618. 2011 Greek Trip Part One: Down with theology! Down with social issues! Go to Greece. 2011 Greek trip Part One

It’s time to take a break.

The Sabbath Principle: Stop working. Get away.

Now that many people work online, they keep working all the time. Brothers and sisters, cut it out! if you can. Fathers, give your wives a break. And if you can, get away and go somewhere else – even if it’s only to grandma’s house. * While you’re away, say your prayers regularly, and get to church if you can. All this gives us a new perspective on life.

• But visit another country if you can – or at least watch news from an overseas source. Because of our geography, Americans easily become insular. And now we’re not even supposed to like our friends in Canada!

God created us so we need to take time off to open up our hearts and minds to Him and to new things and grow. Also it makes us more productive. I wish more employers would catch on to this.

When I became Orthodox in 1989, for all I knew I’d be sacking groceries for the rest of my life. But God was good to me. (So was my wife who went back to work full time.) By 2011 Saint Nicholas Church was well established, growing and prospering, and I trusted my Parish Council completely. So I took a month off every year, and got away. * During that month I refused to think about work.  I know it expanded my mind and my outlook on life, and it increased my faith – even if it did diminish our savings.

• Just in case you’re curious, sometimes Khouria Dianna and I traveled together for the month, sometimes with her blessing I spent a month in Greece alone. Usually it was a combination.

“Givens”

That’s an odd word: plural of a “given”. For example, in acience e=mc2 is a “given”. I once asked my chem professor “But why does e=mc2?” He, who was accustomed to explaining everything, paused, gave me an odd look, then said “It just does”.  It could be as simple as this: With me chocolate is a “given”, and therefore I try, within limits, to eat as much of it as I can.

Have there been things in your life – people and places and the like that are “givens”? you love and accept them, just because you do? These inexplicable things, so long as they are not immoral, are gifts from God. He usually has a purpose in them. As in all things, we need to use sweet reason regarding them, lest we get carried away. But then… go with them!

Here are my major “givens”: Suddenly one afternoon God showed me that He was real (I mean, real!) and that I should be ordained *, then in fairly quick succession that Jesus loves me and I love Him, and that my wife was “the one” for me, which I’ve never doubted for sixty years. Through these, God has shaped my life.

• Me? I hadn’t even been particularly religious. I started nearly from scratch. However, 66 years later, it seems to have worked out ok.

And then there is Greece. 

It is now the year 2011 again, and I’m going back to Greece. Brothers and sisters, if you want to stay home and do something else – play computer games or stare mindlessly at videos or just take advantage of the last days of summer, whatever: no problem. But I’ll miss you.

Before we leave, first let me tell you how Greece became one of my “givens”.

Probably I’ve told you this before. I’m going to tell it again. (Humor me.)

I have loved Greece from the first time I saw her in 1985. I had left my family behind in Rome. They flew home, but I was going to a conference on Crete. So I took an overnight sleeper train * to Brindisi, the ancient Roman port to the East, arriving about 7:30.

•  At about 6:30 the porter knocked on my compartment door: “Here is your cappucino, sir.” Can life get any better than that?

 

Then a ferry across the Adriatic to Greece: I awoke, looked out the porthole of my room and saw the Ionian islands through the grey mists of dawn, and I said to myself “Yes!” From that moment I was in love with Greece. I can’t explain it. Since then Greece has been a “given” in my life. I haven’t been able to go there for too many years now. I miss it more than I can say. That’s why I love re-living this again.

Greece and the Greeks

Southern Europe is hot in the summer under the best of circumstances *, and now even northern Europe is burning up. (Don’t tell the Europeans there’s no global warming.) I learned to go to Greece in September when the weather is warm, the water is lovely, and most of the tourists have left.

• We visited Rome at the end of July and were sorry we didn’t know better.

In these next three Posts, I’m going to try to give you a picture of Greece and Greeks, at least as I saw it fifteen years ago. All told I spent nearly a year there. Perhaps things have changed since then. * However, in 2011 Greece seemed to me a delightful somewhat crazy place, often disorganized and chaotic. God only knows when the ferry boat or bus or train will actually leave – sort of like Amtrak, but Amtrak at least feels bad about it. No wonder there are few Swiss tourists in Greece – it would drive them up the wall.

• When I was first in Greece in 1985 the place seemed almost third world. Twenty years later it was turning into Western Europe in some ways. However, check out Greek pop music, which I did only yesterday. It is definitely not Western.

Did I ever tell you this story? When they were first trying to get the Athens nefos / νέφος (smog) under control, they passed an ordinance that on odd days of the month, only cars with odd license plate numbers could drive into the city, and likewise with even numbers. The Athenians’ solution? They bought two license plates, of course. That gives you the picture.

Our regular hotel in a south Athens suburb had a beautiful view of the sea, but also before you got to the sea, of a six-lane highway with cars going very fast and motorcycles zooming even faster in between them. Why Greek motorcyclists are not all dead I have no idea.

With exceptions, Greeks tend to be blunt, charming, gregarious people who love to talk.* And to argue. This even carries over to second generation Greeks in America. Once during a presidential campaign, I had told people at Saint Nicholas, Cedarburg, that it was fine to discuss politics at church, but if they started getting excited, “zip it up”. One Sunday at coffee hour after Liturgy I saw a table of Greeks arguing like fury, so I went over to see what was up. They were all for the same candidate (Obama – sorry you Republicans), but that didn’t stop them from going at it!

• A Catholic/Anglican style “silent retreat” for Greeks? Forget it!

I think that’s because many Greeks are bright, educated, care about ideas, can discuss a multitude of subjects intelligently and have informed opinions. If they’re “religious”, as many of them still are, they have a deep innate piety, that doesn’t seem to exist in America any more – except with some Orthodox and maybe a few old-fashioned Roman Catholics.

Greek restaurants: People rarely eat evening meals till very late, at least in summer when we’ve been there. One time in Athens Khouria Dianna and I went to a good restaurant and tried to get a meal at 8 p.m. The waiter was kind, but I think he was stifling a laugh – crazy tourists! He told us to go away and come back at 9. when we were almost alone. “Normal” people began to arrive about 10 and God only knows (we certainly don’t) how late they stayed. How they then get up and go to work early I have no idea. Maybe it’s different Greeks who go to work early.

And then when you want the waiter to bring you the bill -“to logariasmo, parakalo” / το λογαριασμό παρακαλώ” – good luck! He looks away every time you try to catch his eye. Often the only way is to go up and ask him. But this is because (unlike many American restaurants where they hurry you along) the Greeks and many Europeans assume you will want to enjoy your meal slowly and talk and drink wine with friends and family, maybe all evening. Good thing!

Meals outdoors in the summer, sometimes under grapevines: I didn’t eat indoors for weeks at a time. Food tastes so much better that way, like a picnic. Is that why I could drink like a fish in Greece (well, a small fish), but at home even a glass of wine almost knocked me out?

The open display of Orthodox faith: people forever going in and out of churches to pray and light candles, crossing themselves as they pass churches, even while riding the light rail and the Metro. Icons everywhere – in restaurants, banks, taxis, the post office! Many Divine Liturgies on television on Sunday morning, plus many other Orthodox programs. During Pascha, shows often begin with “Christos anesti!” And, at least where I have been, almost always churches have been full.

I love the bedlam of Athens – for about three days. If you haven’t seen the Acropolis, you must. And the fantastic new Acropolis Museum.

But here’s the place I love most of all:

South to Crete

Overnight by ferry or an hour by plane is Crete, the Big Island ‘way off the south coast of the Greek mainland. After some years I gave in and took the plane which is much more convenient. But really, I think the ferry is the way to go, at least the first times you visit. In the evening, as you sit on the back deck, the many lights of Athens fall slowly below the horizon – and if the air is clear, the Acropolis may be the last thing you see. Then in the grey dawn, the Big Island rises out of the sea, first the mountains, and then the city emerges below. You feel as if you have come to another foreign country.

The north coast of Crete has become over-touristed since I was first there in 1985. Too many charter flights, too many high rise hotels, too many (I hate to tell you) drunken tourists at night. What’s with these Brits and Germans?

The south coast of Crete is the place to be. (But don’t tell anybody. Then it too will become covered with tourists.) Wide open spaces with a few towns and villages scattered here and there. Closer to Africa than it is to Athens.

The high mountains are now to the north, pine-clad, snow-covered sometimes even into early summer. Still-traditional villages scattered everywhere up in the hills.

To the south and far below: the blue, blue Libyan Sea. Does everybody feel a thrill the first time they see it? I did. Then steep, sometimes frightening gorges taking the road down. And when you arrive: austere beauty, sparse landscape, cliffs plunging down into the sparkling sea. And when you get there, the almost never-ending rush of the waves.

As everywhere in Greece, Orthodox churches are in every traditional village (many of them in the small cities), like Lutherans in Wisconsin, with the smell of incense sometimes wafting out from the doorways, very unlike the Lutherans in Wisconsin! Church bells, sheep bells, goat bells and goat-herders yelling at their flocks with words which I would not dare to share with you here, and roosters for some reason crowing night and day.

Out in the open hills, the pungent fragrance of the herbs and wildflowers – I wish words could describe it. Long beaches with almost nobody on them – except me. Narrow roads over the hills and clinging to cliffs, with only the occasional tiny useless guardrail – sometimes with buses emerging alarmingly around the corners!

And blue summer days which feel like they’ll never end. The sun bursting full-strength over the eastern horizon almost like chunks of light, its rays a little while later shining through the east windows above the church altars, and then over all the land. That all-encompassing brilliant light, the deep blue shadows, and later the slow peach then orange then red sunsets, promising yet another gorgeous day.

A side trip: Once on the island of Paros up in the Aegean, there were no rooms and I had to camp out on the beach – the huge yellow moon setting in the west, then the brilliant stars, finally the sun hurling himself up out of the sea beyond Naxos, the first island to the east. I will never forget it. On the third day I found a room and almost wished I hadn’t. Except for my back.

I love Greece.

2011: A Retreat

At age 73, back when I was young and still working full time, the purpose of vacation for me was relaxation. I needed time to do nothing but eat, sleep, say my prayers, lie on the beach and read. Khouria Dianna can’t handle inactivity as long as I can, so she kindly gave me time on my own to “crash”, then usually she would fly over and for a while we would be a bit more active.

This time I made a real retreat of it. In those days I loved finding the most out of the way places I could. I began with ten days at a small family taverna with a few rooms down (and I do mean down) at an isolated place: about $25 a day for a cozy room (my room-mate was a little gecko) and good food, and this long gorgeous beach backed by cliffs. The nearest grocery (for peanut butter!) and church for Divine Liturgy were thirty minutes over the mountain.

As part of my retreat from the world, I did not watch television or go on-line for 3 1/2 weeks and did not miss it. They had internet even at that remote location. * I did carry a cell phone in case of emergency (that’s always wise) and a short wave radio (that seems so primitive now), so I could tune into the BBC for a few minutes a day, just in case I had missed the Second Coming.

• Many rural locations in the US are still without good internet service. If Greece can do it, why can’t we?

After ten days I picked up Dianna at the airport in Iraklion, and she joined me at our regular hangout – a small taverna and inn just outside a village, still on the south coast. That day I finally read a newspaper. I don’t know what I expected. I mean, except for the occasional disaster, it was “the same old same old” – just like the old soap operas. My reaction? “Aaargh!” American politics and economics seemed so appalling (even in 2011 – little did I know…), and I got so depressed by it that I didn’t look at another paper for the rest of the trip.

On this trip my only concession to the digital age was my new Kindle, onto which I had downloaded many books. * A great idea! instead of carrying twenty books I could use one little electronic device. Before leaving home I did wonder if it was wise to put all my literary eggs, so to speak, in one basket. What if something went wrong with my Kindle?

• Even at home, I always got most of my reading done on the beach. Ah… warm sun, the swish of the waves and J.R.R. Tolkien or whoever.

And so it did. My first day on Crete the screen went crazy (like to the left) and I couldn’t get it back. (At the time I blamed the Kindle, but looking back now, I think perhaps I shouldn’t have rolled over on it in bed…) Happily there are bookstores with English language books even in the little villages, and I wound up reading and enjoying books and authors I hadn’t known. After that my motto was “Down with Kindle. Back to Books”.

I said my prayers every day. Thank God I had brought a printed prayer book and a small New Testament. And I went to Church Sundays and holy days.

That’s what we’ll talk about next week. Come along, and see what Orthodox worship is like 8000 miles from home.

Forgive me for rattling on and on. I love talking about Greece.

Next Week: Church on Crete and then in Athens.

Week after Next: Saint Nektarios does it again (possibly)? Reflections on Re-entry.

Week after that: Back to work. Is Orthodoxy conservative or liberal? Preview: No.