realize that ìwe have before us the glorious opportunity to inject a new dimension of LOVE into the veins of our civilization,î a comment from Martin Luther King. But we canít burn away the fog without acknowledging its presence, accepting our need for it to go away for our clarity, then respecting that human clarity is only possible with the fog gone so we can see and experience LOVE, any one of the three mentioned above.
The following comes from the above link and opens the door to much clarity. No record exists of romantic celebrations on Valentineís Day prior to a poem medieval English poet Geoffrey Chaucer wrote around 1375. “In his work ‘Parliament of Foules,’ he links a tradition of courtly love with the celebration of St. Valentineís feast day, an association that didnít exist until after his poem received widespread attention. The poem refers to February 14th as the day birds (and humans) come together to find a mate. When Chaucer wrote, ‘For this was sent on Seynt Valentyneís day/Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate,’ he may have invented the holiday we know today.”
I wrote this four years ago and find it still relevant today. Love follows respect. Like friendship, our language may not be sophisticated enough to accurately describe this concept.
For the record, respect is defined as a feeling of deep admiration. Love is defined as an intense feeling of deep affection. Sounds to me like respect would lead to love and not the other way around. The history of relationship is filled with power thatís confused with love.
You can see the problem when people throw love into a culture that has no respect. Affection is impossible without admiration. It’s the same with repairing the rips and tears that have American culture in rags.
If you don’t admire me as a human being with equal protections and equal access to my own dreams, you’ll NEVER have true affection for me. We may not be wired that way. We may not be able to love another’s life unless we respect it first and believe that it deserves to be. Itís irrelevant if we live, sleep or are intimate next to each other. Without respect weíre living below our means approaching disaster.
It’s almost funny when I hear people suggest that we need to love each other but we won’t live in the same neighborhood, let our kids go to the same schools, or sit next to each other in worship.
I heard something recently that puts this into perspective: “If you need to worship around people who are just like you then maybe youíre worshiping a projected image of yourself.”
Don’t choke on the word worship. Replace it with anything you’d like. If you need to love people who are just like you, then maybe you need to love a projected image of yourself.
In a phrase: there ain’t no respect in that!
Finally, I’m reminded of a recent meme: “Being taught to avoid talking about politics and religion has led to a lack of understanding of politics and religion. What we should have been taught was how to have a civil conversation about a difficult topic.” Like humans. Or love.