By Carl Brown
Dear Doctor of Love,I am a married woman over 50 years old. I have many wonderful memories of love and romance in my life. But, as I move into my second century, I find myself musing about the definition of love within a culture saturated with images of sex and youthful romance. Could you explore the subtleties of mature love and the many other forms love can take?
A Happily-ever-after Baby Boomer
PREFATORY REMARKS:
Please join me at Highland Baptist Church (the stunningly beautiful stone church with stained glass windows, located at the intersection of Cherokee Road and Grinstead Drive). Joe Phelps, the preacher man, is way cool. When he pastored a church in Austin, he would open the doors at night so the homeless could sleep on the pews. Need I say more?
Services are as follows: Sunday mornings at 9 a.m. (half-hour, drive-by Jesus service; this is where you’ll find me) and 11 a.m. to noon; Friday nights at 7 p.m., featuring a band, and on Wednesdays from 5:20 p.m. to 6 p.m., a church dinner to die for – $5 for catered quality buffet food, a drink and a dessert. Come sup with me.
Or go to Hell.
Your call.
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Dear Sister Boomer:
You have raised important questions.
The first was of how your memories of love and romance seem to be in conflict with the emphasis on youth and beauty in 21st century American culture.
This one’s easy. Make your marriage youthful and beautiful, by your standards. Let you, in 20 years, have memories of today’s happy marriage.
Next you asked about the types of love. There are three: eros (sex), platonic (“We’re just friends”... no touching below the neck). Then there is agape love, my favorite.
I think a New Testament follower of Jesus put it best in the Bible’s love chapter:
“If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophesy and know all mysteries and all knowledge and I have faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. And if I give my possessions to feed the poor and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek it’s own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails ... But now abide faith, hope, love, these three, but the greatest of these is love.” (Corinthians I: 13).
The subtleties of mature love, in my own damn opinion, can be found in these words.
As far as cultural emphasis on youth and beauty, let me say merely this. Both youth and beauty as defined in America fade. The 20-something hot chick on Bardstown Road, if she lives long enough, will become older herself and her external beauty will fade.
Anyway, I’m Carl Brown, Louisville’s Doctor of Love, living in an undisclosed Fortress of Solitude in the Original Highlands, and all I ask is this: Love one another, love yourself and love The Highlands.
All we need is love.
Carl
Carl Brown lives at an undisclosed location in the Original Highlands. E-mail him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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