TEA: Love is a many splendored Thing
Last night I gave a talk at St. Patrick’s to the Goretti Group on the subject of love, drawing heavily from C.S. Lewis’ book, The Four Loves.
Love is a many splendored thing (Download)
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Talk Notes
• I opened the talk using a prayer attributed to St. Basil the Great:
Christ my God, set my heart on fire with love in You, that in its flame I may love You with all my heart, with all my mind, and with all my soul and with all my strength, and my neighbor as myself, so that by keeping Your commandments I may glorify You the Giver of every good and perfect gift.
Prayer for love
Amen.
• I mentioned that I facilitate a C.S. Lewis reading group in San Diego.
• I began with the following movie quotation which alludes to songs by Sweet, Paul Francis Webster, Joe Cocker and the Beatles:
“Love is like oxygen! Love is a many splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!”
Christian, Moulin Rouge
• I explain that English has a single word, “love”, which is used to describe very different kinds of relationships. The French don’t even have a clear distinction between “to like” and “to love”, having just a single verb, aimer. Greek, however, distinguishes between four different kinds of love:
1. Storge (Affection)
“it is to our emotions what soft slippers and an easy, almost worn-out chair and old clothes are to our bodies. Wraps you round like a blanket, almost like sleep. At its best, gives you the pleasures, the ease and relaxation of solitude, without solitude itself”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
2. Philia (Friendship)
“Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
3. Eros (Romantic love)
This is the state of being in love.
4. Agape (Divine love)
This is God’s love, how God loves us and how Christians are called to love one another.
• I gave a brief biography of Lewis, through the lens of these different kinds of love.
“My happiest hours are spent with three or four old friends in old clothes… sitting up till the small hours… talking nonsense, poetry, theology, [pause] metaphysics over beer, tea, and pipes. There’s no sound I like better than adult male laughter.”
C.S. Lewis, A brief autobiographical sketch given to Lewis to the publishing house, Macmillan
“They say [that] a rival often turns a friend into a lover… [approaching death] is a most efficient rival… We soon learn to love what we know we must lose.”
C.S. Lewis, Letter to Dorothy Sayers
• I then spoke about how the natural loves go wrong:
1. Storge (Affection)
“It is really astonishing how her family have brightened up. The drawn look has gone from her husband’s face; he begins to be able to laugh. The younger boy, whom I had always thought an embittered, peevish little creature, turns out to be quite human…
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
Mrs. Fidget very often said that she lived for her family. And it was not untrue. Everyone in the neighbourhood knew it. “She lives for her family,” they said; “what a wife and mother!”
She did all the washing; true, she did it badly, and they could have afforded to send it out to a laundry, and they frequently begged her not to do it. But she did.
There was always a hot lunch for anyone who was at home and always a hot meal at night (even in midsummer). They implored her not to provide this. They protested almost with tears in their eyes (and with truth) that they liked cold meals. It made no difference. She was living for her family.
She always sat up to “welcome” you home if you were out late at night; two or three in the morning, it made no odds; you would always find the frail, pale, weary face awaiting you, like a silent accusation. Which meant of course that you couldn’t with any decency go out very often….[he goes on…]
The Vicar says Mrs. Fidget is now at rest. Let us hope she is. What’s quite certain is that her family are”
2. Philia (Friendship)
The typical expression of opening Friendship would be something like, “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
We admit of course that besides a wife and family a man needs a few “friends”. But the very tone of the admission, and the sort of acquaintanceships…[described] as “friendships”, show clearly that… it is something quite marginal; not a main course in life’s banquet”
Sirach 6
A faithful friend is a sturdy shelter; he who finds one finds a treasure. A faithful friend is beyond price, no sum can balance his worth.
“We are the average of the five people we spend the most time with”
Jim Rohn
3. Eros (Romantic love)
“…the very mark of Eros that when he is in us we had rather share unhappiness with the Beloved than be happy on any other terms”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
4. Agape (Divine love)
“ We want to be loved for our cleverness, beauty, generosity, fairness, usefulness. The first hint that anyone is offering us the highest love of all is a terrible shock.”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
• I then spoke about how we can stop the natural loves going wrong:
“Every natural impulse, however innocent in itself, may stand between God and us and so become an idol”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“[Love] begins to be a demon the moment [it] begins to be a god. Every human love, at its height, has a tendency to claim for itself a divine authority… … It tells us not to count the cost, … …it demands of us a total commitment, … …it attempts to override all other claims… …and insinuates that any action which is sincerely done “for love’s sake” is thereby lawful and even meritorious”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves
“…no natural feelings are high or low, holy or unholy, in themselves. They are all holy when God’s hand is on the rein. They all go bad when they set up on their own and make themselves into false gods”
C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce
• I explained that all the loves are wrapped up and fulfilled in Christ.
“I no longer call you servants… Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you”
John 15:15
“Divine Gift-love in the man enables him to love what is not naturally lovable; lepers, criminals, enemies, morons, …”
C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves