From Your Minister     

by Meg Riley Senior Minister, Church Of The Larger Fellowship

In a book I read years ago, called The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis describes the ancient Greeks’ understanding of love.

I think that there are probably dozens of kinds of love—I have been wishing for a new word just to describe how I feel about my iPhone, or the particular way baby animals makes me feel—but the four from the Greeks certainly are a good place to start to flesh out that big old English word LOVE.

The four that Lewis’ book describes are agape, which is love between God and people; eros, which is the bond between lovers; filia, which is literally translated as brotherly love, as in Philadelphia; and storge. Storge is the love of what is comfortable and comforting.

It’s a good book, and I recommend it. I have read it several times, and even led adult education classes about it, for it provides rich opportunity to talk about love. Just to spend time thinking about when what is comfortable and comforting becomes love, and what this means for different people, is fascinating. I personally think storge is highly underrated—I have never seen it as the motive in a murder mystery, for instance.

I also like to use these four words to poke around at ideas in my own mind such as, if we aspire to Stand on the Side of Love, are we edging up next to agape or to filia? For UUs for whom justice-making is the primary spiritual practice, what is the difference?

Many years ago, at the end of one adult education class exploring these concepts, a man said, his voice shaking with vulnerability, “I mean, how much love does everybody experience? I have good friends, my wife and I are still kind and interested in each other after 26 years—is this it? Is this what everyone else thinks is good enough?” He was genuinely not sure.

Are you? Is there enough love in your life? I think many of us, whether we are alone and rarely interact with others, or are surrounded by people and animals and tasks that we enjoy, might wonder that sometimes.

For me, the path to knowing that there is enough love in my life has led to spiritual practice focused on a kind of love which is not laid out in C.S. Lewis’ book. Only recently did I wonder if the Greeks also have a word for self-love.

Luckily, I have a handy-dandy friend, a CLF member who is an ex-pat in Greece. I called her to ask this. She replied that she wasn’t sure, but would ask someone who is a birthright Greek. Then she emailed me this:

Just had an interesting conversation with C. about self-love and she said the correct word is probably auto-ektimisi. I think the closest translation is self-esteem, but C. thinks this sounds too superficial to the meaning in Greek. She says it’s a very deep, very proactive concept—something not everyone can reach but which gives us (through accepting our own mistakes) the energy for life.

My friend continued:

I could be wrong, but both “self-esteem” and “taking care of myself” in English sound like therapy-speak. C. and I often talk about how Greek culture is essentially Eastern, with lots of value placed on self-knowledge. So ideas like auto-ektimisi run deep, whereas they might not in English/ Anglo-Saxon approaches.

I don’t know about you, but I think the concept that the only people who achieve real depth of self-love are the ones who accept their own mistakes is an intriguing one. As I struggle with daily imperfections so striking I don’t even need my fourteen year old to point them out—trusty Greek chorus though teenaged children be in this regard—I like thinking that all my mistakes give me extra spawning ground for something good, namely extra opportunity to practice auto-ektimisi.

Years ago, I had the privilege of sitting in a ten day meditation retreat with Buddhist teacher Sharon Salzberg. Salzberg’s definition of meditation was the kindness we show to ourselves when our mind wanders, yet again. Such systematic re-teaching of kindness and interest in our mistakes, in our imperfections, is deep practice indeed.

On that retreat, the fact that I had the attention span of a gnat on my zafu cushion could be seen as a strength, not a liability—I could practice this kindness and interest over and over and over (if I could remember to do it).

I think my Greek friend is right, that “taking care of myself” in English can mean anything from narcissism to shallowness. I am much more interested in swimming in the deep waters of self-love. And I suspect that this is where we can each know, or not know, that there is enough love in our lives. I suspect that this is where loneliness or a sense of “not enough love” most resides—in lack of auto-ektimisi. I suspect that more marriages fail because of the lack of auto-ektimisi in one or both partners than from anything between the two. There is no love we can offer to or receive from others, finally, which we are unable to give or receive to ourselves.

So, I imagine auto-ektimisi as the hub of the wheel that is all kinds of love. May your own wheels keep rolling. May you spend your days discovering and naming new varieties of love. And may your life be rich in this most valuable currency of all.