After the video of UCLA gymnast Katelyn Ohashi’s “perfect 10” floor routine went viral, NPR interviewed her head coach, Valerie Kondos Field about her character and skill.

Katelyn had almost given up on the sport. “The elite level came at a price. Not just the injuries, but the body-shaming and the cut-throat competition that left her questioning her self-worth” (NPR’s Morning Edition).

Coach Val became a catalyst for change in Katelyn, who had stopped loving the sport at age 11. How? At the 1:40 mark in the two-minute interview, Coach Val utters the sentence that says it all:

“I cared about her more as a human being than as an athlete.”

And that was everything.

Caring more about a person’s humanity than about the role they play, regardless of the context, is the essence of respect for human dignity.

Want to know how to live your faith in the secular workplace? Care about people more as human beings than as coworkers and employees.

How does every single faculty and staff member live out the Catholic Identity of the school? Care about people more as human beings than as students and colleagues.

It really is that easy.

Care for a person’s well-being more than the function they provide.

Stop using people as objects. Stop objectifying the body for the sake of athletic or advertising success. Stop shaming. Stop the competition that leaves people questioning their self-worth.

We don’t have to choose between people and profit, between personal well-being and excellence, between compassion and success.

In fact, look at the results: not only does Katelyn’s routine earn a “perfect 10,” not only has the video of her performance gone viral, but in the words of Coach Val, “She just exudes goodness and love and joy.”

Be a catalyst: care about a person more as a human being than anything they can do.

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I love my husband.  And I know he loves me.  In the REAL LOVE way.  But sometimes I’m just not feeling it.  Why is that?

After 7 years of marriage (11 ½ years together), we’re definitely beyond “You’ve Lost That Lovin Feeling.” But from the kitchen to the bedroom, we know we need to cultivate agape, eros, philia, and storge.

I have been trying to get him to read Gary Chapman’s The Five Love Languages for quite some time.  He’s not just a guy; he’s a science guy.  An engineer.  And I know expressing “emotions” isn’t his thing.  But gosh darnit, I know we really, truly love each other, and I’d just like him to tell me in the way I’d like to hear… you know?

“We must be willing to learn our spouse’s primary love language if we are to be effective communicators of love” (14).

Gary Chapman identifies five different ways that we express and experience love.  What makes one person feel loved emotionally isn’t necessarily what makes another person feel loved.

1.  Words of Affirmation – Verbal affirmations and compliments, expressions of gratitude and appreciation.  Spoken with encouraging words… kind words… humble words… genuine words.

2.   Quality Time – Giving the other your undivided attention, focus, time.  Doing things together.  Having quality conversations.

“A central aspect of quality time is togetherness.  I do not mean proximity… Togetherness has to do with focused attention.” (59)

Offering someone Quality Time means offering your understanding and sympathy, as you give your attention to the person…not necessarily offering advice (unless that’s what the person is asking for).  We can do this by

• maintaining eye contact
• giving our undivided attention to the other
• listening for the feelings being expressed
• observing the other person’s body language
• refusing to interrupt the other person – seeking to understand what they are saying and waiting to respond

“Many of us… are trained to analyze problems and create solutions.  We forget that marriage is a relationship, not a project to be completed or a problem to be solved.” (62)

3. Receiving Gifts – This love language has less to do with the monetary value of the “gift” than it does with the thought behind it.  The gift symbolizes love.  It represents the fact that the person was thinking of the one they love (be it friend, family, or beloved).  These gifts of love may be purchased, found, or made.  They needn’t be extravagant nor expensive.

“A gift is something you can hold in your hand and say ‘Look, he was thinking of me,’ or ‘She remembered me.’ You must be thinking of someone to give him a gift.”  (74)

4.  Acts of Service – This love language is about doing things for the one you love… things you know they would like you to do.  Acts of service require forethought, planning, time, effort, and energy.

Jesus offered us an example of the way in which acts of service demonstrate love when he washed the feet of the disciples.

5.   Physical Touch – This love language includes all forms of affection: from hand holding to the supportive friendly hug, to kissing, to a marital embrace, to sexual intercourse.

In this, there is the recognition that all forms of touch (including the refusal to touch) express emotion – positive or negative.  The thing to remember is that while this love language includes sexual intercourse, that’s not what it’s all about.  Holding someone tenderly while they cry… squeezing a hand in excitement… patting a shoulder in encouragement… These are all forms of expressing love.

Chapman explains that we each have a “primary love language” in which we express and experience love.  We need to pay attention to what our beloved’s love language is so that we can express love in the way they primarily communicate love.

This explanation is so simple, yet so profound.  And it explains so very much.

In my case, my primary love language is quality time, with words of affirmation close behind.  My husband definitely enjoys quality time, but he primarily speaks acts of service.

Chapman challenges us to try to speak our beloved’s primary love language – so that they feel the love we have for them.

I’d go a step further and say that it’s also important that we hear the love our beloved is expressing to us in their primary love language.

If I hadn’t read this book, I may have missed appreciating some of the wonderful things he does for me as expressions of love – like something as simple as making me a cup of tea every morning with breakfast.  Or recognizing that making me breakfast (or dinner) is an act of love.  Without a doubt, I heard his expression of love when he built me a little shelf to hold all my jars of loose tea.

I know he loves me.  But sometimes I need to hear it in my love language (particularly in words of affirmation).  And this isn’t easy for him.

But he’s trying.  And that means the world to me.

And both of those—that he’s trying and that I know it—are important.

It’s important that we do this for all of the special people in our lives: spouse, children, parents, siblings, friends, co-workers, etc.

How do you express and experience love?  How do the important people in your life express and experience love?   Are you speaking their language?

“Love sign language © Depositphotos.com/altanaka”

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Have you ever had one of those random moments in life—personal or professional—when someone asks you something, and when you open your mouth to respond, you’re amazed by the profound insight that comes out?  You know you said it, but the wisdom had to have come from God?

Well, years ago, while teaching in Austin, I took a group of students to work at an orphanage in Mexico.  In addition to showering the children with attention and affection, we did a bunch of home-improvement style projects – from cleaning to painting to repairs.  The poverty was staggering. While we helped both physically and financially, it was abundantly clear that our charity was not going to bring about a real and lasting change.

That evening, we did the Mission-Trip-Circle-Up conversation to discuss and process our day.  One student, Travis, was extremely conflicted: “I feel really good about myself, but I feel guilty for feeling that way.  We have so much, and they have so little.  It just doesn’t make any sense; I don’t like the fact that I feel so good about myself.”

I suggested to Travis that “feeling good” was not reflecting some kind of “superiority,” but rather he felt good because he was participating in true agapic love.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus called us to love one another as he loved us; to participate in agape.  This was not a “to-do-list” task, but an invitation.  The act of selfless giving in service (and in love) feels great because in it, we experience the divine.

And it doesn’t matter which kind of love we’re talking about: philia (friendship love), eros (passionate love), storge (family affection), or agape (unconditional giving of oneself for the good of another).

What a profound “God-is-love” truth.

The act of selfless giving in love feels great because in it,

we experience the divine.

For some reason, when talking about love, it’s a lot easier to get our heads around what love means when we take romance out of the equation.  But this same dynamic of selfless-giving-feeling-great applies to all four loves.

Allow me to explain:

Remember Erich Fromm’s definition of love (from Art of Loving 19)?  I concluded my post on dependency (I Need You to Need Me), with this:

 Mature Love “is union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity” or individuality.

If we were to diagram that one, it would be two stick figures choosing to come together to hold hands, maintaining their integrity, freely capable of individuality.  This “pattern” can and should apply to all four kinds of love.

In all four types of love, one can and should be able to give of oneself without giving up one’s identity.

Going on, Fromm names four basic elements that are common to all types of love:  Care, Responsibility, Respect, and Knowledge.

1. Care – When we care about someone or something, we are concerned for their well-being.  When we don’t care, we don’t love.

2. Responsibility – Instead of limiting our understanding to some assigned “duty,” Fromm goes to the root of the word:

3. Respect – Without the element of respect, the element of responsibility “could easily deteriorate into domination and possessiveness” (26).

Love means letting people be free to be who they are, right now.

4. Knowledge – As we seek to become closer with people—friends and family as well as our beloved—we come to see how many layers there are to truly knowing someone.  Knowledge of a person is key to real, mature love.

• Agape, Eros, Storge, Philia
• The will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth – M. Scott Peck
• Union under the condition of preserving one’s integrity and individuality, practiced with care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge – Erich Fromm

Love is all of this and more.

Painters by Bart Everson licensed under CC BY 2.0

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