Family, Friends and Star Wars

Love is all you need—so said the Beatles. Love makes the world go 'round—as the old saying...well...says (a saying that has been turned into many, many songs). Love is a many-splendored thing—a phrase that's been turned into songs, a film and books. Love is what we want, we crave, we need, we hope for. And yet, we have so very little understanding of what love is. We hear 1 Corinthians 13 at nearly every wedding we go to, and yet we don't allow the words to penetrate into our being. We know God is love (1 John 4:8)—but even when we hear that, we equate God with hearts, warm feelings and little cherubs shooting arrows. (Though some today don't even equate God with any kind of love. I saw a post online this week responding to a prayer for a restoration of a marriage, and one response was this: "Instead of praying to Jesus, you should pray to Cupid, the god of love. What's Jesus gonna do?")

C. S. Lewis, famously, reminded us that the ancient Greek language (the language of commerce in Jesus' day) had four words for love. Our English language, by contrast, is rather weak in only having one word to cover all four of these ideas. The first of these words, and the "most humble of the loves" according to Lewis, is storge (pronounced "store-gay"). This is the Greek word for "family love" or "affection love." This is the sort of love shared by family members, obviously, but also the kind of feeling you have when you truly, deeply enjoy something. It is the kind of love that enables us, even calls us, to share what we love with someone else (like taking someone to a Star Wars movie for the first time, but I digress...).

Too few people have truly experienced even this most basic of loves in our day. Families come apart, abuse takes place, love is withheld as punishment or because of judgment, and it seems that the smallest of things will cause a break in this love. In addition, this kind of love has a dark side (as do all the loves). Sometimes a person will love something so much that they become obsessed with that thing or person. Storge can lead to hoarding or selfishness or even to attempts to totally control the other person. Storge can lead to pain if it is abused and not rightly understood or lived out.

Like all the loves, storge takes work. Family love does not just happen, especially if you're apart for a length of time. We no longer live in a world where family reunions happen on a regular occasion (those of you who still do have such events, rejoice!) or where families gather for things other than weddings and funerals. We always say we will get together, but rarely do. We're so busy with our own lives, with pursuing what we believe are noble goals. But for storge to grow, we need time with those we share it with. And if we're ever going to experience the other, more intense loves, we need to get this one right. Without storge, the rest of the loves have no foundation to build upon.

So...today...what are you doing to grow storge among those who are your friends, your family, your close companions?