STUNG TO MADNESS BY DIONYSUS
 So where does that leave us? "Shall we sin, because we
are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid." The embrace of a
Dionysian Christianity over an Apollonian one is in many ways no different
than the acceptance of the Gospel of Grace over the legalistic imitations the
Apostle Paul was always having to refute and shake off — except that, as
is the way of law, the available legalisms threatening to encrust that pure
Gospel have multiplied over the centuries. The paradox of law and grace will
continue to confound those who seek a clear sign or formula instead of
submitting to the contradiction that is the Cross of Christ. True enough, we
still have to figure out, practically speaking, what the submission of
Bacchus to Aslan might look like in our own day and contexts.  (And all our good wishes go out to the Walt Disney Corporation for success with
that project as well.) But my interest here has been primarily to guide us to
that picture and leave us contemplating it: to orient our vision and attitude
toward our faith rather than offer any practical advice on measuring form to
freedom. Of course, that means I'm shrinking once again from the task of
resolving the battle of Carnival and Lent. So maybe I was hasty in rejecting
RUSH's quest for a "god of balance" after all! Then again, all the endless
dualisms seem to be at the root of the problem, not the solution.
That's why Lewis's undoing of the dualism of Apollo and Dionysus seems so
promising to me. Indeed, "balance" can never resolve the conflict between
Apollo and Dionysus because balance is itself a Dionysian solution: an
Apollonion could never tolerate a both/and proposition, the unrelieved
tension of unanswered questions. Apollo will not be crucified, as has been
said, on the horns of dilemma. Dionysus, on the other hand, is the always
dying, always resurrected god, the always double creature, half-and-half,
like another Centaur, the eternally juxtaposed God-man.
The human condition itself defies the Apollonian demand for absolute order
and purity: sooner or later Apollo chooses one side or the other, leaving
something less than human. To be Dionysian is to rest in the quantum
realities of a faith that insists, for example, that death is the way to
life. "Quantum" refers to the subatomic world. The discovery that the quantum
world did not obey the laws of Newtonian mechanics threw physics into a tizzy
it still hasn't recovered from. Nothing was supposed to be above the laws of
science, or any system with pretentions to science. Like the Telmarines, the
systemetizers are phobic about wildness. Yet Christian Truth is Quantum
Truth: a glimpse of the wholly untameable, a Truth that is neither law nor
ideal nor concept but Person, who — while having a definate character
— is subject to no law higher than Himself. A glimpse of that Truth is
always personally threatening to those less truth-seeking than
control-seeking — which probably includes all of us at one time or
another. If we're paying attention, Truth won't just leave us petting its
pretty fur, but — to use Kierkegaard's phrase — in "fear and
trembling."
Peter Leithart again:
The wine of the true Dionysus is not safe. It is the wrath-wine of the holy
God, the transcendent God, the God who escapes our every effort to control or
corral Him. The wine of Jesus is the wine foaming and strong in His cup, wine
that he pours out to make his enemies stagger and fall. The wine of Jesus too
sends people mad, for some who come to this table are sick, and some are
fallen asleep. This wine is not safe; but it is the cup of blessing. Why
wine? Because the Lord of the table requires it, and He is the true god of
the vine.
And for those who cannot bring themselves to take the strong and heady wine
of blessing, Leithart concludes, "there is grape juice for minors in the
center of each [communion] tray."
And so, from Memento Mori, through Carnival and
Lent, and Dionysus and Apollo, we reach the end of this rambling, untamed seminar
without finding any deus ex machina to save us from our unresolved
tensions: only a rather unsettling Dionysian ambiguity. If the view from
here provokes a certain sense of vertigo, of looking down at your feet to
find them on a tightrope with no net beneath, well, that's just what carnival
is supposed to do. And, if nothing else, the persistence of our efforts to
build our own nets, even if they come to tangle and choke us, reminds us that
carnival will always be necessary. Human beings will always need regular
time outs to admit that their order is not absolute, not final, at best a
compromise — full of situational practicalities prejudices and
idiosyncracies and errors and makeshift under the best of circumstances. And
maybe if you know that your net's not going to hold you anyway, that may help
you to pay a closer attention to watching your steps.
I do wish we had more time to walk a little further out on this particular
tight-rope, however; there remain a multitude of fascinating subtopics for
further consideration.
It would, for example, be most enlightening — or should I say
intoxicating — to survey the landscape of the Gospel and
Christian history for clues to locating a more Dionysian faith. In so many
places you can actually feel some ancient, even primal energy
straining against whatever cultural container barely holds it back, ready to
explode into something sensual, even (dare we say it?) sexual. The
Passion of the Christ. The ecstasy of St. Teresa. The
throbbing beat of that ancient prayer, the Anima Christi: "Blood of
Christ, inebriate me." John Donne's poem, "Batter my heart,
three-person'd God… Except you enthrall me, [I] shall never be free. Nor
ever chaste, except you ravish me." You can almost hear the hypnotic
rhythms of drums, the seductive melodies of the flutes, the sighs of the
maenads, lost in their mad, whirling, self-forgetting dance...
And we could certainly talk more about C. S. Lewis in this connection, who
throughout his writing divides human knowledge and ways of looking at the
world into a division that coincides very well with the Apollonian-Dionysian
opposition. Like Lewis the popular theologian, Lewis the literature teacher
makes it clear that learning to engage with art requires wrestling away from
Apollonian control a way of seeing that is closer to (he doesn't put it quite
this nakedly) sex — as in "knowledge in the Biblical sense"
— than in the abstract, practical, utilitarian, even scientific sense
that some people approach art. Perhaps the very real relation between
Dionysian seeing and Biblical knowledge is why RUSH pairs Apollo with Reason
and Dionysus with Love, and also why N. T. Wright can call for Christian
approach to knowing that makes knowledge not a subset of power but of love.
(Some further investigations are obviously needed here. Stay tuned.)
Another direction we could have gone if we'd have had a few more seminar
sessions is in further consideration of the deep psychological and spiritual
wisdom of the ancient moral of the Dionysian myths: that we pay a terrible
price for refusing to acknowledge ambiguity, mystery and finitude. The fact
that tragedy invariably concerns a hero who, due to events out of his
control, suffers and dies seems highly significant to me — especially
given the human, especially the American tendency to deny tragedy and
death. The question of whether a Christian view, the Divine Comedy —
which includes both crucifixion and resurrection — can ever be truly
tragic, is deep waters and we may not be strong enough swimmers yet to wander
into that end of the pool.
But it does bring us bring us back to where we began, which is probably as
close to a conclusion as we can get on this topic, some further consideration
of the charms of "Sister Bodily Death," as St. Francis called her —
"from whose embrace no mortal can escape." As I look over all those
portraits of Francis with a skull, I've wondered if the secret to his
detachment from the world and attachment to God, his sense of connection to
the mystical heart of the universe, his carnivalesque, Rabelaisian, Dionysian
leper-embracing oneness with all creatures, was rooted in his close, loving
relationship with Sister Death. Perhaps Death is the leper we are called to
embrace, our first partner in any Dionysian dance of self-forgetfulness.
Perhaps Memento Mori is one thing we cannot forget if we are truly to
forget ourselves. Perhaps remembering death is a prerequisite to truly
living.
This year's theme for the Imaginarium has been "Days of the Dead". Today is the last day of the festival, tonight is the last dance in the Imaginarium. I hope to see you all there. Eu-oi-oi-oi!!!
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