All We Need is Love Two

There are groups to join – Save the Whale group, People opposed to Mumu dresses, Ukulele Revolution … You can prod and super-prod friends, challenge them in a “How-many-capital-cities-do-you-know? Quiz”, or compare notes on movies.

St Paul ends his letter to the Corinthians with the observation that there are three great virtues: Truth, hope and love – and the greatest of these is love. The love he refers to is agape – unconditional love, that is patient and kind, that keeps no record of wrong doing, love that accepts and forgives. Agape is a self-less love; it does not seek anything for itself, only good for the other.

It is a fine ideal – as are eros and philia and xenia and self love and storge and the rest. So in a way the Beatles were right: all we do need, to make this world a better place in which to live out our span of days, is love. But it is love in the plural, and it is those forms of love in balance.

If we were to frame a humanist’s prayer it might go something like this:

In our lives, may we all show love in all its forms.

Let that love for our family and clan – that which we call storge – be there, but not in its dark form, that would exclude the “other” simply because it is different.

Let that love for our friends – that we call philia – be there.

Let eros be part of our lives – eros that draws us in close intimacy with another.

Let there be love of children – a love that wants only what is good for the child, and not love that is manipulative or centred on our own needs rather than the needs of the child.

Let us be welcoming to strangers and to those different from us – who knows, they may be gods. May we be hospitable to others, and accepting and tolerant of them, and make them welcome.

May we love ourselves, be accepting of ourselves, be forgiving of ourselves.

Let us strive, too, for selfless love – for agape, recognising what humans have long known: that we are not islands, complete until ourselves, but are – with all humankind – a part of a promontory.

All we need is love, in all its forms, and in balance. If we could achieve this, imagine what the world might be like.