November Day

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The sky is bluer than blue, the sun is shining so brightly you need sunglasses outside and your sheers drawn inside. It's what my mother-in-law used to call "the sun with teeth," meaning the cold will nip you, but it's still dazzling. The trees still have most of their leaves. You can hear dishes clattering as people get ready for their main meal in the early afternoon. "Our" lovey-doves are preening each other. Somebody's laundry is stirring in the breeze.

THIS, not that, is a perfect November Day!

Well, not quite perfect; for that, it should be 80 degrees outside.

A Pleasant Sunday

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For the first time since we’ve been here, we finally got around to attending our own neighborhood church yesterday. I like it quite well. They do things in good order, no objections. Afterward, we went for our favorite Sunday breakfast, bougatsa. It’s that crème-filled pastry made with fillo. It was fresh and hot out of the oven. They serve it sprinkled with confectioners’ sugar and cinnamon. Yum!

After that I began the first draft of the (I hope) last chapter of my book. It may turn out to be two chapters. Demetrios is also working again on his book about human brain function. He has made some milestones in the development of his theory.

In the evening we, together with Manolis and Vasilea, went to visit Kostas and Mena. Kostas looks much better than before the surgery, better than he has looked in years, as well he should, now that he has a new valve in his heart and it is pumping more blood than before. His color is much improved and he looks a lot younger than he used to. He looked so contented and happy. Mena was radiant.

The swelling in his leg, where he had bled so much, is down. That thigh used to be three times its normal circumference; now it is almost normal.

Demetrios and our two cardiologist friends, Andreas and Tasos, are still marveling that Kostas’ cardiologist never told him anything was wrong. They can find no explanation. To me, with my suspicious nature, it seems obvious. You find no rational or medical reason, you are left with corruption. Wake up, guys! That cardiologist was/is in cahoots with the surgeon who messed up so badly ten years ago! They are either blood relatives or koumbaroi or childhood friends or the cardiologist was being paid off not to recommend another surgery, or something like that. Because of course a second surgery would lay bare, literally, the willful, inexcusable, major malpractice of that surgeon who failed to finish the job. He had shown the extra lousy judgment of doing his malpractice upon, of all people, a lawyer, and it was important for him that Kostas die before it would ever be revealed. (Surprise, surprise! He lived! Alleluia, a thousand alleluias!)

As that surgeon is by now retired, and the need to put him out of practice is moot, I doubt Kostas will sue. The subject hasn’t arisen. But you never know. He once sued the School for the Blind to force them to keep him as their attorney when they tried wrongfully to fire him – and he won! (Maybe by now he wishes he hadn’t, as the School owes him 30,000 Euros and cannot pay it. The entire staff has been unpaid for more than six months now. Although Mena urges him to sue them, he won't, for fear of depriving the blind.)

The whole company all began to share memories of their childhood together. Mena, at my request, brought out some photo albums showing everybody in the high school and university years. Our husbands were all so dorky looking! I wouldn’t have looked twice at any of them, with the possible but unlikely exception of Demetrios or maybe Ioannis the Theologian. They certainly all have improved a lot since then; Kostas is very handsome; Manolis is even dapper and distinguished looking on top of being handsome; George (Pelagia’s husband) has also become dashing in his latter years. Demetrios I cannot tell because his face is my favorite in the world in any case.

Well, okay, Leonidas, an exception, was handsome all along.

With the women the reverse is true. All of us used to look quite a bit better than we do now. How is that – they grow better and better looking while we do the opposite?

A Blustery Day

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We are having a lot of fun today on account of the weather! It’s clear and bright and not too cold, but the wind is ferocious. Demetrios tells me this wind, which comes about this time every year, even has a name. It’s called the Varthares (Var-THAR-ees) from the region where it originates. It comes tearing down the mountains from what used to be Yugoslavia.

I suppose it must not be the strongest wind I’ve ever been in, since it isn’t dropping trees. But even Hurricane Isabel, which did smash trees into many houses in Richmond, and flattened cars, did not seem as violent as this wind.

One reason is probably that we are less sheltered from it than in Richmond. Our doors and windows are single-glazed and badly in need of weather-stripping. They’ve been rattling loudly all day. In fact, one of the doors, one of the sliding doors (!) kept blowing open – this despite the fact that the shutter had been closed over it. I finally thought to lock it. The wind still comes right through, blowing the curtains.

Then again, the tall buildings apparently magnify the sound of the wind as it comes screaming between them.

And everybody has awnings above his balcony. These are pretty well rolled up this time of year but a portion of them hangs down even so. You know the sharp crack of a wildly flapping sail or flag or tent. Well, multiply that sound by a hundred or so times and you get the effect. Also, our shutters turn into whistles in this wind; the result is almost spooky.

Above all, perhaps, is the fact that our apartment is right at tree-top level, so while pedestrians on the street, where the tree trunk sits motionless, may be vaguely aware that the trees are moving ‘way up there above, we are right up here where the trees are taking the brunt of it. These trees, still with virtually all their leaves (although they are beginning to turn yellow), are bending and swaying tumultuously, like huge waves. You could almost get seasick watching them. The ravens, who seem to have trouble landing in them anyway, are going to have a hard time of it when they come to roost tonight! I’m not sure why, but whereas other birds seem to pick out their branch during their approach and alight on it in one, perfect try, the ravens sort of crash land. They come barreling into the tree and seem to fall a foot or more before clutching onto a branch that will hold them. That’s in calm weather; tonight should be very interesting!

Occasionally we hear the sound of shattering glass (which reminded us to bring in our little wrought-iron and glass table from the balcony) or of things falling.

Christos’ tenant, the one who recently provided us, through the wall, with a live, x-rated sound track, moved out and Christos gave us a key to his apartment, across the hall from ours, so we went over and checked it out, too. Everything there seems okay, and everything on our balcony is secured (except one rag I had drying out there which blew away).

We felt very cozy, eating our dinner at the kitchen table, where the oven had been on for the preceding 45 minutes. Tonight we are going to have a traditional Greek soup of milk, butter, flour, and salt. You buy it dried and add water.

We may add an extra blanket to the bed, too.

Is This a Good or a Bad Thing?

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Hat tip: Elizabeth at The Garden Window. Her blog is College Level, Undergrad. What's yours?

Point to Ponder

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It is January, 1829. The place is Georgia, in the Russian Empire. A three-week old infant, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili, dies in his mother's arms. Is this a tragedy?

He didn't really die. He grew up as a horribly abused child with an alcoholic father. He survived smallpox, which he suffered at age 7, but with a permanently and badly scarred face. He lived until 1953. You know him as Josef Stalin, whose atrocities made Hitler look like a choir boy. (That's an ironic comparison, as Stalin actually WAS at one time a choir boy!)

Would it have been a tragedy if he had died in infancy?

How about if Osama Bin Laden had?

More Notes on the Greek Table

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There are at least two kinds of fruit here in Greece that I never tasted in the States, and they are both delicious.

One is “Queens.”

“Queens?” I asked Demetrios.

“Queens.”

“Queen’s what? Queen’s crown? Queen’s slipper, what?”

“Just Queens.”

“Spell it?”

“Q-u-i-n-c-e.”

Quince looks rather like an oversized pear. You bake it with water and sugar and cinnamon and I don’t (yet) know what else. Mena adds cognac and orange juice. Vasilea is going to give me her recipe. It tastes somewhat like baked apples, but with a special perfume all its own.

The other fruit new to me is Lotus. Remember Odysseus and the Land of the Lotus-eaters? If you started eating the lotus, you would be trapped there and never leave? Well, perhaps it isn’t quite that good, but it's delicious.

I saw some at the fruit and vegetable stand the other day and I asked Anesti, the proprietor, “How do we eat these?”

“Peel them and eat them just like an apple,” he said. “They’re very good.” So I bought one, and it was so good I went back the next day and bought five more.

(“I was right, wasn’t I?” said Anesti, with a grin.)

They look like tomatoes, from a distance. They feel harder, though. Inside, they have approximately the color and texture of a very ripe cantaloupe. They are juicy and mildly sweet and do not taste like a cantaloupe, but more like a peach.

There are also pomegranates here, but you can find them rather easily in the States, too. I find them not good enough to be worth the trouble it takes to eat them.

Hint from Helen: Wear a bib when eating pomegranates, or at least do not wear white.

Today I made roast red peppers, copying the way I once watched Mena do it. You rinse off the peppers, toss them into a medium-high oven, whole, until they burn a little. (Your nose will tell you.) Then you plunk them into cold water until you can handle them. Cut them open, discard the insides, cut the rest into strips. Season to taste with lemon juice, salt, olive oil, and, optionally, a sprinkling of sugar.

Demetrios loves them. Christos, too.

Note to self: The main (midday) meal should always be cooked for three, not two. (You should have figured this out a couple of years ago.)

We've just finished our midday meal, and Demetrios and Christos have gone to the office of the gas company, to see if they can understand why we have been charged such high bills for natural gas when we weren't even here.

A Delightful Evening

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We are still in the “Demetria,” the days surrounding the feast of the Great Martyr St. Demetrios. Last night there was a free concert at the University as part of the Demetria. We went, in part because it featured Manolis’ and Vasilea’s daughter, Maria, as one of the two conductors. Her children’s choir won a silver medal at an international competition somewhere (Paris, maybe; I forget) and split the gold medal with China at the Berlin competition, featuring 150 children’s choirs.

It was a wonderful evening! The music was inspiring and the occasion nostalgic for Demetrios, who used to sing in the university choir. (This was not the university choir, but still…)

The program started with a children’s orchestra, featuring grade-school kids. But the beauty of it was, the two pieces they played had been especially composed for them, so were within the children’s ability to perform very well (once several adults had passed among them helping them tune their instruments). In fact, each piece consisted of exactly four notes. (Yes, I counted!) These were played first in one order, then in another order, numerous times, now softly, now loudly, now slowly, now quickly, with different instrumentation, and a very complete tympani section adding special touches – variations on a theme! I thought it an ingenious way for small children to be able to make very enjoyable music.

The children were dignified and mature for such small tykes; their parents, the whole time, waving wildly and gesticulating, vying with the conductor for their children’s attention.

Then came Maria’s gold-medal children’s choir, with Mozart’s Alleluia, the one you’ve all heard, beautiful. This choir sang three other delightful songs from around the world, and got big applause and bravos.

Then the whole conservatory, from teachers to adult students to the youngest, all together, with great gusto, played the two wedding marches everybody knows, the Verdi and the Mendelssohn, great crowd pleasers. The conductor said they were in honor of all newlyweds, especially two of the flutists playing tonight, and he introduced the young couple.

They had an excellent tuba player, too, which made me laugh, because it reminded me of Demetrios' tuba. Note to family and friends: If you have never persuaded Demetrios to play his tuba for you, put it on your "To Do" list. You are missing a real treat! He plays several other invisible instruments, too, but the tuba is his best.

We clapped until our hands were sore.

During the intermission, Demetrios began sounding rather apologetic that we hadn’t done more of this sort of thing; in fact, we’ve done just about nothing this trip. No side trips anywhere, no sightseeing. I said that was okay; we had looked after Kostas and that was the important thing, and anyway, “We’re very lucky just to be here.”

“And especially to be here together,” he added, and the tears in his eyes made me cry, too. (Play those wedding marches again, will you?)

“Okay,” I thought to myself when the intermission was over, “Now they’ve got the crowd-pleasers out of the way,” and I settled back to wait for the part one has to endure. You know, the part where the conductor thinks you need to have your musical tastes broadened, the esoteric stuff.

But perhaps the most delightful part of this wonderful concert was that it didn’t contain any such rot! It was all joyous, beautiful, and actually musical instead of cacophonous, all the way through.

The grand finale was Vivaldi’s Gloria.

“The one we listen to every year at Christmas?” I asked Demetrios.

“Yes, that one. And it was the first song I performed with the university choir, too. First Western music I ever sang.”

I just don’t know how a human being can compose anything that magnificent. More tears in my eyes. I turned to Demetrios afterward and said, “I can’t help thinking how glorious a creature is mankind! I mean, even in his fallen state, sin and all. To be able even to conceive such beauty, much less compose it and orchestrate it! To be able to play it, even to be able to appreciate it – in spite of everything else, how glorious is that!”

“Indeed!”

The next thought was, how interesting that the Western music made me think immediately of the glory of man! Never mind it is a doxology, viz., written to the glory of God. Well, to be fair, one can hardly think of the glory of man without reference to his Creator, and I did think about that, too—secondarily.

Thing is, although the words take the form of a prayer, you can’t pray to that sort of music. Well, okay, if you put our mind and heart to it, you can pray under any circumstances, but what I mean is, this music is not conducive to it; in fact, quite the opposite. For starters, it stirs up the body, which in prayer ought to be quiet.

The same goes for a lot of music I’ve heard in non-Orthodox congregations: not conducive to prayer.

We waited for Vasilea and Manolis and Stephanos, their son who is spastic. We hadn’t seen him since he and I danced together at his brother’s wedding. He came running toward me with outstretched arms.

We congratulated them on their daughter’s great musical gift, and before we parted company, Vasilea promised to tell me how she prepares the baked quince she had sent over to me a couple of weeks ago.

Demetrios told me that whole family is musically gifted. He used to envy Manolis, he said, because he could play the piano so well. “Not that I particularly like piano, but he was so talented, and I was wishing to be able to play an instrument. I thought I should study violin. However, everybody told me I was too old. I was twenty.”

I said, “The musical gift God gave you is your sweet voice.”

We got to bed some time after 1:30 in the morning. The last thing I remember is being almost asleep when I heard, “Are you asleep?”

“Not now.”

“Oh, good.”

“Good?”

“I’d feel lonely if you fell asleep first. Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, my love, and good morning.”

Lamb for Dinner

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Today I went to the butcher shop across the street to buy a shoulder of lamb.

I had to stand in a short line. Ioannis, the butcher, was weighing a piece of meat for the man ahead of me. He weighs it first, to know how much to charge you, and then he trims it up for you, removing fat and skin, and chopping it if you like. Well, in the process of chopping, about an ounce of meat flew off the chopping block onto the floor. Naturally, Ioannis left it there. Until the customer said, “I’ll take it. Pick it up!”

Ioannis looked startled, but the man insisted, “Yes, put it with the rest!” He was paying for it, after all.

I couldn’t help myself; I shrugged and said aloud, “Why not? The wife won’t know!” with what I imagined was a sly smile.


Ioannis said nothing.

The customer just stared at me.

O judgment, where art thou fled? Where art thou, discretion? They’re wherever they always are; I just never have discovered their hideout.

I didn’t much care; I chuckled all the way home.

Then I turned on my oven and went to work. The secret of good lamb, ladies, is to stuff it with fresh garlic. Chop the garlic into small slivers or spears, poke holes in the lamb with a sharp knife, and insert the slice of garlic. Do this everywhere you can. The more you don’t like the rather strong taste of lamb, the more garlic you need. Then salt and pepper it well. Put a little water in the bottom of the baking pan. I turn my oven to the 200 mark, which is supposed to be just over 350 degrees Fahrenheit, but with this ancient oven is actually an unknown temperature by any measure. Takes about an hour an a half or more to be done, done meaning the meat is falling off the bones. I cover it with foil after the first hour.

Only way to do it better is over charcoal!

Kostas is Restored to Us

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My ISP provider apparently went on the fritz for a couple of days; I couldn’t get on the Internet. I took my laptop to my friend, Nektarios, at his shop, Nek Net. He checked it out, no problem. He speaks enough English and we both speak enough computer to be able to communicate fairly well. Anyway the thing is working now and he put a pretty moonlit picture of somewhere in Greece on the desktop, too.

Kostas is finally out of the hospital. He was discharged Monday, the 15th day after his surgery and the 18th day since he was admitted. We went to visit him Tuesday night and he looks great. He looks better than he did, say, three weeks before the operation. He had taken a long walk through his neighborhood earlier in the day, and was planning, per doctors’ orders, an even longer one tomorrow. Glory to God! I had tears in my eyes. Kostas was all smiles.

Lots of people were there to celebrate, including his brother George, who had come from Athens, and his friend Demetrios, who had just returned from a 10-day trip to Israel, and his daughter Elpida and her fiancé, Panteleimon. Pantelis (for short) had cut off the top of his thumb earlier in the day. It’s going to be okay, according to my husband.

Demetrios (the friend, not my husband) regaled us with stories of his visit to the Holy Land. He told us a million Russian Jews have emigrated to Israel since 2000, and there were already a million and a half of them there. That, he says, has significantly altered the demographics, because most of these immigrants (coming from a Communist culture) are atheists or at best non-observant Jews. Orthodox Jews are now a minority in Israel.

(“Orthodox?” asked Mena. –“Orthodox Jews.” –“Ah, Jews!” This happens all the time; when you tell a person you are “Orthodox” you have to specify Orthodox Christian.)

Demetrios also told us an interesting thing about St. Catherine’s Monastery, atop Mt. Sinai. Apparently Mohammed came there once. Yes, the Mohammed. He found the monks there worshipping God and obeying the commandments. So he had a document drawn up ordering that no Muslim should ever harm the place, and he “signed” it with his own handprint. It’s the only known handprint of Mohammed still in existence. And it puts the monastery in the peculiar position of being under the protection both of the Holy Theotokos (as all monasteries are) and of Mohammed!

After a delightful evening with our dear friends, making them renew their promises to come back with us to America next year, Demetrios changed Kostas’ bandages, and then the bandages on Pantelis’ thumb, and we caught a bus for the short ride home.

Hint from Helen

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For all you husbands: how long since you gave your wife a gift "for no reason"? I mean not on your wedding anniversary, or her birthday, or other such observances.

I'm not sure men understand how much value wives put upon such a gift. It need not be anything more than a box of candy, or even just one chocolate bar. I can be flowers or a pretty vase or a scarf or a pretty piece of custume jewelry, which you can get for under $20. An "I love you" card you custom make on your computer will also fill the bill.

Avoid anything expensive! An expensive gift given for no reason (except during courtship)is apt to seem suspicious.

It doesn't really even matter all that much if she LIKES the scarf or vase or jewelry (though that outcome is obviously to be preferred!). She will still treasure it. This is a case of it literally being the thought that counts. That you thought of her during your busy day, and in such a way as to wish to give her a gift, will mean all the world to her.

You'll be glad you did!

P.S. Are men that way, too? Should we wives be doing the same?

Glimpses of Life in Greece

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Yesterday and the day before were entirely consumed in buying two new items for the house. One purchase was indirectly the result of Demetrios’ cold. He decided, for the duration, to sleep on the futon, in an (apparently successful) effort not to give the cold to me. Well, that futon is hard as brick! We really cannot expect a guest to sleep there.

The other item we need is what I call a “wall unit” and the Greeks call a syntheto because it consists of various matching elements you can purchase separately, such as shelves, small display cabinets, small solid-fronted cabinets, a unit that holds your television and DVDs, and so forth. You then arrange these as artistically as you can upon the available wall space. Or you can buy them all built into one large piece of furniture.

The problem with shopping for furniture is that the showrooms are all outside the city, and getting there is always an ordeal. This time the ordeal was exacerbated by the construction along the Egnatia. The Egnatia is the main road of this city, in fact, one of two main roads in all of Macedonia. It is the road St. Paul traveled from Philippi to here and from here to Berea. Well, he would probably prefer not to travel the Egnatia in Thessaloniki today, as it is being dug up for the new subway system. (I’m hoping and assuming great care is being taken with these excavations, as the entire city is obviously sitting atop a priceless archaeological site.) It took us two buses, a longish hike, and a cab ride to get where we were going.

One scene along the way made up for a lot. We passed, by foot, a vacant lot, fenced in, which houses some unidentified ancient ruins. (Unidentified doesn’t mean nobody knows what they are, only that we don’t. There are no signs.) Ancient ruins in this part of the world always house cats. There, among some 20 feline friends, mostly calicos that reminded me of my Molly Malone, I spotted a young woman sitting quietly. All around her, pages of newspaper were spread out, upon each of which she had put food for the cats.

My heart rose straight up into my throat. I got as close to the woman as I could and when she stood up to greet me, I pulled the ever-present baggie of cat food out of my purse and tossed it to her over the high fence. She caught it, smiled, and said thank you and we moved on.

One of the nice things about buying furniture in Greece is that you pick out what you want from the showroom, and they build it for you, happily making any modifications you require. We required some, the rooms in this house being small. Anyway, we ended up with a sofa that becomes a bed simply by removing the back cushions. But the really cool part of this thing is that the front, below the seat, which looks solid, pulls out and is a separate trundle bed. This trundle bed is spring-mounted, so that with a lever, you can pull it up to the same height as the seat of the couch. Thus, you can have either two single beds or a double bed. You could even roll the trundle bed into another room if you wanted to. I love the versatility! The washable (!) upholstery looks like velvet and is very moderne. The kanape (sofa) itself will be upholstered in melon. The rear cushions are to be a splashy pattern of melon, cream, black, and burnt orange, and the decorative pillows are in the same burnt orange. Anybody who has been acquainted with our very classical, traditional taste will appreciate what a departure this is for us; we feel so adventurous!

The syntheto is more traditional. It’s all one piece, in walnut.

Delivery to be December 7. Our departure from Greece to be December 10. Close shave. Par for the course with us.

On our way home Thursday night, we had to change buses right at the corner where McDonald’s is, so we stopped there and had a Big Mac and a Quarter Pounder. Let’s face it; Greek food is fabulous, but an American, now and then, just gets a hankering for a hamburger!

We got home a little earlier last night; I sat out on the balcony at dusk and watched the crows and the ravens gathering on nearby TV antennas before heading, in groups, to their respective roosts for the night. The beaks of the ravens are so big you can see them clearly against the evening sky.

I love watching things from that balcony! There is a woman across the street from us we call the “fleißige Dame,” industrious woman, but we use the German term because it somehow sounds more like what we mean. She’s always, always hard at work cleaning her house. She comes out on the balcony to shake her dust rags, beat her rugs, fetch a broom or bucket. She airs out her bed sheets daily on her clotheslines unless it is raining. She dusts the railing of her balcony every day, too. (She doesn’t have doves hanging out with her all day as we now have. I have to scrub my railings! And no, that does not get done daily.) Today she brought out each large cushion from her sofa and beat it five times with her carpet beater, and took it back inside. Watching her, I feel like a complete slob.

This morning I went around and did my marketing. That’s always fun; makes me feel so Greek, because all the other housewives are doing the same thing. (Except the industrious woman; she's too busy polishing door handles or something.)

By the time I got to the butcher shop, I was loaded with shopping bags from Nikoletta at the corner grocery and Anesti, the fruit and vegetable man. Another woman came in with me and ordered a kilo of ground beef. Then the butcher’s wife asked me what I wanted. I said, “The same.” The other customer said, “Oh, give her mine, and I’ll wait. She has so many heavy bags!” Then she turned to me and said, “You do want half and half, don’t you?”

I said I didn’t know what that meant.

“Here in Greece,” said Parthena, the butcher’s wife, speaking slowly and clearly, “we put half beef and half pork into our ground meat. It is very tasty that way.”

“Where is she from?” asked the other customer.

“Ameriki. But she’s Orthodox, and she is learning Greek. She can already write it.”

(It’s never, “She’s American and Orthodox. Everyone always says, “American but Orthodox.”)

I thanked both of them very much, but declined to take the other woman’s order, with a promise to try the half-and-half next time.

Parthena has always loved telling her other customers about me, ever since the first time I ever went into the butcher shop by myself. I wanted ground beef, and it never occurred to me until I had actually entered the shop that I had no idea how to say that in Greek.

I was rather embarrassed, but decided to see if I could make myself understood. “Sorry,” I said. “I don’t speak Greek and I don’t know the word for what I want…” Then I remembered the word for meatballs. “I want to cook some meatballs,” I said.

Parthena nodded, then turned toward the back wall of the shop, where there are posters of various animals. She pointed to the poster of the cows. “From that?”

“Yes, from that. Please tell me, what is it called?”

So she told me and I whipped out my tiny spiral notebook and wrote it down, with her help. And she has been telling people about that ever since.

People here are so kind!

Another kindness has been shown to me, too. Ioannis, the Theologian, found me a priest who speaks excellent English, studied in London, who is willing to take me under wing while I’m here. I haven’t phoned Fr. Athanasios yet, but shall, very soon.

Kostas is still in the hospital; today is the 16th day! However, there is still talk of discharging him tomorrow or soon thereafter.

Hint from Helen: You can make an exception to the rule and attend the home church of a saint on that saint’s feast day after all, provided the saint isn’t one of the more hugely popular ones and provided, further, that the church happens to be within easy walking distance of your home, as is the case with the Church of Sts. Cosmas and Damian.

Can God Sin?

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Somebody wrote requesting me to post something about whether God can sin. Apparently this person heard some students debating this point, some saying He could not, others arguing that He had the power to sin but chose not to.

If we define sin as Lossky (I think) does, namely as the transgression of God’s will, then of course this question is just like asking whether God can create a rock too heavy for Him to lift. The question, since it is self-contradictory, can have no proper answer.

Moreover, “sin” is just not a category that applies to God, any more than hair color does.

If we redefine the question and ask instead whether God can do evil, we run into a similar contradiction built in to the question, but it is perhaps more subtle.

First we have to say that anything and everything God does, He does because He freely wills to, and not because of any external or even internal necessity. He is not compelled even by His own nature, for example, to be good. One of the unique things about God is that He doesn’t “come with” a pre-determined nature, a set of “givens” within which He must exist, the way we do. If we can speak of His nature as being determined at all, He Himself is the one who determines it! He has the nature He wills to have. He, uniquely, is who He is because that is who He wants to be. Nothing infringes upon or compromises God’s freedom even to the tiniest degree. Nothing. Not His Love, not His Justice, nothing. He is totally, radically, supremely, and perfectly free.

It’s that “perfectly free”, wherein the contradiction lies that makes nonsense of the question. Moral evil is always a form of self-seeking at the expense of others. God, of course, is never in the least degree self-seeking,since in Him is already the fullness of being; there is nothing He doesn't already have that He need seek. What He seeks is always our greatest good.

Furthermore, evil is a form of slavery to self-seeking. An evil act is an unfree act. God is perfectly free. Therefore it is a logical absurdity to suppose that in His perfect freedom, God could behave unfreely.

We cannot say of God that He could do evil, just as we cannot say there is anything He could not create. We cannot say of God that He could not do evil, either, just as we cannot say there is anything too heavy for Him to lift. Either answer is an answer to an inapplicable question.

If we do say “God cannot do evil,” what we really mean is, we must not theologize in such a way as to assert that He does, or could. (There are, as we've all known, heterodoxies that ascribe wicked behavior to God routinely and then call that wickedness good, since it's God doing it -- but this is not a legitimate way of theologizing.) The “cannot” has to do with us, with our human logic, with what we may or may not say – and not with what the infinite, illimitable God can or cannot do.

Free Will in Conversion, Part V (Final)

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If we say (and we do) that God and God alone can bestow upon people the ability to know and to desire something of goodness, and to perform as much of it as they know, or try to change when they fail, then we must add that God has never withheld the gift of these abilities from anybody. Why must we say this? Because otherwise we are indirectly but inescapably saying God is a monster.

First, if there were anyone who from his conception until his death never had the ability even to desire the good, much less do it, then he would not be responsible for the evil he did. If we add that God (and God alone) could give him the ability to strive for the right or pursue the wrong, but does not, then we make God responsible for that person’s wrong choices. That’s another way of saying God is evil. Whoever has the choice is the one responsible for it. God must either abolish evil or be guilty of it. Or else we must say evil exists because man has a measure of genuine freedom, given him that his freely choosing the right may have value and meaning.

Second, if a person from conception to death never has even the ability to desire the good, there is no fair, moral ground for condemning him to hell. “Oh, but he willed the evil he did,” some may say, “so God is justified in condemning him.” So then what you do is accuse God’s own law of justifying His unfairness, immorality and monstrousness! No. The person cannot be said truly to have willed the evil if he could not have willed otherwise; that’s just playing with words. That’s sophistry. God, who could have given him that freedom but didn’t, would have no ground for allowing such a person to suffer eternally. He shouldn’t even have created such a person who never had any chance, to whom He never intended to give any chance for anything but eternal suffering. You can’t get around it; such a teaching portrays God as repugnant, hateful, and immoral.

To avoid making God out a monster one must affirm that there is nobody who never had a chance. Though we universally fail, it is and always was exclusively our own fault; it was never from God’s withholding from us any chance to succeed in fulfilling His will for us. We fail. It isn’t because we could not do otherwise; it’s because (worse) we would not.

Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire, and Other News

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Demetrios is in the 3rd day of a cold, so we have both been staying away from Kostas. I don't have it (so far) but we want to be very cautious. We are staying clear of Christos, too, who already has emphysema.

Kostas, meanwhile, is doing very well -- finally! Yesterday all his various tubes were removed. He is walking normally and is projected to be discharged in 2 or 3 more days.

We went downtown a few evenings ago, just for fun. I wanted to look in a craft store that sells mosaic tiles. I have designed a mosaic I want to make. We found the store, but...first, the tiles turned out to be cubes, not tiles, of glass. Second, the gold (on one surface only of each cube) is real gold. Making the price horrendous -- up to 200 Euros a kilo, and I would need probably 8 to 10 kilos for this oversized project, a small wall. I am going to check out ceramic tiles.

We bought chestnuts. In winter, but starting now, vendors downtown roast them over small charcoal fires they light in a metal box designed for the purose and sell the chestnuts hot. Demetrios likes them just as well boiled; I like them better that way. So we bought some uncooked chestnuts, too.

Hint from Helen: Do not encourage visits from doves on laundry day. Do hang the laundry in such a way as to minimize horizontal surface area. Bring the laundry in as soon as it is dry.

Hint from Helen: The young lady next door is not having a heart attack and does not need or want your help.

Free Will in Conversion, Part IV

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God does not save you because He is pleased with you. Pleasing God is good, but it is not what saves you any more than displeasing Him is what damns you.

God does not even save you because He is legally although not existentially pleased with you. He does not save you because He is pleased with the Christ He sees when He looks at you or because He is in some way pretending to be pleased with you or because He is somehow shielding His eyes from all that is displeasing in you or because He is morally obligated “for Christ’s sake” to save you. We don’t have to go through all those theological explanations, contortions, and shenanigans to come up with how we can be (regarded as) sufficiently pleasing to God for Him to save us. Why not? Because that isn’t why He saves us in the first place. God does not save you because He is pleased with you! He was already good and gracious toward you all along, whether you pleased Him or not.

God saves you purely because He wants to. He wants to purely because He loves you. He loves you purely and only because He freely chooses to love you, and everybody else, with an infinite love. Period. Hold that thought. It’s the same thing as saying salvation is not a merit system.

Once we understand that salvation is not a merit system, we shall have no trouble in asserting that yes, a pagan who has never heard of Christ can indeed please God. He can do this by desiring the good, insofar as he may understand that good, and by attempting to do that good, as well. He can even succeed to some extent in doing the good, too. I’m not the one saying this; St. Paul is, in Romans 1. Our hypothetical pagan can potentially rack up some merit!

Bear in mind that the merit no more buys him salvation than Monopoly money does. We do not even need to point out (although it is true) that the good is highly imperfect, or that he will indubitably rack up some demerits as well, or that the merit is not enough to save the man. And why do we not need to point out these things? Because even if the merit were infinite, that is not why God saves anybody! Much less do we need to resort to calling good evil by saying his righteousness is only apparent, but in reality is “filthy rags”. This only applies to someone who, having heard Christ rightly preached, has outright rejected Him. In such a person, his “good” works amount to hypocrisy; but in the person who has not rejected the true Christ, his good works are really, truly, in some degree, good! Which still does not obligate God to save him. God cannot be obligated at all, by anything whatsoever, nor needs to be, since He already, without any inducement, wishes to save both the good and the wicked.

When anybody is saved (put into intimate, eternal communion with God) it is simply and only because God wants to save him, because He loves him, because He freely chooses to love Him. God in Christ has already accomplished all things necessary for our salvation; the one remaining thing is our consent. To save us apart from our consent is a contradiction in terms, a flat impossibility. There is no “salvation“ that does not also save our will, rendering us free as Christ is free, so that we freely participate in God’s own life. Our will is an essential component of our very humanity, let alone of becoming participants in divinity. There is no such thing as a love we can offer God that was extorted from us. That’s another oxymoron.

Our ultimate destiny depends upon God’s love, which, however, is a given, and upon our giving our free consent to it at some point. God’s love alone is the cause of our salvation; our free, genuine, and active consent, enabled by Him, and with all this consent implies, is only the condition, the thing that gives His saving work the go-ahead, makes it possible.