I would like to introduce you to a friend of mine who visited me in a dream. His name is Agape. He is very quiet, very understated, and very giving to everyone he encounters. His enemy is the ego. His enemy is motive. His enemy is hubris. He is purely metaphysical in nature, but from time to time he will assume physical form and play frisbee with me in the park of roses. He has a job, though his job is unlike any that you or I have. He does not sit behind a desk, nor does he he work with his hands. He does not stand behind a counter, nor does he go door to door trying to sell cleaning materials. His a job that cannot be properly comprehended by you or I, but from time to time Agape attempts to share what it is he does.Agape showed up at the park of roses this afternoon, and once again tried to explain to me the nature of his employment.
As we toss the frisbee back and forth, he asks me “By what principles do you abide?” and I answer, “The Harm principle and the principle of Universalizability.” He nods his head and throws the frisbee to me. “Why do you ask, Agape?” I inquire. He catches the frisbee and says, “Do you believe this translates to love?” This leaves me confounded at first, but eventually I answer, “I suppose if everyone cheated on their lover, there would be no trust. I suppose if everyone refused to trust a lover in the first place for fear of being cheated upon, there would be no love.” I toss the frisbee to him. “If one has learned not to trust due to a series of betrayals, does this warrant them to seek out only those lovers with whom trust is not an issue; those with whom they will share but a single night and never see again?” I search my mind, catch the frisbee, and answer, “If everyone shared only one night stands, there would be no initimacy and no sense of closeness with the rest of humanity.” He catches the frisbee and says to me, “Then it seems those principles translate.” “Yes, to a certain extent.” He drops the frisbee and motions with his head to follow.
Agape and I begin to walk through the forest that forms the perimeter of the park. As we walk over logs and lament the mud getting onto our shoes, he casually asks, “Have you ever seen love?” “Agape my friend,” I say to him as I stop and look around me into the forest only just beginning to bud green, “I have seen what I would call peace. I have seen what I would call joy. I have seen what I would call hope. But no, I have yet to see what I would call love.” Agape stops, and for a moment we together listen to the creek that is flowing by only about ten feet away from where we stand. His eyes appear sad at first, but soon focus and then gain resolve before he looks into mine. “There is something you need to see then.” He motions for me to follow further down the path.
We walk for a half-mile before he stops. I stop as well, and see him turn and look to his right – out over the creek. I follow his gaze into a clearing about fifty yards from where we stand. A solitary Oak stands in the middle of this clearing. It appears to be a magnificent tree in the prime of its’ life. At the base of this tree, I notice two women. “There,” Agape says to me. “FI must go to China for a moment,” and he vanishes. Our friendship only survives due to my willingness to tolerate his random vanishing acts. He does it from time to time, and no matter how much I insist, he only tells me is part of his job requirements.
While he is gone, I see that the two women are laying embraced against the tree. One is taller, with short and curly black hair. She is fair-skinned, and has an eagle tattooed onto her left shoulder. The other is leaning against the right collar of the black-haired woman. She is heavier than the tattooed woman, and has very short-cropped blonde hair. My mind registers the nature of the embrace, and questions the appropriateness of my standing here too long. It is then that Agape reappears.
“How was China” Agape does not answer, but merely focuses upon the young couple across the way. “Tell me what you see,” he says to me. “I see two women, probably in their early thirties, leaning against the tree. My guess is they are lovers.” “And?” “And from the looks of it, they are happy.”
The black-haired women looks in our direction. I begin to move. “No. They cannot see us. I have ensured it.” And indeed, her eyes passed through as she appeared to merely be taking in the sights around her. “Let me tell you what I see, Dan.”
“The woman who has short black hair is named Laura. She works for an antiques store in the Short North, has an adopted son who is spending the day at a birthday party, and is afraid of how much she has fallen for the woman in her arms. She is also afraid of what will happen if her husband finds out.’ Agape’s eyes were focused upon the two of them as he spoke, but now grew very sober and appeared to be seeing things a thousand miles away. ‘The one in Laura’s arms is Sierra. It is a name she took for herself as a line of separation between who she is now, and who she had to be growing up. She has experienced hardships that would shake you to the core. You are tall. You are white. You are male. You are intelligent. She is short. She is white. She is female. She is hindered by a barely average IQ. Furthermore, she is incapable of seeing herself as anything other than that which is defined by the word ‘fat’. She has been called a freak by more people than she can count on account of her sexuality.”
I attempt to digest this. “Don’t,” Agape tells me. “I didn’t not bring you here to feel bad for her. She has been dealt a very difficult hand to play in the current world, but she is a woman, and has enough strength to make the day-to-day decision to keep living” “Then why did you bring me here?” “To see what it is I am here to do; To see my ‘job’ as I’ve told you to call it.” After that he vanishes.
I can’t help but think about Sierra, and her hardships. But it is then that I see that they have begun talking to one another. Sierra stills has her head against Laura’s right collar, but now Laura has laid her head over Sierra’s. I see Sierra talking…and talking…and talking. I see her hesitate, see her raise her right hand as if in protest, see her put her hand back down, and then see her lips barely move as she says one last thing. At first I nothing transpires after this, but soon I see that Sierra is trembling and then Laura pulls her head away. Sierra looks up at her, and the one word that I can comprehend through lip-reading passes through Laura’s mouth. “Okay,” she says. Sierra clearly begins to cry, but at the same time pulls up for the embrace of her life.
Agape reappears next to me. “Do you see?” “I think so.” “That was agape, Dan. In that moment. Laura asked for nothing, and gave Sierra everything her soul had been screaming for for years.” “I know.” “It is time for us to go.”
We continue walking, the both of us lost in thought. “Agape, what is it exactly that you do when you vanish?” He stops and turns to me. “When someone, somewhere, is about to give without condition, without ulterior motivation, without hubris and with complete loss of self, I am called to be there in the moment the gift is passed. In a way, I am the gift. Even when I last but a moment, my effects last forever. Sierra is, at this very moment, already considering changing her name once more. She was once Yasmine. She is now Sierra. One day, she hopes to take Laura’s maiden name as her own.
We emerge from the woods, and the though strikes me, “But you have such importance in the world, how can you possibly only vanish every hour, or every fifteen minutes. Hell, once a minute seems to little.” Agape looks at me with lamentation, “I know. I am rarely called upon anymore. Very few gifts are given anymore. This is why I have the time to talk to you and throw frisbee.” “What needs to be done?” “There is little that you as one man can do to change things. All you can do is be ready, be willing, and then be aware. I must depart.” “Farewell Agape.” “Farewell.”
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