The Four Loves: Eros

My donkey Riley is one of the most indomitable creatures I know. She is horrendously ugly, her wispy hair provides scant covering for the bulges of fat that cover her flanks. She gives an asphyxiated hee-haw when I approach, and yet, on good days she is quite eager to see me and be brushed. On bad days, she just gallops away. It is impossible, as C.S.Lewis says, to either revere or hate a donkey. C.S. Lewis suggests that we look at Eros in much the same way. And with Riley as moniker for Eros, it will be difficult to deify this most treacherous of loves.

I really appreciated C.S. Lewis’s comparison of love to a garden. You see, I had become rather saddened that love was so much work. I still have this idea that marriage is kind of magical. It was self sustaining. Sure, there might be unpleasant weather, but the natural sun of Eros would clear everything up momentarily.

However, Lewis points out that Eros is not an attitude, but a fickle passion. When love first blooms, we are quite certain that the marriage relationship (which C.S. Lewis compares to a garden) will always be this way. But Lewis would tell us that this Eros is not really the natural state of a relationship in the same way that gardens are not in a state of perpetual bloom. We must learn to love the garden and to cultivate our Eros by fertilizing the soil. The true test of a good garden comes in that which we do not see. It is in the careful pruning and endless weeding. There are dry spells, spells of resentment, self-pity, suspicions, wounded vanities, and frustration. To the true gardener, the true lover, these dry spells may be trying, but they have the idea of a perfect bloom that keeps them going. And if they are quite mature, they see each bloom as a gift. Instead, what brings them joy is all the little things: the fresh green branch developing, the deadheading of a plant. And if they can see the benefits that these little acts give the garden with joy, then imagine the ecstasy experienced when a rose unfurls her maelstrom of colour.

By the time the gardener has spent some time among his plants, he has developed an interest in every little growth of the garden. In fact, if you will visit his garden with him, you will see him, as he points out the chrysanthemums, quite compulsively pulling a weed here and there. The care that his garden needs is no longer a means to the end product of beauty. Instead, it is a deep affection for these plants, a desire to serve them and see them flourish.

But I must bring Riley back in. Eros, as a donkey, is unpredictable. Sure I love her affectionate nuzzling, but it is hardly something I live for. Although a gardener loves a rose bloom, it is not sacred to him, and he will clip it and put it in a vase inside. He is content to admire it while it lasts, but will, without melancholy, put on his boots and go whistling out to pull weeds, content to be back tending his overgrown, unpredictable old friend.