You’ve Got a Friend in Me
The importance of platonic love
by Claire Law
Suitable for Whole School (Sec)
Aims
To consider what is meant by platonic love.
Preparation and materials
- You will need the PowerPoint slides that accompany this assembly (You've Got a Friend in Me) and the means to display them.
- Have available the song ‘You’ve got a friend in me’ by Randy Newman and the means to play it at the beginning of the assembly. It is 2.10 minutes long and is available at: https://youtu.be/zIYOJ_hSs0o
- Optional: you may wish to arrange for a student to read the Bible passage 1 Corinthians 13.4-8 during the assembly.
Assembly
- Show Slide 1 and have the song ‘You’ve got a friend in me’ playing as the students enter.
Ask the students whether they can name the song that was playing as they entered the room.
Listen to a range of responses. - Tell the students that the song that they heard was ‘You’ve got a friend in me’ by Randy Newman. Most of us here will recognize it as the theme song from the Toy Story movies. It was originally written for the first Pixar feature film, Toy Story, which was released in 1995, but then became the theme song for each of the subsequent films.
The song lyrics match the theme of the films: that friends are there for each other in both good times and tough times. - You could say that ‘You’ve got a friend in me’ is actually a kind of love song. Sure, it doesn’t talk of romance or sexual attraction, but it is all about the love between friends.
- The idea of friendship as a form of love is not new. In fact, we can trace it back at least 2,400 years to the Ancient Greeks in the fourth century BC. One of the Greek philosophers, named Plato, was interested in the idea of love and different forms of love. He saw love as a type of ladder that could bring us closer to the divine.
Show Slide 2.
Here, we see a statue of Plato. Interestingly, his real name is thought to have been Aristocles, not Plato. It is believed that he was given the playful nickname Plato (which means ‘broad’) because his chest and shoulders were broad, or because he had a wide forehead. - Plato, and other philosophers who succeeded him, saw love as a way to move towards wisdom and beauty – and friendship was one form of such love. In fact, we sometimes refer to the kind of love that we experience in our friendships as platonic love, or we might speak of a platonic friendship between two people who show a deep connection.
In recent years, the term platonic life partnerships - or PLPs - has been coined to describe committed friendships, where a pair of lifelong friends live together, but have no romantic or sexual connection.
Time for reflection
Show Slide 3.
Ask the students, ‘What qualities do we want from a friend?’
If someone is a really good friend, we might feel that we love them platonically. Perhaps, like Buzz Lightyear and Woody from Toy Story, we have friends in our lives who we know we can trust and we are happy to be there for them no matter what.
Let’s take a moment to call these friends to mind. What is it about this friendship that we like? And, if we don’t have such a friendship just yet, what sort of qualities are we looking for in a friendship?
Explain that we often hear the same kind of words when people answer this question. They say they want to be, and want a friend who can also be . . .
Keep clicking the slide to reveal each word and read it out when it appears.
. . . patient, forgiving, generous, thoughtful, upbeat, warm, encouraging, compassionate and loyal.
These ideas are similar to a passage in the New Testament that describes the qualities of love. It is a reading that is often used during Christian weddings to reflect on the qualities of romantic love. However, it is also possible to consider the passage as an ode to platonic love, the love between friends.
Let’s hear from this passage, which comes from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Chapter 13, verses 4 to 8.
Show Slide 4 and read, or invite a student to read, from the Bible passage.
‘Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.’
To be a loving friend is a way in which we can be more like God. Plato was not Christian – he was born before Jesus’ time - yet he saw love as a way to be more like the divine. The Bible tells us, ‘God is love and anyone who lives in love, lives in God’ (1 John 4.16). So, when we are a loving, kind and patient friend, we can take hope that we are becoming more like the God who made us to be loving.
I wonder which of our friendships enable us to be patient, kind and without envy. Which friendships are the ones where we know that we can be ourselves, without feeling resentment or becoming easily irritated?
Which friendships enable us and our friends to be hopeful about what we can achieve with our lives?
Let’s take a moment to bring these friendships to mind. Let’s think about any friendships that we are grateful for.
Pause to allow time for thought.
Let’s also consider the kind of friend we are to others and what kind of friend we want to be. Perhaps we want to work on being a better friend and making more friendships. Let’s give ourselves some time to consider what sort of a friend we want to work on being to others.
Pause to allow time for thought.
Prayer
Dear God,
We began today’s assembly by listening to the song, ‘You’ve got a friend in me’.
We are reminded that friendship matters and that you call us to be a friend to you and to others.
For those friends we have in our lives who are kind, patient and give us hope, we are grateful.
We pause to silently consider their name now and ask you to bless them today.
Pause to allow time for thought.
Help us to be good friends to others and find ways to be a better friend when we do get it wrong.
We pause for a moment and ask you to give us insight as to what we can do today to be a loving friend to others.
Pause to allow time for thought.
Please help us in all that we do.
Amen.
Song/music
‘You’ve got a friend in me’ by Randy Newman, available at: https://youtu.be/zIYOJ_hSs0o (2.10 minutes long)
