101st Post

This is the 101st post to this blog. I started this blog on March 17th, 2006, because I felt I had something to say, and I wanted everybody to hear it. (How vain is that?)

The software was very primitive then, and to use the blog you had to use a lot of HTML, which I didn't really know. In the first year I had just two posts. Also, I had no idea how to work out how many visitors were dropping in to read my blog, so I did rather get the feeling, in those early months, that I was just blethering my nonsense to the family labrador.

But the posting became heaps easier when Google reworked Blogger. So I started posting more. I get hundreds of visitors each month now (thank you! and hello!) and it gives me a place to vent, to share my thoughts and my worries, and to show you some of the beaut pics I find on the web.

So today I'll share with you two images which more or less summarize what my writing and my e-presence if all about: love between men. Not necessarily sex (it's nice, but there's much, much more to life than that) but just sheer affection, caring, friendship. The Greeks had three different words for love (actually, they had more, but these will keep us busy): ἀγάπη (agape) the love of father for children, of family for each other, and is the one Christians mean -- or Jesus meant -- when they say "love one another as I have loved you"; φιλíα (philia), friendship; and ἔρως (eros) whence comes 'erotic'. All of them are worthwhile, but it is agape and philia which make the world go round. And if your relationship with someone else starts with these two kinds of love, and moves on to eros, then you may achieve the sublime.

I wish that for you all: love. Not sexual passion, not a hot boyfriend (though we are programmed to enjoy them, for sure) but love. St John said ὁ θεὸς ἀγάπη ἐστίν (God is love). In the absence of a divine hug, I guess we'll have to make do with our friends, husbands, wives and children.

Friendship is especially important for men, because we are wired to compete hard, and male friends, who care about us, who love us can help us get past that urge to compete, so useful sometimes and so very damaging and pernicious at others, and so make our lives better. They can help us through the valley of the shadow of death, when our life turns to ashes, because someone we love dies, or because our marriage fails, or our career. Just by being there, by caring, by listening.

Society doesn't much value friendship -- how often have you heard, "he's just a friend"? -- but I value it very highly. Without it, we shrivel and die inside. With it, all the horrors of life and death are bearable.

Consider yourself hugged. And thank you for visiting.