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.

Peter Costanzo
How Can I Possibly Celebrate 4th of July This Year?

Independence day? A celebration of America, liberty, and the dream of democracy, which all seem to be crumbling?

The Statue of Liberty has taken a big hit the last years, but the crowning blow was the series of rulings the Supreme Court made during these last weeks. They ruled New York’s gun law unconstitutional, a law meant to protect people’s lives in gun-free places, at a time when gun violence and deaths have risen exponentially. Then they struck down Roe vs. Wade, which gave women the right not merely to a safe abortion, but also to control their own lives and bodies. Not all the supreme court justices took these away—the three liberal judges (two women, one man and two out of three who are Jewish)—tried valiantly to uphold these laws and rights, but were overpowered by a conservative block of five men and one woman (three appointed by former President Trump).  Those justices, led by Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, who identify as “originalists,” limiting themselves to the freedoms and meanings intended (but can we ever really know intent?) by the original framers of the constitution, are actually “fundamentalists.” Their reading of the Constitution is analogous to religious fundamentalists, who read their Bible literally, believing it is something fixed, the literal word of God (though written by humans?), whose meaning must never change, despite the fact that people, societies, and the world changes. 

The “Founding Fathers” of America at least dreamed of “a more perfect union.” They were NOT bound by what had been done before, which is why they broke with the tradition of monarchy, when kings insisted they were above human laws and ruled by “divine authority.” Abraham Lincoln saw himself evolving, perceived injustices that needed to be changed, but it has been a long, incomplete journey. Chattel slavery, the enslavement of Africans, Black people stolen from their country, had to change, even though many of those founding fathers themselves were slave owners. But Michelle Goodwin’s brilliant Opinion piece in the NYTimes  (June 26),  argues that the Supreme Court decision effectively means “the erasure of Black Women from the Constitution.” For it “ignores the intent of the 13th and 14th Amendments, especially as related to Black women’s bodily autonomy, liberty and privacy, which extended beyond freeing them from labor in cotton fields to shielding them from rape and forced reproduction.”

Apparently our contemporary originalists don’t accept all of the Amendments or believe in evolution and working towards a more perfect union. Indeed, this action treats women as chattel slavery, moving the clock back, returning us to a more unjust, and yes, less free society. With the undoing of Roe vs. Wade, women have lost their liberty, especially the poor, and most of us are devastated with feelings of outrage, despite the split in the country over abortion. 

Does race enter into this? Yes. Apparently for some, racial fears are a motivator. AP reported that U.S. Rep. Mary Miller (R) of Illinois, at a rally on June 25th with former President Donald Trump said, “President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday.” Twitter went crazy. Her defenders say she misread her written speech, and meant to say, “right to life,” but even if it were a misreading, it shows what was actually on her mind, and the MAGA patriots cheered loudly. Yet their position defies logic, because who is not going to be able to afford to get abortions? Disproportionally black and brown women, that’s who. Guess these white patriots haven’t thought this through. The more black and brown babies, the sooner “white” people will lose their majority.

Even though women also praised the overturning of Roe vs. Wade, it’s impossible to miss the misogyny in the Supreme court majority opinion or its advocates, whether actual hatred of women or “merely” the belief that men and women are not equal, thus are not capable or worthy of the freedom to make their own choices. John Milton, the seventeenth-century poet and defender of liberty (though also with his own misogyny) in Paradise Lost (one of the most read books in early America, along with the Bible) had Adam and Eve separate right before the Fall, to show that each had to be tempted by Satan separately, to make the choice for themselves (woman being endowed with “free will” just as Adam was). The husband didn’t “choose” for the wife, didn’t rule her actions. What could be a more striking instance of a woman’s right to choose? Milton would say, it’s a “necessity.”

What hypocrisy for five judges on the Supreme Court to strike down more stringent gun control but enact complete control over womens’ bodies and choices, as well as their overall well-being. Thus allowing states to pass laws forcing women to give birth when their pregnancy is the result of rape or incest. Imagine nurturing the very baby that is the result of violence, that might look like the rapist or incestuous uncle or father. But no, concern is not for the life of the child after birth (as some say, this is “pro-birth” not “pro-life”). Many of the same people who are against abortion in all cases (even if it threatens the life and health of the mother) do not want the government to spend money on child care, food, or education for the children that never asked to be born. Many of those same people also fear their gun rights will be restricted. Fine to restrict women’s rights over their own lives, their freedom, but God help you if you want to restrict their rights to own military style guns and carry them wherever they want.  Throughout farmlands in Illinois, you still see “Guns Save Lives” signs posted along the highway, despite the murders of children in their schools, even grade schools. And no, the answer is not more guns.

 We in America are supposed to enjoy religious freedom, with the separation of church and state enshrined in the first Amendment, as usually interpreted. But the overturning of Roe vs. Wade  violates the first Amendment because it imposes on the rest of the nation the beliefs of a particular religion---Christianity. Evangelical Christians, particularly hold to the belief that life begins at conception (though St. Aquinas did not). There are plenty of Protestants and Catholics who are against abortion but oppose the ruling, believing in the freedom of others to do what they believe is right.

This new ruling, which imposes a specific religious viewpoint, violates the principle of religious freedom in America, especially that of Jews. In the Torah, the Talmud, and later rabbinic teachings, a fetus is part of the woman’s body and is not considered a living person until birth. Judaism does not prohibit abortion, especially if the mother’s health is at stake. Are those same justices now going to insist on a literal, fundamentalist interpretation of the first Amendment that gets rid of the broad sense of religious freedom for all, including freedom from religion?

Don’t get me wrong. I love the Bible, and study it. But I believe that all important, valuable texts—the Bible, and yes, our Constitution with all its Amendments—are living things (the Torah is called “The Tree of Life”).

As living things, they change, they grow.  Otherwise they die.

Peter Costanzo