Even now in the age in which we know everything, thanks to Watson and his Madison Avenue cohorts, we buy and save things we don’t need, still compelled by Watson’s love-greed-lust twist. What Jesus said about that was "let your yea be yes and you nay be no" (for Quakers this was the root of ‘plain speech’). "Wise as a serpent and innocent as a dove". He was warning us about Watson and all the other deceptions at Wal-Mart.

But, there is more to say about love.

In the fifties and sixties, ministers like me preached often about love using the three Greek words for love: Eros; sexual love, Philia; brotherly, sisterly human love, and Agape; the special love of God. We preached the hierarchy of these loves, with Eros and Philia being low status worldly and not generally to be trusted. And then there was Agape, the pure transforming special Love of God, way up there on the top shelf and most of us without a stepladder.

Today minister’s and scholars are more likely to speak of these three Greek words for love in terms of a continuum all parts of love making a whole. In Paul’s first Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verses 1-13, he says: "I may speak in tongues of men or of angels, but if I am without Agape (God’s special universal love), I am a sounding gong or clanging cymbal...Love is patient; love is kind and envies no one… Love keeps no score of wrongs… He lists some of the qualities of God’s love, all are qualities of Philia; human love, all are qualities of Eros; sexual love.

Thus, we find our way to the special love of God through all of the manifestations of love. Every kindness awakens the prayer of the souls longing. The patient listener causes us to be wrapped in the light and reach toward the Divine. Sexual love, when close and deep, responsible non-exploitive and kind, reminds us that ecstasy is a human right and turns our celebrating hearts to God.

This whole love is much more than a good idea or a psychological integration. It transforms the being ness of the human being, in small and often erasable ways and then in deep gentle ways that abide and last. Our gift of being alive is vitalized. A bit like mixing nickel with steel to make it strong and less corrosive. This love unites us with God.

God is Love and God Abides. Pray.

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