Craig Werner - Love and Happiness: Eros According to Dante, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and the Rev. Al Green

Praise for Love & Happiness

A compelling journeybrilliant, poetic and astonishingly truthfulinto realms of love and honor where, like Beatrice in Dantes Inferno, this books guiding hand could be the difference between delight and disaster.

Timothy B. Tyson, author of Blood Done Sign My Name (winner of the Grawemyer Award in religion)

Craig Werner and Rhonda Lee have crafted a brilliant study of love, using the seemingly incongruous figures of Dante, Shakespeare, Austen, and Rev. Al Green not only to guide us through central texts but also through our own lives. Kudos to the authors for writing in a style both scholastically substantive yet refreshingly readable! The third chapter offers rich insight into Jane Austens surprisingly modern treatment of eros and philia in a society where love was a commodity. Jane Austen fans and foes should not miss Werner and Lees introductory remarks on the manufactured version of dear Aunt Jane or their discerning discussions of Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. After reading Love & Happiness, my eyes have been so opened to the nuances of love that I think I will never read classic literary texts in the same waynor will I perhaps be the same as a wife, daughter, or sister.

Emily Auerbach, author of Searching for Jane Austen and co-host of University of the Air

Craig Werner and Rhonda Lee have created a stunning success in Love & Happiness, walking the razors edge between creativity and commentary with grace, honesty and dignity. Love & Happiness breaks down Big Love into three principal forms: eros, or sexual love; philia, or familial love and trust; and agape, a profound love for all. Using classic literary figures as well as recent soul music greats as inspirational yet conflicted points on their map, Werner and Lee bring these subtexts into a sharp, knowing focus. Shaped by the Christian tradition, moving from Shakespeare to the great Al Green, Love & Happiness is that rare thing a fresh insight into our most studied, primary impulse, Love.

Stewart Francke, award-winning musician and author of Between the Ground and God

Love and Happiness offers a liberating and refreshing look at how eros, held hostage by entertainment media as overly lustful or by conservative politics as inherently shameful, can serve as a powerful creative force that can activate greater intimacy with community, and passion with spirituality. This book dusts off Ancient Greek tenets of love, long forgotten, and remixes them with rich examples from classic literature and soul music. Werner and Lee practice what they preach as their words embody the co-creative potential that lies at the core of every relationship. Love and Happiness offers us the key to unlocking mental, emotional and spiritual intimacy in ways that would earn the good Reverend Al Greens Amen.

Roberto Rivera, President, The Good Life Alliance

All rights reserved. Copyright 2015 by Craig Werner and Rhonda Mawhood Lee. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without permission from the publisher.

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Cover and Interior Design by C Book Services

First edition: 2015

14 15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Werner, Craig Hansen, 1952- Love & happiness : eros according to Dante, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and the Rev. Al Green / by Craig Werner & Rhonda Mawhood Lee. -- First edition.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-940468-09-9

1. Love in literature. 2. Happiness in literature. I. Title. II. Title: Love and happiness.

PN56.L6W48 2015

809.933543--dc23

2014030086

Contents

T he Reverend Al Green bathed the crowd in a smile that took the edge off the unseasonably cold Little Rock autumn night. Hed played a full set and the crowd had sung along with every song: Lets Stay Together, Tired of Being Alone, L-O-V-E, his gospel hit Everythings Gonna Be Alright, covers of the Temptations My Girl, Sam Cookes Bring It On Home to Me, and the Soul Stirrers Jesus Gave Me Water. At the sound of the straight-out-of-church organ introducing the evenings final number, a wave of joyous anticipationhalf sex, half spiritspread like a wave through clear water. Transforming the concrete amphitheater into an outpost of the Full Gospel Tabernacle he pastored just up the road in Memphis, Tennessee, the Reverend began with a confession: Sometimes people say I shouldnt play this song... He stepped back from the microphone to give the good-natured cries of protest time to subside, then went on, So I asked the Lord about it. A hum of approval urged him on. And he told me to ask yall how you got here. Not waiting for the amens to fade away, the band swung into Love and Happiness.

Everyone knew the song. Male or female; married or single; black, brown or white; straight or gay. Didnt matter. Love can make you do right, love can make you do wrong. Judging by the expressions on their faces, more than one listener had stood at that crossroads. They could hear the voice on the phone at 3 a.m. whispering that she, or he, could make it right. Theyd lived through the moment when you didnt know whether to come home early or stay out all night long. When you couldnt tell the difference between sin and salvation. When you felt your lips forming the yes. But then you heard your heart whispering no. You hesitated, thought again. Maybe, like Reverend Green, you prayedhowever prayer looks to you.

Like Al Greens song, Love and Happiness is a prayer. Its our meditation on love, our appeal for guidance on behalf of a culture that desperately needs it. At the heart of the book is the type of love known as eros. Usually understood as sexual desire, libido or sometimes just lust, eros possesses enormous power. Its creative love, which taps into the deepest parts of the soul, inspiring earth-shaking music and art, knitting two people together physically and emotionally to create a home, a family, and a shared history. When eros is warped, bad things happen: its power can destroy lives, spirits, marriages. Being faithful to a higher call, tasting victory, may mean walking away from the voice at the other end of the telephone at 3 a.m. But turn away when you should reach out, and you may be left with the taste of ashes for the rest of your life. In the middle of the night, creation and destruction can be hard to tell apart.

Our goal in writing Love and Happiness is to change the way people see eros, and help them liberate its creative power. We place eros in conversation with two other types of love: philia, the reciprocal love of friends, family and community; and agape, the self-giving love that sustains the world, the ultimate power that people of faith call God. In secular terms, eros is love for one; philia, love for many; and agape, love for all.

Our argument is this: eros has the strongest potential to be a creative force when its embedded in networks of philia, and suffused with agape. Remembering our bonds with the people in our liveshonoring philiaserves as a check against the destructive potential in eros. Celebrating agapeembracing loves spiritual source and significancefrees us to spread the life-giving energy of eros through our communities. Philia places love at the center of our everyday lives; agape brings us back to its deepest source. Lets be clear: eros and philiaour human, embodied lovesare not in conflict with agape. They depend upon it. Our deepest connections with friends, lovers, and family occur when we understand those relationships as part of a love that was working in the world long before any of us was born and will go on long after were dead.