Enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice …
I am re-reading some of my favorite C.S. Lewis books and thoroughly enjoying peeking into very-young-Tara-ness because of my (near constant) underlining and notes in the margins. My old paperback books may be falling apart, but that doesn’t mean I’m not immediately transported back to First United Presbyterian Church (Moline, Illinois) and Augustana College and Dr. Paul Jensen’s Sunday School classes and philosophy classes. What a grace that God brought me there way back in 1988.
My topic du jour? I am continuing on the theme of friendship. The Four Loves is a must read, of course, and that transported me immediately to Dr. Jensen’s message at our wedding in 1995. Familial affection (storge), friendship (philia), erotic love (eros), and divine love (agape) … only minutes after we were husband and wife, Paul made our entire wedding party laugh with the acknowledgment that eros was not lacking in our hearts in that moment. And then all of the married people in the room nodded in quiet agreement as he counseled us that, even though we could not IMAGINE it at the time, eros WOULD wax and wane throughout our marriage. (Yes. We couldn’t imagine it at the time, but of course he was right.) But that philia and storge and agape love would cement us together for life. (Praise God!)
If you haven’t yet read The Four Loves, I commend it to you. It’s a great read. But if you’re not quite up for a book these days, there is a good summary here:
Mere Friendship: Lewis on a Great Joy
One of my favorite quotes:
“Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art. . . . It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that gives value to survival.”
And another:
“The very condition of having Friends is that we should want something else besides Friends. . . . There would be nothing for the Friendship to be about; and Friendship must be about something, even if it were only an enthusiasm for dominoes or white mice.”