February meeting

With Valentine’s Day in mind, our 8 February service took the theme of love.  But a very particular form of love, known in Greek as eros.  Eros is not much spoken of these days and is often misunderstood.  It stands in contrast to philia (usually translated as "friendship" or affection) and agape (charity, warm-heartedness).  Eros is a kind of love that one would not feel for everyone, only for a few, and it should be understood in terms of a kind of longing for, a yearning, a desire for fusion with the beloved.

Two aspects of westernised life have all but eliminated eros from our awareness today.  The first is that we in UK are suffused in the light of a different sort of love, agape, which is written into the very fabric of our laws and our life through our historical Christian heritage.  In the demand that we treat our neighbour with dignity and respect, agape has now been so watered down from the intense idea of “God’s love for humanity and humanity’s love for God” that it has become replaced by a general wish for everyone’s well-being.  So watered down, that although we may wish people well, we seldom get round to actually doing anything truly compassionate for anyone.

The second modern aspect of life that has impacted on our awareness of eros is our capacity and appetite for immediate gratification.  There is no longer any need to long for anything while the latest app is available for download and Amazon can supply anything you might desire at the swipe of a credit card.  Many have all but forgotten the benefits that can come from remaining without the object of one’s desire for just a little while.

We had three readings from The Symposium by Plato, and two sonnets, one by Elizabeth Barrett Browning and one by William Shakespeare.  We enjoyed two hymns sung to traditional tunes, the first being about ever striving to become wiser and to overcome incompleteness, and the second about everyone being welcome.