This week’s musical mental health break is from the British folk band Bear’s Den who performed at my local bar The Earl on Monday night. (Any band that opens for Mumford & Sons I’m gonna like, so I knew I had to be there.) They’re a new favorite of mine.<\/p>\n
“Agape” is one expression in Greek for “love.” For the most of us who haven’t gone to seminary or read C.S. Lewis, love in its Greek rendering has several main iterations or forms: “filos” is love between friends; “eros” is the more sexualized love between lovers; “storge” is the kind of natural affection between parents and children; and “agape” is selfless love expecting nothing in return (the kind of love that largely, although not exclusively, describes God’s love for human beings and the world).<\/p>\n
This song as I see it\u2014and I’d love to know what Bear’s Den would say\u2014is really a sort of prayer or ode to “Agape” Itself. Where would any of us be, really, without the kind of selfless Love that breathed us into being from the very beginning and sustains us? Maybe this is how the apostle Paul can write that Love is “the greatest of these” (faith, hope and love). As Bear’s Den lyricizes: Agape, please don’t dissipate. Yeah, I know I’ve got the song wrong. I’m reaching out to touch you now, but Baby I’m clutching at straws….I’m so scared of losing you…I don’t want to know who I am without you.<\/em><\/p>\n Here are Andrew Davie, Kevin Jones and Joey Haynes of “Bear’s Den” <\/span>singing “Agape,” in hopes that that same Love holds you and keeps throughout this week in all that you do and in all your comings and goings:<\/p>\n