I Agape

Love is all around. Saturday is Valentine’s Day, a day designated to celebrate romantic love. We often hear it said that God is love. Jesus told us that the greatest commandment is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind” and the second is like it; “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 27: 37-39). Love is one of the Twelve Powers of Man as discerned by Unity co-founder Charles Fillmore. Love is also one of the five core values of Unity Church of Denver.

With all the talk of and references to love in our culture, the Bible, Unity teaching, and our church, one might think that we all understand what it means and how to put it into practice. Perhaps I am alone in this, but I admit that I am often still confused when it comes to love. What do we mean when we use the word ‘love?’ We accept that God is love and we are created in the image and likeness of God, so it follows that we, too, are love. Since we acknowledge that we are love, a common understanding of what it means would prove beneficial in our intention to be love in the world. What follows are some of my thoughts as I have meditated on and explored ‘love’ over the past few days.

In our daily conversations, we most often use the word ‘love’ in relationship to an “other,” whether a person, an animal, an object, or a life condition. Grammatically speaking, we generally use ‘love’ as either a noun or a transitive verb. For those of us who have not been in school for a while, a reminder in grammar may be helpful. A verb is an “action word” and a transitive verb is one that requires a direct object. When we say, “I love you,” we are using ‘love’ as a transitive verb, an action word, and ‘you’ as the object.  In the same phrase ‘love’ may also be considered a noun as we may actually be saying “I feel love for you.” In that case, ‘love’ is an emotion.  The same is true when we use phrases, such as “I love my job;” “I love my pet;” or “I love ice cream.”

Such phrases express an aspect of love that we value in our lives; they are ways that we experience love reflected to us from others. Yet, while they express warm and tender sentiments, these statements can also suggest what A Course in Miracles calls “special relationships” that can be exclusionary. The implication is that someone or something is loved, while others are not. This use of ‘love’ is habitual in our human experience. We typically evaluate others based upon our established criteria to determine whether they are worthy of our love, and we decide to extend our affection and compassion to them, or not, based on our assessment.

I have to believe that this is not the love that Jesus was referring to when he instructed us to “love your neighbor as yourself.” I suggest that he was, instead, referring to Agape, a Greek word which denotes the love of God for humanity, a love that is all-pervading, all-inclusive and all-providing.  Agape is love without condition, without restriction and without limitation. I offer that Agape, love in its purest form, is neither a noun, nor a transitive verb, but instead is an intransitive verb: It is an action that requires no object. In fact, it is God in action.

Agape is God – Creative Life Force Energy – in its purest vibration. It is the Principle of Love and is not personal. It is.  And, it is without respect to person, place or thing. We make it personal as we demonstrate it. We give it meaning and purpose. It is comparable to the principle of mathematics: It is only principle until we apply it

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Agape, while it requires no object, is energy in expression and requires a channel through which to flow into the manifest realm. We, you and I, are the channels through which it is meant to flow. We open ourselves to the flow through our conscious intention to do so. We must be willing to proclaim as composer Dan Schutte so beautifully wrote in his song, “Here I Am Lord”,

“Here I am, Lord. It is I, Lord. I have heard you calling in the night. I will go, Lord, where you lead me. I will hold your people in my heart.”

We must open to the “Lord” of our being, “the activity of the Spiritual I AM”¹, and allow love to call us forth to our purest expression. We must allow our hearts to be the chalice of love and our thoughts, words and actions to be the means we employ to pour love into the energy matrix from which the world we perceive is made manifest. We must engage in the activity of the Spiritual I AM and perceive all as One.

As we answer the call and open to allow, we bask in the glow as our consciousness is flooded with the Light of Agape. Our chakras awaken in all dimensions as portals through which it flows into and through us. In this way, we begin to embody the Truth of what Jesus meant when he said, “You are the Light of the world” (Matthew 5:14). It no longer remains simply an affirmation of our essential nature, but in our acceptance of it, becomes our conscious expression.

When we embody Agape, we see all creation as perfect and whole, the complete demonstration of the Life Energy it signifies. We hold all, including ourselves, in complete acceptance without evaluation or judgment.  We embrace all in compassion, knowing that any suffering is our suffering. We no longer have a desire to find fault or place blame, instead we let go of our need to be “right.” We know that there is only One, and we are that One. We see the “other” as ourselves, and we love accordingly.

In the consciousness of Agape, the phrase, “I love you” is grammatically incorrect because ‘love’ is neither a noun nor is it a transitive verb. We might instead say simply, “I love.” Some Christians, in an attempt to capture the spirit of Agape, use the phrase, “I agape you²,” but again, that usage makes Agape either an emotion or an action directed toward another.

I realize that it may sound odd, but I invite us to affirm, “I Agape”: I love with no limits, no boundaries, no labels, and no exclusions.

Join us on Sunday for our 10:00 service as we explore how we can together embody “I Agape.”

¹ Metaphysical Bible Dictionary

² Dictionary of Christianese