Thoughts on Valentine's Day

If there's one passage I find truly beautiful in the New Testament it is this one,owing to truly beautiful language, rare for St. Paul, personal implications, but most importantly,  political ones.

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love (agape) [openness, self negation, freedom, “Platonic love”], I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love (agape), I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love (agape), I gain nothing.Love (agape) is patient; love (agape) is kind; love (agape) is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful;it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love (agape) never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror, dimly,but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love (agape) abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love (agape).(1 Cor. 13)

 Today it's Valentine's Day, which if I'm being honest, used to be my least favorite day of the year. I'm sure I'm not the only single person who pretended not to be bothered by IS whole affair, even though some part of them was. For of course "the concept of love is merely a byproduct of heterosexual capitalist oppression". But then Graham wished me a happy Valentine's Day, and pointed out the obvious fact that we should celebrate all kinds of love, including, but not limited to, romantic relationships. In ancient Greek there are four words, encompassing different aspects of the surprisingly vague and discursively powerful English term "love". Let's appropriate "Valentine's Day" from the capitalist order, and use it to explore all kinds of love uniting humanity, from which we can begin to think about an egalitarian notion of emancipatory collectivity, rather than production and exchange. For the first time, I am happy to be single: first because no human being ever is single, and second because I am in a vast network of caring relationships, to which I'd be happy to add a romantic one, but I don't find it essential. I thought the adage that you can't love someone else until you love yourself was complete bull , but slowly, through much work, I'm starting to believe that is true. I love all my friends, and family. I'm grateful for them every day. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, whether you are in a relationship or not. May we all explore the wondrous phenomenon that is love, because it's all we have to do in our short lines.