Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Questions of Love

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
I Corinthians 13: 4-7

While reading Plato's Symposium the other day, I had to wonder at the fact that the question of 'what is love' has plagued mankind since the great beginning. Plato was pondering it all those centuries ago in Greece and we are still pondering on it today. So, I wandered over to YouTube to see what I could for answer to this question. Apparently, Betty Crocker has an answer, as does Sesame Street, Michael Jordan, Diet Pepsi, and the movie Night at the Roxbury. There was a whole lot more out there, so much I can hardly believe it.

So, just what it love? I thought it was interesting what Diotima says about love in the Symposium: "he is always poor, and anything but tender and fair . . . he is hard-featured and squalid, and has no shoes, nor a house to dwell in; on the bare earth exposed he lies under the open heaven . . . and like his mother he is always distressed" (pg. 27). It is very different from the picture of the cute, chubby cupid that many of us think of when we picture love. Yet, I think I have to agree, at lest partially, with this depiction because if love was a cute baby, then it would easy and fun and cute. But that is not how love really is most of the time. Love is pain and agony. As the saying goes, there is a thin line between love and hate.

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