Sakis, Again, and Imam

Friday, May 08, 2009

Today, we went looking for Sakis, who made us such a nice bathroom window, to look at the available options for sliding glass doors and windows. The ones we have are single-paned and the weather-stripping is so old it’s practically non-existent. In winter, the wind blows right through them. So we walked into Sakis’ shop.

He wasn’t there. Kostas, his assistant, told us he didn’t know where Sakis had gone or when he would be back, but we were welcome to wait.

We declined, saying we had other errands to run. (We were puzzled, too, because we knew Sakis has a cell phone…)

Next stop, supermarket, or what passes for one here. We had reached the supermarket door when Sakis came into view, heading in the opposite direction, toward his shop. That makes the second time in three days Sakis has just appeared when we needed him. Does he make a habit of this, or something?

So, back to his shop we all three went. He has some good-looking sliding doors and windows (or rather, small samples), for he custom makes each order), insulated, double-paned, with the option of bright brass grids between the two sheets of glass.

He will call us with an estimate. We probably can’t afford new windows and doors this trip, but we can at least get an idea what it will cost when we are ready.

Then, back to the supermarket for a few things only it carries, and from there to Nikoletta’s grocery store, where we bought everything else and she kindly repeated to me her recipe, which she had given me a couple of years ago, for Imam. It’s an eggplant casserole sort of a thing that the local Turkish ruler here was known to enjoy; hence it is named after him. Here’s how to prepare it.

In a large skillet, put ground beef, tomatoes, garlic, and onions. Chop off the top and bottom of the eggplants; with a potato peeler, take off stripes of the skin. Cut each eggplant almost in two and lay it, face down and open, on top of the sautéing meat mixture. By the time the meat is done, the eggplant should be soft. (You can also fry the eggplant in a separate skillet until it’s soft, but Nikoletta says that means you use olive oil and that will make the meal “heavy”.

Stuff each eggplant with the meat/tomato sauce mixture and lay it, open-faced, in a baking pan. Sprinkle parsley over it. Cover with very thin slices of tomato to keep things from drying out. Bake until – well, it wasn’t clear how long.

Neither are the amounts of anything clear. One must experiment to get it to ones own taste, I suppose. Or use common sense, or pretend it’s spaghetti sauce.

Update on the Circle of Life (Erin's Robins)

Today I received this from my daughter:

I talked with my resident Dr. Doolittle (my friend Lisa here at work) and she said the crow came and kidnapped the babies to raise themselves. Blue Jays and mocking birds do the same – raid other nests for babies so they can raise them instead. So at least we know they will be OK – but isn’t that the wildest thing??? And she said the robins will lay again immediately but probably not in the same nest.

I am heartbroken along with you and Sydney.

I didn't know that! Didn't know creows or jays or mockingbirds kidnapped other babies. Imagine that!

Ripped Off Twice – In One Morning!

Thursday, May 07, 2009

Yesterday we went downtown, in search of a replacement glass for one of our chandeliers. The chandeliers in our house are old-fashioned, and each bulb has a tulip-shaped, glass shade around it. We had broken one of them. What was the chance we’d find one just like it? Slim to none, but if we could even find the right size, we could buy four of them (which is how many bulbs there are on that chandelier). We had tried before, last week, with little success. That is, we had found several models, none exactly the right size, and none particularly pretty. This time, though, we had in hand a card from a shop that apparently specialized in chandelier glass.

So off we went, on the bus, and traipsed happily around downtown, asking our way. Nobody knew where the street was. They would say things like, “I think it may be that way,” so we went that way. Still nobody knew where it was, until suddenly, we were on it, and there was the little shop.

We entered it and, having brought along one of the other glasses just like the broken one, showed it to the man.

“I had one just like it,” he said. “I know I had…” He looked around, and a few moments later, produced one identical to the one we had brought. Amazing! It’s approximately 35 years old.

Now what I should have said is something like, “That’s good, but Demetri, do we really want that particular model, or shall we look around, while we’re here, for something prettier, and buy four of them?”

But what I said instead was “Doxa to Theo! Glory to God!” so then the man knew he had us, as in over the barrel.

He smiled and wrapped his merchandise in newspaper for us, then wrapped our own piece similarly, and put both in the bag. And then charged us twice what everybody else in town had quoted us. That made it one expensive piece of glass!

We walked out rather miffed, but still pleased and amazed to have found exactly what we needed. To cheer ourselves up and rest our sore feet, we headed toward the sea, where there are a lot of sidewalk cafes, and had lunch at a very nice one, just sandwiches.

It was a glorious day and the sea was sparkling and showing some whitecaps. A large ship was anchored out in the bay straight across from us, but in the distance, waiting its turn for a berth in the port, so it could be unloaded and perhaps re-loaded. A ferry boat was making its way in roughly our direction, and a tugboat also passed us.

The parade of people was also fun, teenagers in Mohawk haircuts or in plum-colored hair; businessmen who at first appeared to be schizophrenic, until you realized they had cell phones clipped to their ears; shoppers, tourists. A beggar woman came by and said, “I am the mother of two; give me some money.” Numerous African vendors came by our table with large pieces of corrugated cardboard, to which they had affixed their displays of sunglasses, CDs, postcards, trinkets. You look AWAY from these people to signal your lack of interest. I looked away. Into the distance.

That is a big mistake in Thessaloniki these days. When people approach you, especially Gypsy beggars, the first thing you should look at, immediately, and glue your eyes to, is your purse. Mine was beside my chair and a little behind it, and behind the shopping bag, to make it both less conspicuous and less reachable. Somebody did reach it, though, because when we got up to leave, it had disappeared.

There wasn’t much in it, for that very reason. I had less than ten Euros in it (that is, less than about $14) and two pairs of glasses from the dollar store that had literally cost me a dollar apiece (but I had two more pairs back at the house), and lots of clean tissue left over from when I had that cold. There was a flash drive which I regretted losing because it’s how I transport what I write at home on my laptop to the Internet Café where I have access to my blog and my e-mail. It also had pictures of my granddaughter, Kelly, on it, which I shall have to ask her mother to re-send. I was about to post the cutest of them on my blog… But a flash drive is easily replaceable. There was a set of keys to the house, but that’s also easily replaceable. (Christos says we should now change the lock.) There was no credit card, no checkbook, and nothing with our Greek address on it. My Virginia driver’s license WAS in the purse, so that will be a minor nuisance when I get home. I had taken our passports OUT of the purse and put them in a drawer. In fact, the main thing of value the thief got was the purse itself! Or rather, that would have been the case when the purse was new. It can’t be worth much now, though. It was my mother-in-law’s, and she’s been dead 9 years, and I’ve been using the purse four years. In short, somebody sold his soul very cheap!

When we got home, I called the credit card company, just in case, and also notified my bank, just in case. Then I lay down on the bed and cried.

“I don’t know why it’s so upsetting,” I blubbered to Demetrios. “It was only a purse, and there’s no catastrophe involved…I just feel, well, as if I’d been sort of violated!”

“You were violated,” he said. “And made to feel foolish, too, which hurts the pride.”

Bingo! Damnable pride. Yes, I’m stung that somebody managed to sneak my purse right out from under my nose, when I thought I was being so careful. I even had one leg stuck out sideways thinking maybe if anybody approached he would trip over my foot. But somebody outfoxed me. Pride, pride, pride! The incident wouldn’t smart if I weren’t proud. Humility would have protected me from that. Lord, have mercy!

On our way to catch the bus, we passed three shops specializing in purses, but didn’t find what I wanted. Oh, well, I have another purse here that Mena once gave me. I shall try to get by with that, although it is small.

Hints from Helen:

Always carry a purse with a shoulder strap, and always use that shoulder strap. That way, even if you are sitting at a sidewalk café, you can keep your purse attached to your person at all times.

A cheap-looking purse might possibly be less attractive to a thief than a designer purse.

The Paralytic at the Pool

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Today’s Gospel was the healing of the paralytic by the Pool of Bethesda. He had lain there for so many years, waiting for a chance to be healed in its miraculous waters. But only the first person in the water when it became “troubled” was ever healed, and this man never made it into the water in time.

“Do you want to be made well?” Jesus asks him.

Do you? Do you want to be made well? Because Jesus can definitely accomplish that, but He isn’t going to without your permission. Your free choice is not the cause of anything, but it is the precondition.

From The Gurus, the Young Man, and Elder Paisios, by Dionysios Farasiotis (St. Herman of Alaska Brotherhood, Platina, California, 2008, pp. 293-294):

Indeed, His power is everywhere present, yet beyond all perception and beyond the reach of arrogant human attempts to discover it, able to be known only when it reveals itself. This power is what brought the trees, the mountains, the stars, and man himself into existence and what sustains them. In a moment, this power could make them all vanish without any uproar, any tumult, or any resistance, as easily as the flick of a light switch can plunge a well-lit room into total darkness.

Simultaneously, I felt in my heart that God’s almighty power is also infinitely noble, with a refinement that could never allow His power of His presence to pressure anyone. Although He is so very near us, He remains unseen, so that we feel neither weighed down nor obligated even by His presence – for He in no way wishes to restrict us, but instead desires us to be completely free to do as we wish. He not only avoids compelling us through fear, power, and might, but He even avoids swaying us with His beauty, His love, and the irresistible sweetness of His presence. He does this out of an unfathomable respect for human freedom. Of course, He loves us with a fiery love and desires to draw us towards Himself, resorting to manifold other ways that reveal His boundless wisdom, personal attention, and tender loving care for each one of us. Indeed the vastness of the universe which He watches over in no way lessens His love and concern for us. In turn, He seeks, but does not demand, our love, which can be found only with complete freedom.

The Way of Salvation is the Way of Love, and as this author notes, love is only to be found in complete freedom. That is why God graciously preserves the free will of each and every person, so that even though our pride, greed, lust, envy, and so forth, are lobbying hard for the evil, the will still can still heroically resist these and choose the good. Put another way, God has not permitted us to descend to the level of brute beasts (for that is what we would be, if we had no free will). We are still men and still made in His Image.

If anybody tells you some such thing as that the will is indeed free, but not capable of choosing good, that is a sophistry, a word game, because there is no true choice where there is no ability; and where there is no freedom, there is no Love, and where there is no Love, there can be no salvation. Reject such a doctrine, and answer the Lord’s question; tell Him yes, please make me whole!

And if your cry is sincere, is heartfelt, He will.


P.S. Demetrios bought me this book several days ago, and I gobbled it up! It's the story of young man, Greek, who set out to find Truth, and spent yearts in the world of the New Age, of the occult -- finally, in the end, embracing Holy Orthodoxy by the help of the blessed Fr. Paisios. (The book recounts many of the miracles Fr. Paisios did.) I heartily recommend it to anybody, who like me and like this author, has traveled the New Age path. And I plan to publish several excerpts from it here.

A Small Amazement

Tuesday, May 05, 2009, continued

This morning, we went to find the man whose shop is around the corner, to see if we could arrange for him to make us a new bathroom window. The existing one is of louvered glass; it lets in the cold in the winter and the heat in the summer. And it sits back from the wall, with no trim to fill in the space, so it looks ugly and unfinished. Plus, corners are chipped off the slats of glass.

The shop was easy to find, but the door was locked. There was no sign saying anything like, “Gone Fishing” or “On Vacation” or anything like that. We stood there pondering for two or three minutes, when a man of around 40 appeared on a bicycle.

“Are you looking for Kyrios Nikos?” he asked.

Yes, we said, we were.

“He doesn’t work there anymore. He’s retired. But I’ll get him on the phone for you.” He punched a number on his cell phone and Demetrios got to speak with the man.

It turns out the man on the bicycle used to work with Mr. Nick and now runs a shop of his own. “What did you want?” he asked us.

So we told him, and he came home with us, parking his bike in the lobby of our building. He measured the window, told us he would make us a double-glazed one, without louvers, that would slant either partway open, for ventilation, or all the way open on the inside, for cleaning, and would be framed in white aluminum. Then he quoted us a price fifty Euros lower than anybody else had, and departed, saying he would bring us the window tomorrow or the next day and we could pay him then.

We just sort of looked at each other as if dazed. How easy was that? We were looking for the wrong man and didn’t find him, but the right man appeared. Just at the right moment; three minutes before or after, and we wouldn’t have been there. When does such a thing ever happen?

Then we went to the Internet Café (which walk, at this season, entails getting your hair decorated by falling acacia blossoms) to see if the air conditioner we’ve been looking at would be any cheaper online than from the man in our neighborhood. Yes, it was, 90 Euros cheaper, which is well over a hundred dollars. The company’s telephone number was provided, so we went home through more acacia blossoms and Demetrios ordered the air conditioner over the phone. There will be no shipping, because we will pick it up from the store. More precisely, Christos will; the store is along the road to Katerini, where Christos lives part of the time. So now we are going to have a second air conditioning unit as well, which, as we found out on a previous trip, this house badly needs in the hot weather. The one we have is inadequate for the job, cooling only half the place.

We tried to find George the carpenter, too, but failed. His shop was closed, with no sign affixed. He is supposed to make us new kitchen drawers this week, as soon as we give him the go-ahead. We hope to find him tomorrow.

Also among the missing are Anesti (Anastasios) and Vasiliki. (So I didn’t get a chance today to say, “Christos Anesti, Anesti!” (“Christ is risen, Anesti!” – the greeting we all use from Pascha until Pentecost.) But their fruit stand does have a sign: “Our establishment will be closed from the 5th to the 17th of May for health reasons.” I suppose that means one of them is having surgery. You may like to keep them in your prayers.

Thomai is also gone; we knocked on her door because usually we hear her booming voice periodically through the day, and we hadn’t heard it for a day or two.

I’ve been thinking about Thomai, and what’s different about her, as compared with most of us. And the difference, that makes her such a treasure, is that everything she experiences goes straight to her heart. She experiences everything directly in her heart, whereas the rest of us don’t. Most of us have been hurt, so we construct filters (“inhibitions,” Demetrios calls them) between the world and our heart. We do not make our heart immediately available, which is to say, vulnerable, to each and every experience.

Thomai also responds directly from the heart. All of us act from our hearts, that is, from the core of our being, but most of us put our responses through those filters, and Thomai doesn’t. Just however her heart responds, that’s what she spontaneously says or does. That’s why you immediately sense you are in the presence of someone thoroughly real.

We are hoping all is well with her and Zisis, and maybe they’ve just gone to their village.

UPDATES: Wednesday, May 06, 2009

Sakis came today and installed a beautiful new bathroom window for us. The whole bathroom looks so much better. Overall, we are gradually eliminating the “we're just camping out” feeling our house used to have and making it feel like a real residence. It's less and less make-do.

Thomai also appeared; she and Zisis had been to their village. She says she’ll tell us from now on when they plan to be away.

The Road to God

The other night we were watching a lecture, on television, by a monk talking about modern saints. He told of women saints and men saints, of married saints and monastic saints, saints who were royal and saints who were paupers. In fact, the only thing these people had in common, besides being saints, is that they were modern-day saints, not saints from the Roman Empire or the Middle Ages.

I didn’t understand everything the monk said, by any means, but I was struck by one phrase I did understand: “This is the road to God, if you care to follow it.”

It occurred to me that people imagine the Road to God as something other-worldly, mysterious, glamorous, and exotic – and it isn’t! It just is not any of these. No, the road to God is as ordinary as water, or bread, or wine. The path to deification is as down-to-earth as learning to love, tenderly, as yourself, the total jerk you find yourself next to on the bus or at work or in your neighborhood. It’s identifying and correcting all the obstacles to such love that we find within ourselves. That means praying a lot and recognizing our own unworthiness, else we will have a very hard time forgiving. It means fasting and other ascetic endeavor, because love is sacrificial, and we will not be able to give sacrificially to another person when the time comes, if we have not schooled ourselves in self-denial beforehand.

And there’s the rub. People don’t want to love if love means sacrifice or anything ascetic. As someone once said to a roomful of us, “I am not interested in loving; I just want to BE loved.” It’s not that the road to God is anything incomprehensible, impenetrable, or abstruse; no, it’s just that people would rather not walk along it. They sense that the road to God is somehow the way of the Cross. And so it is; Jesus said, “If anyone would be my disciple, let him take up his cross, and deny himself, and follow Me.”

There’s an old Baptist hymn, “The Way of the Cross Leads Home”.

Of Cats and Chrysostomos

Monday, May 4, 2009

We arose in the morning at 7:30 and departed for Thessaloniki by 8:30. As soon as Mena had dropped us off, we went to get bougatsa, our favorite spot being open this time.

As we were sitting there enjoying our breakfast, a calico cat wandered in. The young lady behind the counter came out to greet the cat, speaking very warmly to it: “How are you, sweetie? I hope you have a nice day. Yes, yes, welcome!” as the cat rubbed up against her legs, but tentatively. We noticed the woman didn’t try to pet the cat.

Demetrios made some comment, and the woman said, “She has five babies.”

“Where are they?” I asked.

“Next door, at the clothing store.”

So when we had finished eating, we went next door. The proprietor said the cat had simply walked into his shop on Holy Thursday, and he could see she was very advanced in pregnancy, so he made her up a basket with old clothes, and on Good Friday, she gave birth. Yes, certainly, he would be glad to show us the kittens. There was a gray tabby, two orange tabbies, and the most adorable little calico sweetheart. “Shall I give her to you?” asked the man. Demetrios and I agreed that if we lived here full-time, we would have said yes.

We noticed a large bowl on the floor, full of food for the cat, and another bowl for water. God bless this kind man!

Our next stop was the farmers’ market, where we bought a couple of days’ worth of fresh veggies and fruit. It’s a small market on Mondays (a larger one takes place Thursdays) and there aren’t any non-food items available.

On our way home, we found the man who lives across the street from us and owns the Antikleptika shop. (You know “klepto” of course, as in “kleptomaniac”. Well, antikleptika are anti-theft devices. This man installs them in your car or on your motorcycle.)

“Let’s stop and ask him about his cat,” Demetrios suggested. “We haven’t seen her at all since we’ve been here this time. Oh, look, there she is!”

Sure enough, that cat, who loves to follow her master everywhere, faithful as a dog, was standing right next to him – looking, however, a bit old by now. We stopped to talk with the man, and he said the cat mostly lives indoors nowadays. “She is getting old. But she still produced one kitten this time.” He pointed to a box in the rear of his shop. We tiptoed toward it, not going very near because the cat was becoming nervous, and saw a large gray tabby kitten there, about 5 weeks old. We would have adopted that one, too! It’s probably a good thing we can’t.


Tuesday, May 05, 2009

Last night, after many years, Demetrios and his dear friend, Chrysostomos, were at last reunited. I don’t know why it has taken so long, given that the first thing Chrysostomos said to me when we met was, “Demetrios is my best friend!” (Wait, that was the second thing he said, after, “My name is Chrysostomos, as a euphemism.” I started to reply, “Mine is Anastasia, also as a euphemism,” but luckily, before the words came out, I realized that a euphemism is one thing the Resurrection definitely is not!)

When he first arrived in Thessaloniki from his village, he said, as a teenager, Demetrios took him by the arm, literally, and showed him around. “And he didn’t let go of my arm until he had me enrolled in a class of religious instruction, first of all.”

“We were all like that,” said Demetrios. “We all helped one another.”

Chrysostomos shook his head. “YOU were the one who did this for me.”

He is a large man, with a large head and bone structure and coarse features – and as finely honed a mind as you’d wish to meet. He came to Thessaloniki to study medicine at the University here.

Chrysostomos, many years ago, drifted away from the rest of the group of friends when he became an Old Calendarist. I didn’t ask, but he must not be one any more, because he now attends the same church as Ioannis, the theologian. (When I add, “the theologian,” it is to distinguish this Ioannis from another friend of ours, Ioannis the lawyer.) They are cantors together there, in the village of St. Anthony.

He has four daughters, of whom three are nuns and one is a doctor, and two sons, one of whom is a monk, the other a teacher. He also, at one point, adopted a five-year-old girl. Well, he never did formally, legally, adopt her. She was in the hospital suffering from pneumonia, which is where Chrysostomos’ daughter, the doctor, found her. The girls’ mother was schizophrenic, her father was a criminal in prison, and she was living, in horrible conditions, with her grandfather. She didn’t want to go back to him. So Chrysostomos brought her home, and she lived with his family for seven years. Then she began running away. There were two out-of-wedlock pregnancies, and then, eventually, the girl disappeared for good. Chrysostomos doesn’t know where she is now.

Chrysostomos drove us to a taverna he knows, overlooking the sea. We sat there for several hours, eating appetizers at around 6:00 and supper a couple of hours later, and enjoying a wide-ranging conversation. First, it was politics. Chrysostom talked like someone who had quite a bit of inside information, and he dropped a hint or two as to where it came from, but he wouldn’t tell us outright.

“Is America a democracy?” he asked me.

“It looks like one,” I replied. “Yet a democracy does not have places like Guantanamo and a democracy does not use torture, and in a democracy, the people decide not only the answers to the issues, but what the issues are. The people set the agenda.” (I said all this in Greek, but with a lot of help from Demetrios!)

“Ah, bravo, Anastasia!”

After politics, the conversation shifted to religion. “Do you see a big difference between Protestantism and Orthodoxy?” he asked me.

“Oh, yes, a huge one. Protestants (and Catholics, too, by and large) believe Christ died to bear the punishment of God the Father in our stead.”

His eyebrows shot up. His jaw dropped. He didn’t know what to say. Finally, when he recovered himself, he said, “Orthodoxy is about love, love, love, and love!”

I was nodding vigorously. He continued, “The most important thing is for two human beings to become one. Nothing to do with losing freedom or individuality, just you share a single life, Christ’s life.”

More nods from me.

I asked him if he had known Father Paisios. Of course he had. Everybody we know knew Fr. Paisios; everybody except us knew him. So then he told us stories about the holy father.

Once, he said, some hoodlums threw gasoline on a policeman and set him afire. He was hospitalized in critical condition with third-degree burns over large parts of his body, and with damage to his lungs.

Now this policeman was a friend both of Chrysostomos and of Fr. Paisios, so as soon as Chrysostomos heard what had happened, he hastened to seek out Fr. Paisios, to tell him the news and ask for his prayers.

As Chrysostomos approached, Fr. Paisios was standing outside his cell. “Leave!” he called out, before Chrysostomos had even arrived. “Go on home! The policeman will be well. He will have no permanent damage, either from the burns or from his lungs.”

And so it was. The man recovered perfect health.

Another time, a colleague of Chrysostomos was feeling sorely disappointed at the way the hospital functioned, where he worked. He took the notion to go to America, where surely things would be better. (Demetrios could have disabused him of that idea, but that isn’t part of this story.) He phoned Chrysostomos, agonizing over the decision. “Why don’t we go see Fr. Paisios together and I’ll ask his advice?” he said.

But Chrysostomos declined; he didn’t say why.

The friend, after several days, decided to go by himself to see Fr. Paisios. “And as soon as I arrived,” he told Chrysostomos later, “Fr. Paisios invited me in and said, “Why didn’t Chrysostomos come with you?”

He counseled the doctor not to go to America; very sage advice!

Another time, there was a brigadier general who used to go frequently to talk with Fr. Paisios, but never made a confession. “You need to have confession,” the holy monk would tell him, “and communion.” But the man always refused.

Then during one of his visits, Fr. Paisios asked him, “Why were the grenades exploding and the canon firing?” referring to a battle incident that had deeply affected this soldier. He left weeping, to seek out a priest (for Fr. Paisios was a monk but not an ordained one, not a priest).

The general found a priest nearby and said, “I want to talk to you.”

“No,” said the priest. “You want to have confession.”

So the man did, and that is how Fr. Paisios brought one man to repentance.

We were very sorry when the wonderful evening ended and it was time to go home.

The Circle of Life

Mr. and Mrs. Robin hatched a pair of babies right outside my daughter's front door. She took photographs of them every single day, starting the day they second one hatched. Here are a few of them.











Here is Mrs. Robin making an umbrella of her body to protect her babies from driving rain. That's the road, not a lake, in the background.)




And this is part of the e-mail I received from my daughter just now:

Today, tragedy struck. Jeff had just looked out the window and saw a big commotion around the nest and he yelled, "Oh no!" Sydney and I ran to the front door and Jeff said he had just seen a big black crow swoop down and take the babies right out of their nest. He could see the crow flying off with the babies in its beak and one of the parent birds chasing the crow frantically. We were all just devastated. Sydney cried. I cried. The poor mother bird came back and sat on her empty nest briefly. Soooo sad!

I read that robins can have 2-3 nests per season, so I am hoping desperately that they will reuse the same nest and I will figure out a way to protect the babies!!

As she says, sometimes the Circle of Life just plain stinks!

This Has Been Going Around the Internet Lately

She was pregnant. He had just saved her from a fire in her house, rescuing her by carrying her out of the house into her front yard; then he continued to fight the fire.

When he finally got done putting the fire out, he sat down to catch his breath and rest.

A photographer from the Charlotte, North Carolina newspaper, noticed her in the distance looking at the fireman.

He saw her walking straight toward the firefighter and wondered what she was going to do.

As he raised his camera, she came up to the tired man who had just saved her life and the lives of her babies and kissed him just as the photographer snapped this photograph.


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Our Weekend, Part II

Sunday, May 3, 2009

Today we went to St. Anthony’s Church here in Thessaloniki. It’s the church where Fr. Theodore Zisis serves, the church with the miraculous icon of which I wrote in the Fall of 2007. It’s small and dark and the people there all seem to know one another, seem to be a community.

We arrived about 3 minutes late, but I had brought along my wee karekoula (folding chair), so no problem. Or so I thought. I put it near The Icon, but a woman whispered to me, “Not here; people will want to venerate the icon and you’ll be in the way.” So I moved my chair to the rear of the church. “Not here,” said an elderly man, “The priest and altar boys will be passing through here.” So I put it somewhere else, but another man nixed that idea, too. By this time I was having to fight hard to put down the prideful, insane, and childish feeling of being quite unwelcome! (“A suggestion from your enemy,” as Demetrios said afterward, and I knew it.) So I took my little chair and parked it and myself in the vestibule, where I belonged. I did belong there, too, because before long the nave was so packed I couldn’t have breathed in it. In fact, by the end of the service, the vestibule, too, was so crowded this claustrophobic fool was becoming quite uncomfortable.

One joy of sitting in the vestibule was, that’s where mothers with small children often stay. One of the children, in particular, caught my attention, a girl of not yet two, too, too cute, behaving very nicely, too; and from the looks of her mother, very soon to become somebody’s older sister. Sitting next to me were twin boys, too, estimated age, 8, and they reminded me of “my” twins, my grandsons.

I couldn’t hear the sermon, much less try to understand it, but Demetrios summarized it for me afterward and said it had been very, very good. Of course. It’s Fr. Theodore!

After church, I wondered aloud whether we might find Konstantina, a sometime commentator on this blog. Demetrios asked around for me, beginning with the mother of the little girl, and in a very few moments, someone appeared who said, “I am Konstantina!” Guess what? She speaks perfect English – as well she ought, since she is Canadian! She’s here with her husband, and they’re both here to study Greek first, and theology later. In other words, she’s living my dream. (How does that happen?) So meeting her was a joy, and fun. Konstantina, I hope to see more of you!

The mother of the little girl introduced herself as well, in English: Maria, and her daughter is Katerina. Her husband is Moses, and guess what? He’s from Houston, as in Houston, Texas! He, too, is here to study theology. And yes, little Katerina speaks English, in addition to Greek.

Meeting all these people was a great joy for us.

We grabbed a cab and hurried, belatedly, to our favorite bougatsa place, near our house. Bougatsa, in case you haven’t read my description before, is the Greek version, I suppose, of a crème-filled doughnut, except it’s baked instead of fried and the crème filling comes between those very thin layers of dough called “phyllo”, as in baklava. It’s best when served hot.

The bougatsa place was closing; we were too late. No problem. Off to another one, even nearer our house, but with somewhat less perfect bougatsa. (The filling is not as creamy and the dish isn’t served quite so hot.)

We were invited to the village of Nea Syllata, where Kostas and Mena have their summer home. We came home from our bougatsa, threw a few things into a small bag, and left immediately. Christos very kindly drove us there. It’s about a 25-minute drive through countryside dotted with red poppies and purple thistle, and purple something else, and yellow flowers that resemble dandelions, but aren’t.

Kostas and Mena’s house, designed by Christos, will be very nice some day when it’s finished, but so far it isn’t. Everything inside is bare, gray concrete, including floors, walls, and ceiling.

We arrived just before Kostas and Mena were ready for naps, and were grateful for the chance.

After siesta, we had a light supper, sat around and talked, and then, around 10 o’clock (oh, yes, that’s the Greek way!) we all went to the village of Moudania, about 10 minutes away, to visit Elias and Myrta. They’re the ones who live in the house right smack across the bay from Mount Olympus. We couldn’t see it at night, of course; even the sea at night is just a black gap in the scenery; but just knowing it’s there is somehow exciting.

Myrta and Elias have quit smoking; hooray! They are much better company now.

They told us the story of how they met and married. Myrta and her co-workers had a habit, when their boss was out of the office, of dialing random phone numbers (Yes, you dialed in those days!) and asking to speak with – well, they made up names of people to ask for.

Myrta called Elias’ office one morning and asked to speak with “Manolis.” Elias said, “He’s in the bathroom, but if you’ll wait a moment, he’ll be right back.” A moment later, Elias picked up the phone again, and said, “This is Manolis,” and the conversation – and the romance – began.

Myrta called back again the next day, and numerous times after that, until eventually, the two decided to meet. Elias set the place for the rendezvous: the street corner nearest his office. “That way,” he explained, “If she turned out to be a dog, I wouldn’t have far to go.”

But he noticed, as she approached, her face turning darker and darker shades of red, and he thought that was good; a girl about to meet a boy she didn’t know ought to blush. It seemed to indicate she was a good girl.

“And that’s that,” said Myrta. “Happy ending.”

“What ending?” I said. “That was only the beginning! I want to hear the rest.”

“The rest,” she said, displaying a photo of their daughter, Marianna.

“What about the middle, then?” I persisted.

But the only thing more we could get out of them was the fact that for a long time, they had double-dated with Kostas’ brother George, and Helen, his then girlfriend, now wife. And the fact that when the romance was at last revealed to all the parents, both families rejoiced. (This Helen is not the Helen from the previous story; not the one who burned the hair.)

We left at midnight and went immediately to bed.

Our Weekend, Part I

Friday, May 1, 2009

On the First of May; most of the shops are closed. May First marks the coming of the good weather one expects in Greece, warm and sunny, with incomparable blue skies. In fact, although it is not yet summer, the very word for summer, in Greek, means “Good Weather”: Kalokairi.

Christos decided to throw a party at his house in Katerini, to celebrate. He invited us and another Greek-American couple we’ve met before, Chara and Pavlos, and somebody else we hadn’t yet met. We would go to his favorite hotel and sit out on its back patio, by the sea, and enjoy conversation and a treat of coffee and sweets.

Unfortunately, the party had to be cancelled due to, er, bad weather. So I didn’t get the chance to say “Yia chara, Chara!” which means, “Joy to you, Joy!”



Saturday, May 2, 2009

Today was a glorious day; too bad Christos didn’t plan his party for this day instead of yesterday.

Our friend Ioannis, the theologian, picked us up to take us to his house, outside the village of St. Anthony, for the midday meal. First, we stopped at the women’s monastery at Souroti, the one that used to be shepherded by the much-beloved and renowned Fr. Paisios. (Pronounce it “Pye-EE-see-os”.) He hasn’t yet officially been declared a saint, but he no doubt will be eventually, and already you have to stand in line to kiss his gravestone.

The monastery is atop a little mountain, where the air is fresh and breezy and you feel close to the sky. (And you get a nice view of Thessaloniki in the distance, too.) The monastery has several buildings, including housing for the nuns (70 of them), workshops for iconography and I don’t know what else, a guest house, and four churches.

The main church was designed by Fr. Paisios and is named for his spiritual father, St. Arsenios. Like most modern Greek churches (and quite a few ancient ones), it is built of stone and brick in alternating courses. This church sits in the middle of a huge stone patio, surrounded by a low stone wall with built-in stone benches, and some wooden ones as well.

Inside the church are some relics of St. Arsenios; again, you have to stand in line to kiss the little glass-topped box displaying a bone.

The other churches on the property are closed, at least to visitors.

On the monastery grounds are lovely symmetrical flower gardens laid out in geometrical patterns, with mostly pansies right now, and roses, some fuchsia, and several species I didn’t recognize.

There is also an olive orchard, with about 200 trees, I’m guessing, and a pistachio orchard. We didn’t get close enough to it for me to estimate the number of trees it has.

We sat for a while in a guest room, where one of the nuns brought us water, coffee, and sweets, and Demetrios and Ioannis spent half an hour or so having some sort of debate about the words “hypostasis” and “Person”. I think they eventually came to a mutually-agreed position, to the effect that God cannot be a Person unless He is also Trinity. That is, if God has knowledge but no Spirit, then He is just a force, not a person. On the other hand, if God has a Spirit – hence can have experience – but doesn’t have a Logos, knowledge, i.e., doesn’t know what to do or how to do anything, then He is a more complete idiot than any human being.)

Afterward, walking toward the car, we spotted Ioannis’ daughter, Sister Dorothea, and stopped to speak with her.

Next, Ioannis took us to his house, where Manolis (Manuel) and Vasilea were waiting, long-time and dear friends. Kostas and Mena soon arrived, as well, and we had a wonderful feast around the other Mena’s (Ioannis’ wife) big table. It would easily seat 12, and since it is square, everybody can pretty much reach everything. We had pork and goat (which Greeks like even better than lamb) and assorted vegetables and salads and cheeses. For dessert there were fresh strawberries, chocolate and/or vanilla ice cream, and a Greek version of lemon meringue pie.

Of course we all told stories, especially the men. Here are three of them I’ve selected for you.

Ioannis told about watching a nature show on television with his little granddaughter. “Papou,” said she, “are you afraid of lions?”

“No, my child.”

“Papou, are you afraid of tigers?”

“No, my child.”

“Papou, why is it the only thing you’re afraid of is Grandma?”

(What makes this story extra funny is that, in company at least, her Grandma is quiet, meek, mild, and self-effacing, the last person on earth you’d ever dream of being afraid of!)

Kostas told about a woman named Helen who studied to be a teacher and was a classmate of Mena’s. (That’s Kostas’ wife, Mena, not Ioannis’ wife of the same name.)

They had a professor named Leonidas, whom Helen greatly revered. Her adulation of him, in fact, was such that one time, when he sat stroking his beard, she noticed a hair fall out, and after Leonidas had left the room, she picked up that hair and put it between the leaves of a book to keep forever and ever!

Now it happened that the dictatorship came into power some few years after that, and the new government arranged for Helen’s husband, Anastasios, to be fired. His brother had been executed many years before as a Communist and there was some suspicion that Anastasios might be a Communist, too.

The dictatorship also ousted the bishop of Thessaloniki and in his place, installed this same Leonidas who had been Helen’s and Mena’s professor. Helen, therefore, decided to go pay the new, so-called bishop a visit, in hopes he could help her husband.

Leonidas hemmed and hawed but in the end, did nothing.

So what did Helen do? She went home, dug that book out of the bookcase, removed the hair from between the pages, and put a match to it!

(In the end, an investigation proved Anastasios was no Communist and he was restored to his job – with back pay.)

Manolis said that during that time, when the true bishop (whom he knew well) had been dethroned and the usurper Leonidas installed, he had a friend who used to telephone him and pretend to be someone else. (Demetrios and Kostas do this to each other almost every day. Demetrios will call Kostas and say something like, “This is the office of Secretary Hillary Clinton.” Or Kostas will say, “George Bush here.”) Well, one day the phone rang and when Manolis answered it, the party at the other end said he was the Bishop of Thessaloniki.

“Oh, now, that’s all we need,” Manolis replied, chuckling, “You pretending to be the rightful bishop!” – only to find out, a moment later, that it WAS.

Then somebody told about the Euro that died and went to stand before St. Peter. St. Peter let it into heaven. Then the five-Euro note appeared at the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter let it in, too, and then the ten-Euro note. Finally the twenty-Euro note appeared, but St. Peter refused to let it in, saying, “We’ve never seen you in church!”

After the dessert and after the stories, Ioannis said, “Well, is it time to sing?”

“No,” said Vasilea, who was obviously getting sleepy, “It’s time to say, ‘Through the prayers of our holy fathers…’” meaning, about time to wrap things up (as if she’d said, “It’s time to say, ‘Amen.’”).

But she was overruled, so out came the songbook and a half-hour song fest ensued. All the men are singers in the church, and they always sound very good harmonizing with each other.

Then Manolis and Vasilea drove us back to town in their new red Citroen. It was a gift from their daughter, Maria. It only has a one-liter engine. It goes 400 miles on 7 liters of gas.

We arrived home, happy but exhausted, and stuffed, around supper time. We took naps instead of having supper, and had a little snack late at night before turning in again.

On Holiness

Holiness is not to be defined. It is a living, glorious re-birth; it is an active condition, not a struggle with or against self, but a struggle for self, to bring oneself back, back to that pure and fragrant spring of man’s creation.

* * *

First, then, we must recognize that all conscious striving towards purity of life is not the ruthless extirpation of all natural feelings, emotions, endeavours, appetites; if it were, then as weeds they would be back in no time to harass and throttle. The true ascetic labour is not an act of disintegration but of integration. It is the effort of gathering up all these feelings, emotions, endeavours and appetites, and – within the stillness of concentration upon the Divine – gradually assimilating such fleshly ‘enemies” and re-directing them as a healthy, vigorous, integrated part of ourselves. It is fundamentally the same with our own selves as what we are told to do with others: ‘love our enemies’. The quest for holiness is not disintegration of self, but integration; this integration the Saints have longed for and sought throughout the centuries. (Tavener, John, and Mother Thekla, Ikons: Mediations in Words and Music, Fount Paperbacks, London, 1994, pp. 2, 3.)

The Place of Human Reason

We are sometimes confused on the whole age-long controversial question of thinking, of the use of the mind. Throughout the centuries, East and West, there has always been a tendency amongst religious people to denigrate thinking, as if thinking were an enemy of the Spirit. This tendency has been particularly strong in all forms of monasticism. Monks have even gone so far as to consider that in denying themselves space for thinking they have opened themselves more directly to the unhindered communication of the Holy Spirit. This policy is dangerous, for in closing the conscious working of the mind they are weakening their defences, and while attempting to deny temptation, they are excluding the one great defence: a mind open to the influence of the Spirit.

It is neither safe nor fruitful to seek to deny our minds. In fact it is not possible. However we wriggle about, we can only every deny thought by thinking we deny it. So it would seem safer and more fruitful, instead of fighting the inevitable, to set about seeking to train our minds, to discipline them, gradually to learn to avoid self-indulgent speculation and idle dreaming.

Once we accept positively the inevitability of thought, we can begin to learn to direct our minds carefully and lovingly to the search for Truth in every sphere. (Tavener, John, and Mother Thekla, Icons: Mediations in Words and Music, Fount Paperbacks, London, 1994, pp. 23-23.)

Recently I came upon an article on the Internet entitled, “Reason as Pope,” or something close to that. It was an article in defense of irrational theology.

Well, reason is not pope. Our faith is not something human reason hatched, but is based upon what God in Christ has revealed. Reason is not the basis or source of the Christian faith, does not dictate what we shall believe but is shaped by it.

Reason just trumps unreasoning, trumps absurdlity. That’s all.

But that’s terribly, terribly important. If we fail to let reason do that, we have defeated the purpose for which God gave it.

Our Father

I once knew a woman who, to my horror, used to pray ‘My Father’. Her argument was that she could not account for anyone else but that she knew that God was her Father. Apart from the pride of such disobedience to the words given by Christ, she was doing herself dreadful harm by isolating herself from the Communion of the one Church, cutting herself off from the Saints, and leaving herself to flounder alone in the wide, wide sea of temptation. With that one word, *our*, we enter into the freedom of the whole Christian world, on earth and in heaven. We are not abandoned to icy isolation but enter into the joy o the Saints, past, present, future; we enter into a world no longer finite, bound by time and space. We are permitted by Christ himself to join in – no exclusion: our. And Father? No, not the graybeard of childish nightmares but the first Person of the Trinity. Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Three Persons, one Godhead. We pray ourselves immediately into the Mystery, and out of the greybeard, somewhere in the clouds, who punishes us for every little fault, who demands our obedience, who avenges every misdeed. Our Father: He is the first Person of the Trinity, who in his tender love for mankind shows Himself to us in the Second Person, Christ God. We cannot see the Father, but we can see the Son, God incarnate. ‘I and my Father are one’ (John 10:30).

Our Father: with these words we are into the very innermost heart of the Mystery of the Trinity.

(Tavener, John, and Mother Thekla, Icons: Mediations in Words and Music, Fount Paperbacks, London, 1994, p. 44.)

“Sister Death”

Recently, I heard the phrase “Sister Death”. I suppose it was an attempt to sound like Francis of Assisi, but besides being a silly pretense, it’s a thoroughly unchristian sentiment.

No, death is not my sister, and not your sister, either! Death isn’t even your friend. Death takes away your friends and sisters, and fathers and brothers, and mothers and fathers, and sons and daughters.

In our current culture of death, death is regarded as the answer to many things, from unwanted babies and unwanted elders to personal despair to diplomatic stalemate. But death is never the right answer, never the moral solution.

Death is not beautiful. Death is ugly and rotten and putrid. You are not beautiful in death, at least not nearly as beautiful as you were before death, for death has robbed you of your chief beauty, which was life, your unique, irreplaceable life. Death is darkness and nothingness, oblivion, a descent back into the nothingness from which we came. Death is the separation of our bodies from our souls and worse, the separation of both from God.

If death were our sister, or even our friend, the Creator of all the worlds would not have come, in Person, to demolish it for us. (Ditto if death were God’s holy sentence against us for our sin.) That’s why we address Him crying, “O Monophilanthrope! O only Lover of Mankind!” He is our friend, He is our Lover, and He alone. Not death. Death is the devil’s weapon and the devil’s domain. It was the fear of death, St. Paul writes, that kept us enslaved to our sins all our lives long. Death is the ultimate enemy, the last enemy to be destroyed.

But Christ died and filled the darkness of death with the Light of His immortality. Christ died and filled the ultimate aloneness with immortal Love. Christ died and made death another venue for our communion with Him. Christ died and poisoned death (“Epichranthi!”). Christ is risen, and has trampled down death. (Picture an ancient warrior standing upon the corpse of his newly-slain enemy and crowing over it, singing his boastful song of triumph.) Christ is risen and now, death cannot hold captive a single one of the human race. Christ is risen and death will never be the same again. Christ is risen and death is no longer a descent toward oblivion, no longer The End of the Story. Absolutely everyone will live again, reunited with his body, his very own body, yet now metamorphosed, as a butterfly’s body is the same one he had as a caterpillar, yet different. (And some, it appears, will have very ugly bodies, because now their bodies will display their inner condition rather than camouflage it.) Death as separation of body from soul is now only a temporary condition, and a blessing, to boot, because, for those who had struggled against sin, to be separated from our bodies is to be separated from the main factor that had defeated us.

And for those united to Christ by water and Spirit, in faith and love, His promise is that they “shall never die,” meaning never be separated from God at all, in body or in soul. Even as the body dissolves, God never forsakes it. Even as the spirit loses its body, God never forsakes it, either.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and brought me forth in the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of a plain that was full of bones. And He led me about through them on every side; now they were very many upon the face of the plain, and they were exceeding dry. And He said to me, “Son of man, do you think these bones shall live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, You know.” And He said to me, “Prophesy concerning these bones and say to them, ‘You dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will send spirit into you, and you shall live. And I will lay muscles upon you, and will cover you with skin; and I will give you spirit and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’” And I prophesied as He had commanded me, and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a commotion; and the bones came together, each one to its joint. And I saw, and behold, the muscles, and the flesh came up upon them, and the skin was stretched out over them, but there was no spirit in them. And He said to me, “Prophesy to the spirit; prophesy, O son of man, and say to the spirit: ‘This says the Lord God: Come, spirit, from the four winds and blow on these slain, and let them live again.’” And I prophesied as He had commanded me; and the spirit came into them, and they stood up on their feet, an exceeding great army.

And He said to me, “Son of man, all these bones are the house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost, and we are cut off.’ Therefore prophesy, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will open your graves, and will bring you out of your sepulchres, O my people; and will bring you into the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I shall have opened your sepulchres, and shall have brought you out of your graves, O my people, and shall have put My spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall make you rest upon your own land; and you shall know that I the Lord have spoken, and done it, says the Lord God.’”

-- from the holy Prophet Ezekiel, Chapter 37:1-14

Sister death, my foot! Or, rather, Christ’s foot, trampling upon it.