I have just finished reading Lord of the Rings. I have not read it in about 25 years, and I had forgotten why I had read it at least 5 times before I graduated from high school. It is a magnificent trilogy, all about good and evil, war and peace, the heights of joy and the depths of despair, and perhaps most of all, about love. As I reflected on my reading, I realized that one of the unfortunate things about being someone who speaks English is the enormous imprecision of our language when we talk about love. It is very clear from the story that Frodo Baggins and Samwise Gamgee loved each other very much. Unfortuately, because we only have this single word to deal with in English, people miscontrue this love and as a result sometimes impute meaning to Sam and Frodo's love that is just not there. I wish we could all learn from the Greek language, which divides “love” into at least four words: storge, philos, eros and agape. Storge is familial love, like that of a child for a parent, or for a sibling. Philos is brotherly love, like the love you have for your best friend. Eros is romantic love, and is the love normally tied to expressions of sexuality. Agape is the complete and unstinting love of God; love bestowed unreservedly with no expectation of love in return. (These are, of course, grossly simplified definitions...) In my reading I see Sam and Frodo's love as a deep philos edging into agape. There is no implication of erotic love here; they were not gay lovers. Unfortunately we are locked in to the imprecision of a language that has a serious “lack of love”. We use a single, all purpose word that is so imprecise, so general, that it often does not allow us to truly express our feelings without fear of being misconstrued. One of my very best friends in the world is a woman, but if I say I love her, the response in our society would typically be “how can you? You're married and so is she, and to someone else!”. But I would mean it in the sense of a deep and abiding philos, not eros! Fortunately I'm pretty sure she and our spouses all understand the context (hi, cho!). I don't have any suggestions about how to fix our english-language expression “love”, but darn it, I sure wish we could do something about it, as the lack of precision muddies all our conceptions of relationships and hampers our attempts to express our true feelings.

I don't know if I'm actually capable of agape, but if I am I'd send you all some. --Ray