Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault
APOLLO AND DIONYSUS: TWO ASPECTS OF BEING HUMAN
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
March 13, 2005
OPENING READING: "Affirmation"
We affirm the unfailing renewal of life. Rising from the earth, and reaching for the sun, all living creatures shall fulfill themselves. We affirm the steady growth of human companionship. Rising from ancient cradles and reaching for the stars, people the world over shall seek the ways of understanding. We affirm a continuing hope that out of every tragedy the spirits of individuals shall rise to build a better world.
Leonard Mason
MEDITATION READING: "Morning Poem" - #536 Singing the Living Tradition
Every morning the world is created.
Under the orange sticks of the sun the heaped ashes of the night turn into leaves again.
And fasten themselves to the high branches - and the ponds appear like black cloth on which are painted islands of summer lilies.
If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead - it it's all you can do to keep on trudging -
There is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted -
Each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning,
Whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.
Mary Oliver
SERMON: "Apollo and Dionysus: Two Aspects of Being Human"
Nothing is new under the sun! Centuries before psychology as a professional discipline existed, there were psychologists throughout human cultures - analytical types who deduced that the human "psyche" was a most complex and wondrous thing. That there was more to us than merely hunting or gathering or making tools or making little replicas of ourselves (babies or religious statues).
Of course, the word "psyche" is of Greek origin and it is taken from the story of the Goddess with that very name. She it is who is the personification of the soul. In ancient Greek myth, she is represented as a butterfly.
From antiquity's butterfly to the post-modern analyst's office is quite a leap - or should I say "flight"? "Psyche" ("soul") has become "psychology" defined in part by the ASPPB (Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards) Model Act for Licensure of Psychologists as:
The observation, description, evaluation, interpretation and or modification of human behavior by the application of psychological principles, methods, or procedures, for the purpose of preventing or eliminating symptomatic, maladaptive, or undesired behavior and of enhancing interpersonal relationships, work and life adjustment, personal effectiveness, behavioral health and mental health.
And there are 13 more lines to this particular definition of the word.
Personally, I prefer "soul" and the image of a butterfly.
The important thing is that whatever we call the study of the human psyche - from whatever tradition we approach it (and certainly it is not all about professional psychologists having the only answers) - further understanding about who we are can only add to the richness of our human experience.
In the pantheon of Greek and Roman deities there was a great variety of human "psyches" represented. Through myth and wonderful artistic representation, the world that has followed ancient times has been blessed with a richness of meaning about what it means or potentially means to be "human."
Even before there were graphs and charts and statistics stating how varied we are, our forbears were depicting this reality.
Ah! Those ancient Greeks were grand humanists! Through mythology they painted a picture of the human dilemma: the pathetic nature and yet the glory of us mortals!
Poetic words by Ernest Becker come to mine. From his Pulitzer Prize winning book The Denial of Death comes this about man's dilemma:
This is the paradox: he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars and yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill-marks to prove it.Man is literally split in two: he has an awareness of his own splendid uniqueness in that he sticks out of nature with a towering majesty, and yet he goes back into the ground..
Two male deities which are opposite yet complimentary types - and which go beyond the westernized gender stereotyping - are Apollo and Dionysus. Both can provide a substantial clue as to the human psyche and to our ongoing dilemma of understanding who we might be and where we might be going.
Apollo brings the sun to us - the light with its rays of truth and clarity. (We honored him this morning by singing that hymn "The Morning Hangs a Signal" wherein we praised the sun.) In this regard he is called Phoebus, meaning "brilliant" or "shining." That great mythologist Edith Hamilton says of him:
O Phoebus, from your throne of truth,
From your dwelling place at the heart of the world,
You speak to me.
By Zeus's decree no lie comes there,
No shadow to darken the word of truth.
Apollo communicates to us through oracles and prophets - telling us the future and the will of his father, Zeus. The famous oracle of Delphi was the place where Apollo gave mortal beings glimpses of divine truth. And in my collection of rocks from the various countries I have traveled, I have a little Delphic stone. And here it is!
Truly, Apollo synthesizes the best of Grecian culture: perfection of form and harmony of spirit. Form serves to define that which is fashioned; thus, sculpture is the most Apollonian of the arts. Also distinctly Apollonian is rational thought.
Apollo is the god of moderation and is foremost a god of law, described by Plato as the source of law. In his role as lawgiver, Apollo refers to the precedents of the gods and laws of the city, thereby showing the legal meaning of religion and society in general.
He is a talented fellow - playing his golden lyre to delight the other Olympians. He is personified music, poetry, and dance.
And yet not all is sweetness and light about him. He also is the Archer God - the master of the silver bow - and in this he must be feared. Whereas his arrows can symbolize the rays of the sun that bring light and insight, they also can bring death - and various stories about him illustrate this.
He also can be thought of as someone whose devotees can be ecstatically possessed.
In Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy that which is "Apollonian" depicts the "principle of individuation." It is Apollo who symbolizes that part of the individual human psyche that is distinctly unique to that person.
Let us flesh out this deity a bit more by contrasting him with his fellow Olympian, Dionysus, and thereby make the attempt to apply their lessons to our own lives.
Dionysus is also called Bromios, the Boisterous, or Bacchus. His appearance is often accompanied by some disruption of the conventional order. So much for the Apollonian concept of "perfection of form and harmony of spirit"! This guy's a real rabble rouser, and with this very quality he represents another potential trait of humanity - as real and current as the personality aspects of Apollo. Truly, Dionysus is the representative of human emotional abandon and sensuality.
He, too, is sculpted but is usually holding a wine goblet - not a golden lyre. Musically, I would place him with jazz players instead of with Apollonian symphony performers. The wine, however, is not merely a symbol of human intoxication - or of "ecstacy" (the word coming from the Greek words "ex stasis" meaning to stand outside one's normal, predictable self to discover a less inhibited self). Nor is it merely a symbol of our human loss of distinct individuality, since in a tipsy state of being, we become a happy, handholding throng of mortals - a unity rather than a singular being. But it is about more than just this, because wine also is a symbol of fruitfulness and vegetation, of lust and procreation.
Like Apollo, Dionysus has his many adherents as well - all of whom are a lustier bunch than Apollo's posse. In fact, some of them are a bit scurrilous in their behavior. A certain group of followers (all women) were so enamored of this god that in a fit of fierce ecstasy, they rushed through woods and over mountains uttering sharp cries, tearing to pieces wild creatures and devouring their bloody shreds of flesh. These were the Maenads. Edith Hamilton describes this happy scene with these words:
Oh, sweet upon the mountain
The dancing and the singing,
The maddening rushing flight.
Oh, sweet to sink to earth outworn
When the wild goat has been hunted and caught
Oh, the joy of the blood and the raw red flesh!
But let us not forget some medicinal qualities of the vine as well - both physiological ones and emotional ones.
Nor the fact that he is the God of creativity and immortality (symbolized by the vine that dies with the coming of the cold but returns every spring).
So, we have two gods - two aspects of being human. Apollo, as the sun god, represents light, clarity, and form, whereas Dionysus, as the wine-god, represents drunkenness and ecstasy.
If you have seen some similarities between these two fellows and other gods you have known, so be it - humanity does borrow rather nicely from itself when it comes to spiritual beliefs and practices - or not so nicely, depending upon its purposes.
What we can see - especially you brand new adherents to Unitarian Universalism - is the panoply of human psyches both within our own religious movement - and without. How for some UUs, formality of lifestyle - including one's worship practices - takes precedence; how, for others, the opposite is true
The truth of being a UU is simply this: you can be BOTH Apollonian and Dionysian. Or not. That is the glory of being a UU - indeed, of being human! The task is to be aware of the choices and to choose wisely.
In our Meditation Reading this morning called "Morning Poem" Mary Oliver speaks of the rising sun - of the ever-constant re-creation of the day, and of how opposite types of people live with this reality. We all know people like this - we are ourselves people like this - sometimes more one than the other. Sometimes we are like the one Oliver speaks of with these words:
If it is your nature to be happy you will swim away along the soft trails for hours, your imagination alighting everywhere.
At other times we are the opposite type:
And if your spirit carries within it the thorn that is heavier than lead - it it's all you can do to keep on trudging -
Now, one might designate one type of person as Apollonian, the other Dionysian, but which is which? Who is happier? The one who lives an ordered life with reason attendant on every thought and feeling and decision? Or the one who lives a more creative life with lots of emotion and decided highs and lows? (As if we can or even should put anyone - including our individual psyche - into a solitary category!)
Still, the poet reminds us that the upshot of whatever type we might be - happy camper or not, or a combination of each - is that:
There is still somewhere deep within you a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted -
Each pond with its blazing lilies is a prayer heard and answered lavishly, every morning,
Whether or not you have ever dared to be happy, whether or not you have ever dared to pray.
In this poem Mary Oliver brings us all into the recognition of one unassailable fact: that we are one - within ourselves and in relationship to each other - despite our differences; we are one in the fact that we are created beings living in the same world of cause and effect; an existence that forces us to adapt to the natural occurrences over which we have no real control.
That great existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche believed that both the Apollonian and the Dionysian were present in Greek tragedy, and that the true tragedy could only be produced by the tension between them. I would add that I believe comedy needs that as a requirement, as well.
It is this interplay of opposite human tendencies which, at least, makes the story line more interesting - either the one we watch on the stage, or the one we live out as individual psyches - solitary butterflies, if you will - that sometimes cavort together, sometimes dance our singularity.
It was that Greek philosopher Heraclitus who has wisdom to impart to all of us in this regard:
Men do not understand how what is divided is consistent with itself; it is a harmony of tensions like that of the bow and the lyre.
This is echoed in the Taoist symbol of Yin and Yang, dark and light, each with its opposite aspect represented in the other by a solitary dot.
That means, too, that there is some of me in you and some of you in me - an interconnection, despite apparent opposites. For some people, this interconnectedness is divinely sourced. Call it what you will - the Greeks gave various names to their gods and goddesses.
The Irish poet Dylan Thomas - brilliant of brain, but besotted by booze that put him into a too-early grave (truly he was both Apollonian and Dionysian), recognized this unity of humanity. He understood that there is a connecting link, in UU and other terminology: "an interdependent web" - this somber mystery of which Thomas says:
The force that through the green fuse drives the flower
Drives my green age; that blasts the roots of trees
Is my destroyer.
And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose
My youth is bent by the same wintry fever.
In other words, that which creates us, sustains us and eventually takes us into its own again - whatever process or being or force you might like to label it - is that which both speaks of the tragi-comedy of our existence with its high and lofty aspirations as well as its low and ignoble acts.
Ah! What a mystery! At least as Unitarian Universalists we are free to explore the subtlety of it all!
And may we, in the process, be sustained by the hope of it all. That along with Leonard Mason in his "Affirmation" may:
We affirm the unfailing renewal of life. Rising from the earth, and reaching for the sun, all living creatures shall fulfill themselves.(May) we affirm a continuing hope that out of every tragedy the spirits of individuals shall rise to build a better world.
And may we, in good humor, recognize that none of us is perfect, including our self, and that we can laugh at others and our self, as did that sensual woman Mae West (who in some ways must have been a reincarnated member of those frenzied females called Maenads who ran through the woods and over the mountains devouring every wild beast in sight). At any rate this Maenad called Mae West opined on the business of how to live with this dualistic conflict, this Apollonian-Dionysian tension:
When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I've never tried before.
Amen!
CLOSING READING: "Help us to be."
Help us to be the always hopeful gardeners of the spirit who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth as without light nothing flowers.
May Sarton