Simon Jenkins (
Comment
, 17 March) goes into a debate with Jeanette Winterson on really love. He lists the Greek words for love but omits one –

charis

– normally converted as foundation, a debased word which presently has an air of condescension. Better perhaps translated as sophistication or loving kindness, it really is that capability to feel another’s discomfort or joy, their particular hopes and worries. Are an excellent listener and also to provide help, advice and sometimes positive activities to aid in challenging conditions. Especially becoming responsive to the emotions of some other person.

Jenkins dismisses the passage from 1 Corinthians 13 as pulpit platitude, but study in today’s interpretation it extends to the nub: “Love is patient … kind … does not envy or brag. It’s not rude … self-seeking … easily angered.” Isn’t that exactly what Jenkins means by complimentary? It is primarily the types of love which directed men and women to found causes for example Oxfam and Save your children, and also to build women’s refuges, frequently from seeing real human demand and having the creativity and determination to do some thing. Truly a present, but it is cultivated and is found in men and women. Perhaps that type of love “is all that’s necessary”.


Val Spouge



Braintree, Essex

The constraints of English cannot slim our very own idea of love to mere private dedication. Stanley Spencer wrote that the musician has to look at the globe with a love that discloses all things as faced with their own, engaging identity. This profound the fact is clearly recognized by Winterson, though Jenkins misses it. Love is not necessarily the ditto as kindness, benevolence or courtesy, that tend to be laudable but retain the self since the operator, unmoved except by choice. Real really love is an open, prone perceptivity, risky and magical, the source of creative exhilaration. It is really not typically within perfect ministers.


Alison Prince



Whiting Bay, Isle of Arran