Spiritual Sunday
In today’s lesson from the Hebrew Bible (2 Samuel: 1, 17-27), David laments the death of King Saul and of Jonathan, Saul’s son and David’s best friend. David cries out in agony, “How the mighty have fallen” and then spells out what Jonathan meant to him:
Jonathan lies slain upon your high places.
I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan;greatly beloved were you to me;
your love to me was wonderful,
passing the love of women.
The 17th century poet Abraham Cowley has a poem celebrating their love, although in his mind it can’t be a homosexual love, which would be tainted by, well, sexuality. Rather, it is a pure homosocial love such as that celebrated by Plato. That being said, however, Plato’s love between men also had a sexual component. It was just less important to him than the marriage of elevated minds.
I’m not bothered if David and Jonathan’s union was sexual as well as spiritual. In my mind, but not in Cowley’s, marriage between a husband and wife can be just as elevated as that between David and Jonathan, with sexuality adding to rather than detracting from the chemistry. Freud’s process of sublimation may be at work in Cowley’s conception, with repressed homosexual urges manifesting themselves in something which seems pure and elevated because they are repressed. (As Wikipedia explains sublimation, it is “the process of deflecting sexual instincts into acts of higher social valuation.”) While, in Cowley’s eyes, the joys of sex between a man and woman are “full of dross, and thicker far,” the love of Jonathan and David, since it doesn’t involve physical intimacy (“matter”), is “clear and liquid.”
But aside from my objections to the sentiments in the second half of the poem, I like the poet’s description of David and Jonathan’s deep bond: “They mingled Fates, and both in each did share,/ They both were Servants, they both Princes were.” We can celebrate such friendships, whatever form they take.
David and Jonathan
By Abraham Cowley
Still to one end they both so justly drew,
As courteous Doves together yok’d would do.
No weight of Birth did on one side prevaile,
Two Twins less even lie in Natures Scale,
They mingled Fates, and both in each did share,
They both were Servants, they both Princes were.
If any Joy to one of them was sent;
It was most his, to whom it least was meant,
And fortunes malice betwixt both was crost,
For striking one, it wounded th’other most.
Never did Marriage such true Union find,
Or men’s desires with so glad violence bind;
For there is still some tincture left of Sin,
And still the Sex will needs be stealing in.
Those joys are full of dross, and thicker far
These, without matter, clear and liquid are.
Such sacred Love does he’avens bright Spirits fill,
Where Love is but to Understand and Will,
With swift and unseen Motions; such as We
Somewhat express in heightened Charity.
O ye blest One! whose Love on earth became
So pure that still in Heav’en ’tis but the same
There now ye sit, and with mixt souls embrace,
Gazing upon great Love’s mysterious Face,
And pity this base world where Friendship’s made
A bait for sin, or else at best a Trade.