Every year as Valentine's Day approaches, people remind themselves that not all expressions of love fit the stereotypes of modern romance. V-Day cynics might plan a 'Galentines' night for female friends or toast their platonic 'Palentines' instead. In other words, the holiday shines a cold light on the limits of our romantic imaginations, which hew to a familiar script. Two people are supposed to meet, the arrows of Cupid strike them unwittingly, and they have no choice but to fall in love. They face obstacles, they overcome them, and then they run into each other's arms. Love is a delightful sport, and neither reason nor the gods have anything to do with it. This model of romance flows from Roman poetry, medieval chivalry and Renaissance literature, especially Shakespeare. But as a professor of religion, I study an alternative vision of eros: medieval Christian mystics who viewed the body's desires as immediately and inescapably linked to God, reason and sometimes even suffering. My favorite class to teach traces connections between eros and transcendence, starting with ancient Greek literature. Centuries before Christianity, the Greeks had their own ideas about desire. Erotic love was not a pleasant diversion, but a high-stakes trial to be survived, quivering with perilous energy. These poets' and philosophers' ideas can stimulate our thinking today ' and perhaps our loving as well....

For me, gardening is the most joyful summer activity, when I can see my hard work rewarded with colorful blooms and lush greenery. Science explains this feeling by recognizing the deep bond between humans and plants. Being in a nurturing relationship with nature supports our physical and mental health. At the same time, as a scholar of Greek mythology, I also see the close relationship between humans and plants reflected in ancient stories. In fact, Greek literature and poetry often represent human life as plant life. Just like plant life, human life follows the course of the seasons. Our youth is brief and beautiful like the spring, followed by the full bloom of adulthood in summer and the maturity of middle age, which yields bounty and prosperity like the fall harvest. Finally, in the winter of our life, we wither and die, to be replaced by a new generation, as famously described in the Greek epic 'The Iliad': 'Like the generations of leaves are those of men. The wind blows and one year's leaves are scattered on the ground, but the trees bud and fresh leaves open when spring comes again.'...

Celebrations are a joyous time of reuniting with family and friends. But afterward, people can sometimes be left uneasily mulling over their relationships. Annual returns home can induce an uncomfortable nostalgia in the tension between how the past is remembered and how the present is experienced. As someone who studies ancient Greek myth and poetry, I often find myself making sense of my own life through my work. Even though many Greek myths are infamous for disturbing topics such as infanticide and incest, ancient audiences did look to their stories to make sense of themselves and their world. What most people may remember from Greek myth are heroes like Hercules or Theseus, who make the world safe for other human beings by killing threatening monsters or punishing criminal humans. Hercules' killing of the hydra, a dragon with regrowable heads, as one of his labors represent the forces of civilization conquering nature. At a fundamental level, these kinds of stories center on how heroes are capable of making life safer for human communities....

When the Nobel Prizes are handed out each year, honorees each receive a medal and monetary prize. Even in the absence of these material goods, the honor of being a Nobel laureate persists as part of someone's name or title, like a heroic epithet to recognize a life's achievement. I annually join my colleagues in the arts and sciences praising the winners and everything they have accomplished. As a scholar of classical studies, I also mull over the journey of that strange word, laureate, and how aptly it names those who receive it. The English word 'laureate' dates back to the 15th and 16th centuries, when it jumped almost straight out of the Latin 'laureatus,' an adjective to describe someone crowned with a wreath of laurel leaves. But laurel's history as a symbolically important plant goes back thousands of years. The laurel plant is one of a number of small bushes and trees found originally in the Mediterranean. Some varieties grow dozens of feet tall, often marked by smooth, sometimes wavy leaves, with berries and flowers of different colors. Many people will recognize the long, green aromatic leaves as bay, a popular spice in a range of cuisines....