They teach the theology of agape, selfless love, and ask parishioners to "construct with love" and "reduce fear and guilt".
His last substantial novel, "Love in the Time of Cholera", based on the forbidden romance of his own parents, ended with the aged lovers on the creaking Magdalena steamboat, pushing through purple lotus and past crocodiles with their mouths agape to catch butterflies, out to the mouth of the sea.
Mr Scruton, who frets that people have become indifferent to beauty and smut, argues that it is because they confuse agape and eros (the ancient Greek words for deep affection and erotic attraction) that they objectify each other and devalue love in a cycle of "ever-expanding heartlessness".Of the two, Mr de Botton will probably sell more books.
His skull has fallen to one side, his jaw is agape.
Extensive early Christian catacombs, lying beneath the town, contain engraved crosses and agape tables rock-hewn round surfaces tables rock-hewnorounderary ritualsurfaces
A line in Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" illustrates cacophony: With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call.
With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call.
The Church Fathers used agape to designate both a rite (using bread and wine) and a meal of fellowship to which the poor were invited.
He sings "Honey Bee (Let's Fly to Mars)" with a perma-frown, his equine nostrils aflare to his ears, his flouncy shirt agape to his nipples.
It is crawling towards us, boggle-eyed, mouth hugely agape.
Or worse still, your eye rolling when yet another beloved character dies and we're left clutching a cushion, mouths agape.
