The Power of Love (Not Love of Power)

One day I said to a good friend I’d known for some time, “I love you.” "I'm very careful about the word love," was the reply. Then silence. I felt like I’d been slapped in the face and the warm feeling of connection went cold.

There are so many kinds of love. I love my family; I love my friends; I wept when my dog died; I love watching sunrises and sunsets; the clouds form over the Hudson River; or when a rainbow suddenly appears, as if by magic. I love cooking and sharing food and wine with friends.?These things give me a wonderful expansive feeling inside, something that transcends my solitary self. Yes, the word “love” is often so overused that it has become drained of meaning. You don’t have to say the word to show love.

I’ve been thinking a lot about love, particularly in our world where there is so much hate. Where families, communities, and our nation are divided. Where violence repeatedly erupts. We rarely go a day without hearing of gun violence. Gun sales, even of military-style assault rifles, have skyrocketed. Some of those who want to make the U.S. a “Christian” nation believe violence will be necessary. There is talk of “civil war”— and the chatter is escalating.?In Europe, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the bloody war that followed shows no sign of ceasing. War, Division, Hate. These are the antitheses of love and getting worse all the time. ?

Social Media platforms like TikTok, Twitter, or Instagram are not the solution. They have their uses but all too often fuel hate, make people young and old feel bad about themselves, and help spread what is euphemistically called “disinformation.” Why not just say lies? Because many people seem to no longer believe in “truth?” Because we are afraid of making the offenders even angrier?

Currently, I’m getting ready for the fall semester. I will be teaching two separate courses, one on Milton and the other on Donne, perhaps my two favorite writers from seventeenth-century England. They still have something to say to us.? Milton’s great epic Paradise Lost tells us that war erupted even before human history started, before God created earth and humans. Satan (the Hebrew word means “adversary”) rebels against God because God promoted the Son. Satan wants power and glory. We never see a peaceful heaven.?And peace on earth is short-lived. Before the Fall, Eden is a place of harmony between Adam and Eve (even if they are not exactly “equal”). For a brief time (just days?), there is also harmony between humans and the environment, between heaven and earth. But Satan is coming—the walls of the Garden of Eden cannot keep him out. The Fall precipitates universal death and war, conflict between Adam and Eve, war between people, environmental disasters, rapacious animals—the world as we know it. In the last two books of the epic (a history lesson) Michael says War and Hate will continue until the end of time, with things getting worse and worse. How depressing. Yet Milton won’t leave us there. He insists on ending his epic with harmony between Adam and Eve restored, with love, as they walk out of Eden into our world, “hand in hand.”?Love — the possibility of love between human beings is all we have as we walk through the world. Love and hope are what we need to survive.

Perhaps that’s ultimately what I try to teach. ?

Donne, one of the greatest lyric love poets, always witty, is very different from Milton. But like Milton, he disdains those who love power and seek power over others. Donne’s lovers in their little rooms, or in bed, make love not war. Donne’s famous poem “The Good-Morrow” contrasts explorers and adventurers who seek new worlds (colonial domination) with the lovers (lying in bed looking at each other, their souls and bodies awakened). Together the two are a whole world: “where can we find two better hemispheres,” Donne asks, “without sharp north, without declining west?” His lovers embody (at least for the moment) wholeness, not division.?

?Is it any accident that the Hebrew word “shalom” (“peace”) comes from the root meaning wholeness or completeness?

Love, wholeness, healing.

Now I’m back in New York and at work. I’m in touch with good friends here. Will the feeling of renewal last? With the pressures of work, the city, and the world, it’s hard to say. Yet, I feel somehow changed by loving and feeling loved.

The Hebrew Bible says the heart is the seat of wisdom and I believe that is true.?Feelings from the heart connect us with each other. It’s the only antidote I know to ward off all the despair, grief and hatred in the world. The heart also moves us to action, to do everything we can to fight these dark forces.?

And so I return this semester, once again, to teach my beloved students and grateful to be doing so.

It’s my most powerful antidote.

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