How we Managed to Become Stranded in England

June 28, 2009

After church, we went to a favorite eatery to have bougatsa one more time before leaving Greece. Then we hurried home to do all those last-minute things that always seem to crop up no matter how carefully you think you have planned things. Manolis came over with a gift to us, a coffee-table book we will cherish. Christos came, too, to drive us to the airport.

At the airport we had lunch – fortunately, as you shall see.

The Greek woman sitting next to us in the plane had obviously never flown before. She didn’t know how to work the seatbelt; she had two matching ends, one of them mine. She also didn’t know what to do with the things left on her tray after the drinks had been served. She sat in the window seat, but as there wasn’t much to see most of the time, she spent most of her time with her head in her hands, eyes shut, as if frightened. We tried to be extra casual. I took out my crochet hook and a ball of yarn and began a scarf.

When we landed at Gatwick, it was just after 4:00 in the afternoon, their time, 6:00 our (Greek) time. We waited until almost everyone else was off the plane before we stood up, just because we dislike the crush and pushing. Our waiting was fortunate, because it turned out our fellow passenger needed a wheelchair, and someone sent for one of those shuttle vehicles to transport her, the kind you always hear beeping at you when you are in an airport concourse or terminal. The driver, from India, motioned us aboard his little train together with our fellow passenger. He not only took us where we needed to be, saving us from having to discover this information ourselves, he also gathered up our passports and took them to the customs official, and got us all through without our having to move from our seats. Then he brought us to baggage reclaim, to the correct carousel. He was so nice, meanwhile, that Demetrios gave him all the English money he had, one pound.

The first thing we did, after retrieving our bags, was go to the train ticket window. The man there took our credit card and issued the tickets and handed us a long list of connections we had to make to get to our destination, the little village of Ormskirk, Lancashire. I think, counting the underground trains, there were 6 all together. We could leave in an hour, he said. Well, actually, if we hurried, we might catch the train about to leave now.

We hurried and we made it. The price of our haste, which we ignored, was of course that we now had no English money at all. (No, England is not on the Euro, despite being an EU nation. It retains the Pound Sterling.) We also didn’t have a chance to relieve our full bladders or our empty stomachs. Never mind, I said, the main thing for now was to get where we were going, and we’d worry about the rest later. Wrong!

We had a grand tour of London – from below! We never saw a thing above ground. Gatwick Express to Victoria Station, another subway train to Euston Station, then to the town of Crewe, then to Liverpool’s Lime Street Station, where we finally had a chance, before catching the next two trains, to find a toilet. Unfortunately, it cost 30 pence to get into the lavatories, and we didn’t have it.

Time to get some money. Quick, find an ATM. Ah, there it is. Read instructions, insert credit card. Request rejected. Try again. Rejected again. Try another card. Still no go. Try another. No.

Try mine. Oops. My purse; where’s my purse? I left it on the train! I can’t believe this! First I had a purse stolen in Greece, which fortunately did not have my passport in it, and now I’ve lost this one, which does! I ran to the train, still at the platform. I tried the doors; they were locked. I pounded on the doors, I cried out in panicky desperation: “Help! Let me in!”

A uniformed man approached me. “My purse is on that train!” I shouted toward him. “My passport is in that purse, and the PURSE IS INSIDE THE TRAIN!”

“No, it is not,” he replied.

I stared at him blankly, dumbly.

He switched on his walkie-talkie and spoke into it: “The lady has showed up. I’m bringing her now.”

Yes, the authorities had already completed their walk-through of the train, which had reached the end of its line, and my purse was waiting for me in their office a few yards away. All I had to do was sign the receipt. I nearly cried. And I am still in awe of this British efficiency! We thanked them again and again.

This escapade, however, had cost us time, so now we had to rush to catch the next connection, the one to Liverpool’s Central Station, and the one after that, to little Ormskirk.

For Demetrios, that last leg, especially, was a sentimental journey. “When I first came here, fresh out of medical school,” he said, “I took this same route, this same sequence of trains.” He had a more or less running commentary on all the little places we passed, and where we stopped.

It was after 10:00, local time, when we finally disembarked in Ormskirk. We had left Greece 12 hours before.

Fortunately, there were half a dozen taxis waiting. “This way!” I said to Demetrios.

We had gone about three steps when we remembered we hadn’t a single cent of English money with which to pay a cabbie. Or a hotel. Or a restaurant.

Oh, well, perhaps the hotel was in walking distance; most of Ormskirk is, if you’re in shape. We pretty much are, a fact I blame mostly upon Sylvia. And maybe the hotel would accept our credit cards, just maybe, even though the machines in Liverpool wouldn’t. We must enquire of the cab drivers.

“The Beaufort Hotel?” one asked. “That old place closed down a month ago. Just overnight, without telling anybody. And they had weddings booked, and conferences and all.”

I remembered, with sinking heart, trying for the past day or so to telephone them to reconfirm our reservations, and getting a recording. But I had put that down to the difficulties of making any international call from Greece.

Now we were penniless in a foreign country, late on a Sunday night, our stomachs growling and our bladders screaming at us, and with nowhere to go, no hotel; and not only had we no money, but no way of getting any, either, before morning.

The cab driver conferred with one of his “mates.” The others gathered around, curious to see what would become of the stranded Americans. “You want to be in the Prince Albert,” they all agreed. They called that hotel with a cell phone. No vacancies.

The cabbies called around for us to other places, even asking their friends if they knew a place. Finally they located the Premier Inn in the neighboring town of Southport. It had a vacancy for us.

In a neighboring town, right. No way to walk there at all, even if we didn't have three heavy suitcases.

“Ah’ll tayke ya,” one of them finally said. So he did, and the ride was about 15 or 20 minutes long.

“So now how can I pay you? What can I do?” asked Demetrios.

“Well, it’s 14 pounds,” said the man. “So if you have it in Euros that’ll be foine.” Demetrios gave him a 20-Euro note. “Keep it,” he said.

“Naw, look, I’ll give ya some choinge so you’ll have some pounds ta play with.” And he handed us five pounds.

Now, next problem: would the hotel accept our credit card?

“Your card doesn’t have the chip,” said the nice lady behind the counter. Credit cards in the UK all have some sort of a chip on them, without which they don’t work. That was “absolutely without doubt” why our cards had been rejected by the ATMs. However, she could try entering the information manually – yes! Success.

Now we had a room, with comfortable bed, television, and very importantly, a bathroom. With not just a shower, but also a large tub. We parked our luggage and went back to the lobby to tell the lady how pleased we were with our room.

And where should we eat, we asked?

She frowned. It was now after eleven o’clock and everything would be closed. It’s not like Greece, where things are just getting into full swing by 11:00.

Nevertheless, we hadn’t eaten in, by now, more than 14 hours, so hunger drove us to walk around outside to see what there was. Italian restaurants, Mexican, pub, all closed. But, across the parking lot, a MacDonalds! We walked over there. It was closed, too, but the drive-through was still open, hooray! We stopped in front of the menu board and discovered that with our precious five pounds, we could afford two Happy Meals. The advantage of a Happy Meal is that it comes with a drink, too. And a toy, of course.

Up to the drive-through window. I joked with the young man there, “May we walk through your drive-through?”

“No, afraid not. Can’t allow it.”

“Really? Are you serious?”

“Health and safety reasons.”

They don’t want us to be run over by a car? They are afraid we might have guns?

There was nothing to do but accept that we weren’t going to eat until breakfast tomorrow. Well, we said, walking back to our room, millions of people go to bed hungry. Tonight we’re going to join their ranks. So what? We can cope for one night with what they endure night after night.

But it was still a pathetic, helpless, terrible feeling, emotionally.

“Did you get something at MacDonalds?” asked a voice near us.

We turned and saw the receptionist, who by now was off duty and was walking toward her car to go home.

We said no, because they wouldn’t allow us to walk through the drive-through.

“Oh, that’s ridiculous!” she said. “Come, get in my car and I’ll drive you through. My name’s Jacqui, by the way.” She’s off duty, mind you, and alone, offering to take two strangers in her car, foreigners, at that.

We accepted, most gratefully. Jacqui ordered our Happy Meals for us and even held out her own money, but at least we didn’t have to take that. We used our own five pounds.

We are overwhelmed by the extraordinary kindness of people here. We said many prayers of thanks.

And a Happy Meal never tasted so good!

A Wedding in Nymphaio

Saturday, June 27, 2009

On our last full day in Greece, Chrysostomos and Roula drove us all to the wedding of Eirini, daughter of our mutual friends Tassos and Christina. It was held in Nymphaio (say “Nim-FAY-oh”), a medieval village in northern Greece, cradled among the highest mountain peaks up along the border with the former Yugoslavia. It overlooks five lakes.



View Nymphaio and Edessa in a larger map

Nymphaio is about a three or four hour drive from Thessaloniki. We left around 10:30 in the morning and came the scenic route, past fields and vineyards and especially orchards, peach and nectarine and apricot and cherry orchards. We stopped at a roadside fruit stand and bought cherries and the very best apricots I’ve ever eaten, squishy soft, very juicy, very sweet. Now I know how apricots are supposed to taste!

It’s the area where Alexander lived. I mean the Alexander, of course, the Great. Several of the towns and villages along the way are named for his generals. Pella, his actual city, was also along our route.

We passed through Edessa (“ED-es-sah”), a mountain village famous for its waterfalls, greenery, rivers and rivulets, and panoramic views.

Nymphaio was founded in the year 1385. In 1942, it was torched by the Germans, and since then has had modern utilities added, but it still looks the same as it did in 1385. The houses are of stone rather than stucco, and they don’t have the usual flat, red-tiled roofs. Instead, on account of the snow, the roofs are steeply gabled, and they are tin. They all have white Battenburg lace curtains at wood-framed casement windows and fancy wrought iron bars outside the windows and sometimes the doors. Inside, the traditional colors for household linens (rugs, upholstery, tablecloths) are red, white, and black. The streets of the village are paved with the same kind of stones used in the houses, and of course they are narrow and winding and sometimes steep. Here is a photo of the school, now a museum. (There are no more permanent residents in Nymphaio; only summer people live there, so there's no need of a school now.)



Chrysostomos wanted to find a particular house, where friends of his were waiting for us to come and freshen up beforehand. It was too late to do that, but we stopped anyway, where we saw some other people dressed in wedding clothes, to ask the way.

And that’s where Demetrios met – can you guess?—another Old Friend! It was a man named Kostas, whom he had known in medical school.

Okay, so the father of the bride is a cardiologist who was in med school with Demetrios. So it stands to reason many of the people he’d invite would also be doctors, yes? Yes. So Demetrios and Kostas had a joyful, if short, reunion.

We heard music up the street some and followed the sound, to find a band consisting of a trumpet, a saxophone, a clarinet, and a bass drum. “They’re bringing the bride!” I exclaimed. That’s how it’s done in Greek villages: everybody gathers at the groom’s house, and then, accompanied by music and sometimes dancing, the party makes its way to the bride’s house. They pick her up there and escort her to the church to be married.

The whole village seemed to have been invited to this event; the streets were thronged as our procession moved toward the church.

The new bishop of the area (Florina) presided, the successor to the widely-loved Bishop Augustine Kandiotis. Bishop Augustine is still alive, but has profound dementia nowadays. The new bishop was his choice to succeed him.

Fr. Gervasios was also there, who has a famous prison ministry. He raises money to pay the debts of people who are in debtors’ prison, and has already released tens of thousands of them.

It was the first time we had seen the mother of the bride, Christina, since she lost her hearing. At that time, she was too depressed to see anyone. Today, of course, she was radiantly happy, and she has learned to lip-read very well.

The reception was huge; there were 50 tables, each seating ten, under tents on the lawn of the main hotel in town. The buffet was lavish and beautiful. We sat with or near several friends, including Andreas the poet and his wife Thomai; also Vasilios and Maria. Also sharing our table was Harry Truman! Or at least his double. Not only his features, but also his facial expressions were eerily like Truman’s. When we asked him, he said yes, the resemblance had provoked much comment.

I danced once before we had to leave, to the tune played at virtually every Greek wedding, “Beautiful is Our Bride.” We were to leave Greece the next day, so wanted to get home early, and Chrysostomos wanted to have coffee in Edessa on our way back. We got there just as the twilight was beginning, found the waterfalls, and a taverna situated between two of them. Two rushing rivers, each making an impressive roar, and then falling away down the mountain, on either side of us.

Here, courtesy of Wikipedia, is a picture of the terrace below where we sat, where we went to have a closer view of the falls.




As usual, after a while the men fell into a discussion of Greek and world politics, so Roula invited me to have a walk with her. There was a tiny church nearby she wanted to show me, hardly more than a shrine. So we walked across part of a park to it and she explained the icons, depicting local saints.

There was something going on a little further along the walkway; there was a lot of children’s laughter, and there was a big, white sheet set up. “Karagiozes,” said Maria. My heart skipped a beat as I recognized that name. He is the main character in Greek shadow theater. There are set characters in traditional Greek shadow puppet theater; find photos of them here. There are also several set tales; this one was a farce falled "Karagiozis the Doctor".



Demetrios had told me about Greek shadow theater for years and years, and has fond memories of performing it in some neighbor’s yard, behind a borrowed sheet, the characters lovingly cut out of paper glued onto sticks. He had to see this! I ran, yes ran, to the table where he and Chrysostomos were sitting and told them to come quickly for a wonderful surprise.

We couldn’t stay to watch very much of it because we had to hurry home, but Demetrios was delighted I finally got to see what he has been describing almost ever since I met him. So was I. It seemed the perfect “nightcap” after a perfect day.

Long life to the bride and groom, Eirini and Vasilis!

We're Home!

We arrived, safe and sound, yesterday evening. Well, safe, anyway; sound is another matter...

There was Internet connection where we were in England, but my laptop doesn't run on their electricity and the battery only lasted half an hour. In Greece, I have a transformer. But in England, the Greek one doesn't work, because the shapes of American, Greek, and English electric sockets and plugs are all different. So I've suffered the acute frustration of being incommunicado all this while. There wasn't even a telephone in our hotel room! Apparently, the cell phone has made stationery phones outdated.

Anyway, check back and I'll try to post our adventures over the next few days. And we did have some real adventures, too! (The trouble with adventures, of course, is that they only become adventures afterwards; while they are still in progress, they are usually nightmares.)

Hiatus?

Monday, June 22, 2009

Our time in Greece draws to its end while my paid-for hours of Internet time are approaching zero. That’s another way of saying I don’t know when I can post again.

Our only other big plan (only other thing I plan to write about) is a wedding in the ancient and very picturesque village of Nymphaios, high up in the mountains, in “The Balcony of Macedonia,” very near FYROM (which is what people here still call the Former Republic of Yugoslavia). We will pack on Friday, leave here very early Saturday morning, God willing, attend the wedding and some of the reception, and come home again the same night, courtesy of Chrysostomos and Roula. Then after church on Sunday, we’ll head for the airport and England.

I think our hotel there has free wireless Internet access. If so, I’ll write from there; otherwise I don’t know.

We are scheduled to return home July 8.

OH – Demetrios decided to replace half our windows and doors after all! So two sliding glass doors and one window are scheduled to be put in Today, the ones facing north, which is where the wind comes from. Well, with that and packing, it’s going to be one hectic day!

After that, what will remain to make this house properly functional is to replace two more sliding glass doors and one window, the stove, the refrigerator, and the television. After that, all that’s left will be various beautification projects, most of them comparatively minor.

I hope, if we find a house in England, it will already be more or less as we like it.

Basil, Part 2 of 2

or, A Happy Ending for Kitty

To spare you unnecessary suspense, I tell you ahead of time that it has a happy ending.

But what a problem, trying to find kitty a home! I walked all over the neighborhood three times, with kitty on my shoulder, asking everybody I dared, “Do you want a kitten? He’s very friendly, as you can see,” while kitty would rub against my cheek.

Nobody wanted him, precious as he is. There are thousands of homeless cats in this city, tens of thousands.

I met some very nice people in the effort, though, Earlier this week, I met a kind monk, who stopped to say, “What a lovely kitten!” and who wanted to pet him. Of course he couldn’t take it, and he didn’t know anybody else who would, either. I met some very pleasant shopkeepers, sitting on the sidewalk out in front of their establishments. I met a woman with a toddler in tow who said she loved cats and would love to take this one, but she was leaving, same as me. She was French, living here most of the time, but going back and forth to France for vacations. I met another woman who was fussing at her toddler, and when I stopped to ask an old man sitting on a stone wall whether he’d like a kitten, he smiled and nodded toward the woman and said, “Ask her. She can throw away the kid and take the cat.” So I laughed with him. I met two very sweet young women sitting at a sidewalk café, and they told me there was a lady across the street who loved cats, and I should ask her. They were just showing me which apartment was hers, when she appeared on the balcony. Or perhaps I misunderstood and it was not she, but a neighbor fed up with all the cats. At any rate, she called down to me: “Kyria, Kyria!” Lady, lady! When I looked up, she took off her shoe and kicked her bare foot at me. (You remember about shoes and the East, don’t you, from the incident wherein an Iraqi threw at shoe at President Bush?) “Go away!” she yelled. “Go away! Go on, get out of here!”

I think if I had it to do over again, I might have said, “I go where I please” and have sat down. But as it was about to rain, I shrugged and walked sadly away. That is the one and only Greek, here or in America, who has ever been rude to me.

This morning, Demetrios got up at dawn and caught a cab to the village and church of St. Anthony, to arrive in time for services beginning at 7:00. Ioannis the theologian and Chrysostomos are both cantors in that parish, and had proposed that Demetrios join them today. So he did, and if he hadn’t, we wouldn’t have found a home for kitty. Because they all went out for coffee afterwards, and the priest joined them, together with his sympatheros. (Your sympatheros is your married child’s father-in-law.) And when Demetrios thought to ask whether anyone knew someone who could take our kitty, the sympatheros said he would! He already has several cats, including two litters of kittens, but he said it would be no problem to take our kitten as well.

Well, now I’ve got to go clean up my cat carrier, which will go with him, a donation to his new owner, and tomorrow (the shops all being closed for the rest of today), I’ll buy a big bag of cat food, too.

Kitty will be a yard cat, not a house cat, but that’s better than being a street cat. And he will be guaranteed a living; i.e., food, although it will most likely be table scraps. He probably won’t get regular medical care, but he will if there’s anything seriously wrong with him. He won’t be neutered, so I have explained to him that he is just going to have to be the toughest, strongest tomcat out there, to do well in cat fights over females. To that end, to express that hope, he now has a name: Basil.

Basil, Part 1 of 2

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Last night, at last, I got to meet Demetrios’ old friend Vasilios (That’s Basilios, because the Greeks pronounce their “beta” as a “v”. And for short, it’s just Vasilis.) In English, it's Basil.

Vasilis is a friend from medical school, now a retired orthodpedist, and also a friend from the para-ecclesiastical movement Demetrios was so involved with, called Zoe. Chrysostomos had told him we were here, and he immediately got on the phone and wanted to see us. So did their other friend, Christos, who remembered Demetrios from Zoe. He says Demetrios also came to examine him after he’d had a little stroke some years ago. (The embarrassing thing about that is, Demetrios does not remember Christos at all, either from their youth or more recently.)

Vasilis, even in his youth, was a very large, very powerful fellow, and I’ve heard stories about his strength for as long as I’ve known Demetrios. The friends here still delight to tell about the time one of their classmates said, “I’m not sure I exist,” whereupon Vasilis knocked him to the ground and shouted, “Now what do you say? Do you exist or not?” (To me, the cool thing about this story is that if the other guy had answered, “I exist!” then a big thank-you to Vasilis would have been in order, while if the answer had been, “I don’t know!” then he also didn’t know who had been punched, and there would have been nobody to punch Vasilis back, not that anyone would have tried.) There was another time that is still talked about, when a certain student, who used to mock the other boys for being Christians, carried his taunts just too far for Vasilis to bear. Vasilis knocked him to the ground, then picked him up, lifting him horizontally to shoulder height, and then just dropped him. Well, not just dropped him, but kneed him, too, on the way down. There is always great hee-hawing when this story is recounted.

Vasilis became an orthopedist and married a pediatrician he had met in medical school, who turns out to be another long-lost friend of Demetrios’, Maria.

Last night, Christos picked us up in his car, recognizing Demetrios immediately and swearing he hadn’t changed a bit, and drove us to the home of Vasilis and Maria, up on the heights near Thessaloniki, a town called Panorama, for its spectular views of the city and the sea.

Vasilis and Maria have a house there, a single, detached dwelling with a grassy back yard and a vegetable garden.

Vasilis is still a large man, although somewhat reduced in size now from prostate cancer. He has been very ill, and was at once at the point of death, and another time was thinking of suicide, but now says he is growing daily better and better.

It wasn’t very long, of course, before I said, “Vasili, I have a problem I wanted to tell you, to get your advice.”

“Oh, yes? What is it?”

“I’m not sure I exist.”

Demetrios began laughing, but nobody else did. After a moment, Vasilis smiled. He doesn’t remember those stories with the same glee the others do. He remembers them with tears (literally) and repentance. He said, “When the teacher came to try to revive that boy, I thought I had killed him.” And he shakes his head, sadly.

We changed the subject quickly.

The conversation, besides including some religion and some politics (as conversations here always do), was mostly about the course of his illness, which began in September. It seems to have done him some good to tell the whole story.

Both Vasilis and Christos speak excellent English, and both have lived in America, so, since they are both such considerate gentlemen, I was able to be included in most of the conversation. Sometimes they’d get carried away in Greek, but as it was important to them, and as it was about medical matters, and since it was 4 old friends getting together again, I just sat happily and watched.

Once in a while, Vasilis would say, “Anastasia is tired; this is so boring for her,” and I’d reply, “I’m fine.” But eventually we caught on that this was his way of saying he was tired, so we got up to leave just after 10:00. Just before we departed, out on the front porch, they all sang one of the old Zoe songs, one of those songs almost militaristic in tone, that sounds like it belongs at a pep rally, the type of song young would-be Heroes of the Faith would be fond of singing, the kind that used to make our neighbor, Thomai, suspect that Demetrios and all his young friends were Protestants, in fact, probably Jehovah’s Witnesses. They sang it for old times' sake, with the vigor it required, but mock vigor now.

I learned something important from that visit. It’s something I already knew on account of my sister Barbara, yet needed to learn again. When I first heard that Vasilis was very sick with cancer, three or four weeks ago, I felt disappointed, and subconsciously, I thought, “Well, then, we won’t be seeing him.”

Why not? Was it not going to be enough “fun” to visit him if he were ill? Did I already consider him as good as dead? Did I imagine that if he were sick he was no longer one of the old gang? What? Please note, besides the hideous self-centeredness of such an attitude, what twaddle it is! Pure nonsense! Vasilis is not as good as dead; he’s as good as alive and well, because he IS alive and we hope getting well. He’s a wonderful person. He’s still very much part of us, part of everyone. And even if all that were not true, now would still not be the time to abandon him! Now is when he most needs his friends. And it clearly did him good to have them around.

We all hope to see one another again at the wedding on Saturday.

Getting Together

Let’s get together, yeah, yeah, yeah!
We can have a swingin’ time.
Let’s get together, whaddya say?
Why don’t you and I combine?

She leaned across the table toward him, her eyes aglow with love. He leaned across the table toward her, his eyes bright with lust. He was handsome; her main attraction was being clearly available.

Their knees touched. Each hand found its counterpart. There were smiles and whispers, sweet nothings in her ear. She was soaking it up. He virtually had her.

And then her cell phone rang. And she answered it! She held a lengthy conversation with some third party, while under the table, he tapped his heels impatiently, making his knees jump up and down in frustration.


Hint from Helen for Adults

Your cell phone, during a date, should never be used to allow a third party to intrude upon your time together. Turn it off as soon as your date begins (not before, though).

First Exception: It’s okay to find ways to share a cell phone, as in looking together at photos stored on it or texting each other messages you’re too shy to say out loud.

Second Exception: Your date turns out to be a dud and you need a third party to rescue you.

Third Exception: You are a doctor on call, or some other emergency worker who really, truly, does need to be reachable. (Courtesy requires this to be made clear when the date is first arranged.)

Hint from Helen for Teens

Ignore the above advice for adults! The day will come soon enough when you, too, can turn off your cell phone. For now, take it with you on every date, keep it on, and use it! Answer your phone every few minutes (that is, each time your parents call you), and in between times, be sure to call them to let them know you are okay. Encourage your date to do the same.

Don’t talk to anyone else on your cell phone, though, unless you want to let your date know you aren’t interested. Even then, perhaps you can find a more polite way to do convey your message.

Christos, Max, and We

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Demetrios has spent the past two days taking care of people, principally his brother. He found him a good dentist and a good gastroenterologist, and made appointments with both. First there were X-rays of the teeth, and while they were at it, they had a bone scan done. Christos has lost 45% of his bone mass (!!!) and has two collapsed vertebrae. I could have guessed the former, because I noticed him recently clutching his thigh, and he had his fingers almost the whole way around it!

Next, to the dentist, who will adjust Christos’ dentures so they fit properly and don’t hurt. Then he should be able to eat more things. There are two natural teeth holding those dentures, which we will try to preserve, but they aren’t in good shape.

The gastroenterologist did a gastroscopy and found nothing worrisome. Christos doesn’t currently have ulcers, although he has them chronically, and has bled from them 14 times in his life. Probably a colonoscopy will follow. Poor Christos has never been in good health. He has never been inclined to look after his health, either.

We’ll be back in September, God willing, to make medical appointments for him and make him keep them, and to be sure he follows through with doctors’ orders instead of saying, “I tried those pills for two days and they didn’t help, so I threw them away.” So much for coming here to try to gain some emotional distance from sickness and death in the family.

I spent the day grocery shopping, cleaning out the refrigerator, and sweeping and mopping all the floors. Also trying to give away this kitten.

I took him downstairs to our tiny park and the children there all crowded around. I got to meet their mothers and/or grandmothers, sitting on the park benches, watching over them. None of the grown-ups wanted the kitty, although they all wanted to pet him. I explained I had to give him away, as I lived in America and was leaving Greece in about 12 days. (So little time! I can’t believe it!) And I was enormously flattered when one of the women asked, “Have you lived in America many years?” She actually mistook me for Greek!!!

“What is his name?” asked a little boy named Stephanos.

“He doesn’t have a name,” I replied, in Greek.

“The cat has no name,” he said, in English. Then, in reply to my unasked question, he added, “Frondistirio,” which is a place where you can get tutoring. He was taking private English lessons.

“That’s very good, “I said, “Bravo!”

Another little boy, Antonios, pointed to the cat and said, “Max!” So that, apparently, is my kitty’s name now.

I had a lot of fun chatting with the children. I don’t need a huge vocabulary for children, although of course theirs is still vastly greater than mine.

After that, I walked, with the kitty on my shoulder, all the way to the pet shop, about a mile and a half away (even without Sylvia making me!) and asked about 20 people, coming and going, if they wouldn’t like a free kitten. I asked women carrying shopping bags, men sitting at sidewalk coffee shops, street sweepers, anybody who looked even vaguely friendly. One of them said, “When it is a kitten, it is a joy, but when it becomes a cat, it’s ‘Panagia mou!’”

(“Panagia” means All-holy, and is a title for Christ’s Mother, so it’s an exclamation something like, “My God!” but taking her name in vain instead of His.)

I also left at the pet shop a hand-printed notice: “Free, Kitten. Small, very, very friendly. Male. “ Plus my telephone numbers and first name. I asked the customers in the pet shop if they wouldn’t like a kitten, but of course they were there because they already had cats or dogs or both.

I left my little notices, all hand-printed, at other places, too, the butcher, two greengrocers, Nikoletta’s general store, Demetra the veterinarian, and Nektarios at “Nek-Net,” his computer store.

KONSTANTINA, surely you want a kitten, don’t you??

Demetrios also took Leonidas to his doctor today. I only heard that the results were good. But afterward we met him and Ianna at a taverna owned by one of his countless nephews. Mena and Kostas came, too, so we had a jolly good company.

Near the end of our meal, a thunderstorm came up, very unusual, with driving, pelting rain, strong winds, and the kind of thunder that is so close you jump. We were outdoors, but in a covered area. We just moved our table another foot inward and were fine.

Then the lights flickered two or three times, and the next moment, everything around us was blacked out. I don’t know if it was the whole city or only the neighborhood we were in.

The proprietor brought two or three candles to each table and we continued our fun, uninterrupted and glad for the cool brought by the storm.

It was after midnight when the rain finally stopped so we could go home. Mena drove us to our house.

Kitty was dry, in spite of having been banished to the balcony during our absence. Demetrios had lowered one of the awnings all the way. The litter box, with brand new litter in it, also stayed dry.

Kitty was extra happy to snuggle up to my chin tonight, especially when the next line of storms passed through, thunderously, a couple of hours later.

Human Jurisprudence and Divine Justice

If justice means giving each person his due, then there is no justice in human legal systems.

Suppose, for example, that a small girl is murdered. How will you recompense her parents? You can’t. You can sentence the murderer to death by hanging or to life in prison with hard labor and no parole, but no matter what you do to him, none of it will make the parents whole, because none of it will bring back their little girl. The murderer may have gotten what he deserves, but the parents and family haven’t, and of course neither has the deceased child.

Or suppose you are a man and you are gang raped by a bunch of other men, and beaten and left to die, and you spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair. Can human legal systems give you back what you’ve lost? Make the trauma and the horror never have happened? Let you walk again? No. No matter what the court does to the rapists, it will not compensate you one iota. It may uselessly gratify your hostility some, but indulging your hostility will actually further harm you as a person. (It will make your hostility grow, too, and crave further gratification.)

There is no true justice in human systems of jurisprudence. They cannot restore a life or make the damage disappear. But God can. No, what God does is even better than that: He transforms the trauma and the injury into something whereby we benefit, profit, grow, so we end up better off than we might have been, had it not happened. We get back all we had lost and much, much more.

God’s justice, then, consists of putting things back to rights. His justice means righting the wrongs, correcting them, rather than uselessly retaliating. His justice means making things as good as they originally were but even better, far better. God’s Justice means when he encounters evil, He transforms it into a good that would otherwise not have existed. Justice is perfecting His creation, damaged by sin. Justice means abolishing wrong, eliminating evil, exterminating death. It means healing the sick, making then lame walk, setting the prisoners free, liberating the people from their oppressors, giving the widow and the orphan what they need, vindicating righteousness.

And punishing the wicked? No. Converting them, rather! True justice, notice, would also restore the murderer and the rapist, and bring them back to their family and friends, new persons, healed, sanctified, made beautiful. That would be the highest justice, because that would be making things as they ought to be, as our loving God intended them to be.

Yet – because God wouldn’t define anything as sin if it weren’t harmful, especially to the perpetrator – the wicked do punish themselves, and in this way (in contrast to the Penal Substitutionary theory of Atonement) the right people are punished, the guilty instead of the Innocent. The right person is also inflicting the punishment: the sinner himself, tegether with satan. And the punishment is in exact proportion to the sin. (If I touch the hot stove, my finger is burned. If I jump from a bridge, I drown. If I tell a lie, I become calloused and false, and hollow.) This is not yet the highest form of justice, but it is the kind most people lust after. Yes, I put it this way because it is totally unchristian to hope anybody will ever suffer for any reason. Or to suppose it is God inflicting the suffering, when it is the sinner all by himself, with no help from anybody but the devil and perhaps other sinners. If you are hoping the wicked will suffer, well, they will, but you have some serious repenting to do for hoping it.

But I’m only hoping it, you say, because otherwise there’s no justice. But there is. It just isn’t the kind you had in mind, the kind driven by hostility and fear, the punitive kind. It’s True Justice, God’s justice.

So where is this True Justice, which consists of correcting rather than punishing injustice, and making everything even better than it was before things went wrong? This True Justice is eschatological, a long word meaning it only appears, in its fullness at least, at the end of the world.

So what’s to make us think it will, if it never yet has?

But it has. We do not yet see the full-grown plant, but the first green leaves do already appear, and they appear in Jesus Christ. He heals the sick, makes the lame to walk, sets the prisoners free, releases us from the bonds of sin, renews and restores His people, corrects ignorance, brings wisdom to cure our foolishness, love to counter our hatred and fear, and His own Body and Blood to doctor or corruptibility and mortality. He vanquishes death and He promises to come again when the time is right, this time in all His glory, to put the whole house in order once and for all. (Beware, all ye who have investments in the disorder!) He comes again in power to consummate all the work of His own hands.

Fathers Day

I forgot all about it this year. I don't think Greeks observe the day.

Here's a photo, thanks to my niece Tisho, of Mom at Dad's gravesite. Do click to enlarge. I suppose the photo says it all.

The Garbage Strike is Over, Thank Heaven

Monday, June 15, 2009

Around here, there is a different arrangement for trash and garbage than we have in Richmond. In Richmond, every household has its own garbage can(s) and we hire one of several companies to come around and empty them every week.

Here in Thessaloniki, there are dumpsters at every intersection (almost) and everybody takes his trash and garbage in bags or boxes and tosses these into the dumpsters. The garbage trucks come around every day or every night, depending upon your neighborhood.

Well, the garbage workers have been on strike for a week now. They are distressed about the site of the dump. I don’t know why. Perhaps for ecological reasons. Perhaps they are quite right. I don’t know. All I know is, a garbage strike in June is not pleasant. With small mountains of garbage building up everywhere, several times what the dumpsters can hold, this city has become increasingly stinky for several days now.

I also don’t know what ended the strike. (Our television has died, so we don’t hear news.) But it’s over, and what a relief!

I spent the day putting the house back into order. After the fact that you miss your company, that’s the second worst part of having them leave – or the only good part, depending upon your point of view. The disorder resulted from our having removed so much of our stuff from the master bedroom, which we gave to them for the duration. Also from not having had time to fold and put away all the laundry we had to do, and also from having too much laundry because the kitten – well, kitty cried and cried to go outside and I have no idea why we were stupid enough not to let him, but he in desperation scraped together a few layers of a bed sheet and used that instead of his litter box. And after that, he thought that was an acceptable alternate place. So we went through three times as many bed sheets as would have been necessary…

I still have the floors to wash, the refrigerator to clean out, and the bathroom to scrub, but at least there is order now. As Demetrios remarked, “The house almost has back its former shape.” Yup.

Happy Birthday, Sydney!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Today, my youngest granddaughter turns 4. I have been unsuccessful in many times to reach her by phone, and I miss her (and all my other grandchildren) terribly!

Meanwhile, here are some pictures I received recently. Sorry I haven't had time to put them through a photo-editor... Click if you wish to enlarge.


Ryan, Sydney, and Connor


Sydney with Connor


Connor, Sydney, Ryan, neighbor Cloe, and I don't know the rest




Kelly with a new haircut




Kelly's brothers with their new haircuts, Ryan on left, Connor on right

There is no “Justice”

Fr. Stephen has pointed out that justice, as thought of in the West, does not exist. That’s to say, if justice means rendering equality, such that each person is repaid the moral equivalent of the good or the evil he has done, and recompensed for the evil he has suffered, that simply does not exist. It doesn’t exist in human systems of jurisprudence, and it doesn’t exist in the divine order, either.

Let’s begin with the latter, with theology. In classical Catholic and in Protestant thought (Protestants having inherited it), we have varying forms of what has come to be called the Penal Substitutionary Theory of Atonement. This theory states that the reason Jesus died was to bear the punishment for our sins which God the Father would otherwise have had to inflict upon us – and/or that He died to repay God the Father the debt we owed Him on account of our sins. This theory assumes that justice means rendering to each person what he deserves. Yet, ironically, the theory is devised precisely in order to avoid doing that!

In the “Pen-Sub” theory of what the atonement means, the first thing that happens is that the wrong Person is punished. The Righteous One is punished while the sinful many, provided they repent, get away scot-free. How is that any kind of justice? Its own proponents know it is not, else they would try to imitate the Lord by doing the same thing. They would go around to prisons offering to take the punishments of convicted offenders. But they know no court would even entertain the idea. No victim of rape, nor any family of a murdered person, wants to see the perpetrator set free and someone else take his place. The very idea is outrageous, both in human jurisprudence and in theology.

The next thing that happens in the Pen-Sub theory is, the wrong Person is thought to be inflicting the punishment, namely, God the Father! But how in the world could He ever derive any pleasure from seeing anybody, much less His own, perfect Son, be tortured and killed? What kind of God would take any pleasure, whether emotional, moral, legal or otherwise, in such a hideous thing? And why? And how would that repay Him in any way? What is He supposed to get out of it? Does He like bloodshed and pain, hoard up horrors and treasure them? Is anything accomplished or corrected or repaired by punishment? In reality, it is the devil in his wrath crucifying Christ, with the collaboration of wicked men. (Acts 2:23) I can’t think of any theology more tragic than that which confuses God with the devil.

We notice, too, that there is no proportional justice in the Penal Substitutionary theory, none of the business of everybody getting his due. This, on three counts:

First, as Fr. Stephen pointed out on his blog, there is no such thing as a sin so great that eternal torment would be a proportional to it. I mean, you’d think even Stalin might have paid his dues after several thousand years of unspeakable misery, and God would be satisfied and have pity.

Second, there is no way Jesus’ three days in Hades compare with even a sinner’s first taste of torment. Why not? Because Jesus’ time there was spent in perfect communion with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit while He conquered Hades. The condemned sinner, however, has no blessed communion with God and knows he has no way of conquering hell, no way out, no pass after three days or three million days.

Thirdly, if Christ endured His sufferings in the stead of all mankind, then even unrepentant sinners should not have to go to hell, since their punishment has already be borne and/or their debt to God the Father is already paid. Either way, once Christ is crucified, the Father gets all the suffering and death due to Him, yet He exacts it again from those in hell, getting it, in effect, twice. Now two people have had to suffer and die for the same sin(s) – unless you are a Calvinist and believe Christ only took the punishment or paid the debt of those predestined to be saved, and not on behalf of the rest. (I’ll give the Calvinists credit, at least, for logical consistency.)

There are many more things wrong with the Penal Substitutionary model of the Atonement, but I have limited myself here to pointing out only one of them, namely that there is no justice in it whatsoever. The whole theory is a travesty, a mockery, an undoing of justice. (And it’s meant to be, because otherwise, if this kind of justice were actually carried out, we’d all be in hell forever.)

There’s no justice in Orthodox theology, either, if "justice" means giving each person his due. I’ll try to explain that in another post. There isn’t even any such justice in human legal systems and I’ll try to explain that, too.

True justice, on the other hand, divine justice, does indeed exist. It’s the only kind that does. But it’s something else. Stay tuned.

Holy Mountain

Sunday, June 14, 2009
Our guests departed at 7:00 a.m. The taxi arrived at our front door and we said our goodbyes and away they rushed. It was sad to see them go. Their visit was the highlight, for me, of this stay in Greece. Sylvia tells me they arrived home safely and with no problems, other than the last flight being delayed a couple of hours.

At noon, Chrysostomos and Roula came in their car to pick us up. We had no idea what the plan was, but were delighted when told the program for the day was to visit Mount Olympos!

Okay, so who can tell me three significant facts about Mount Olympos?

• It is the highest mountain in Greece (9,570 feet).

• It is the original home of the Olympic Games.

• It is the stuff of fairy tales, of legend, of myth, because it is the home of the twelve gods of ancient Greece, of Zeus, the father of all the gods, and his wife, Hera, and the rest. At the top of Mt. Olympos was (and still is, as a rock formation) the Throne of Zeus, from which he hurled his lightning bolts and thunder-hammers. That’s the throne upon which he invisibly sat to watch the Olympic Games on the plateau spread out before him.

And I’ll tell you a fourth significant fact about Mt. Olympos: a saint lived there in the 1500’s, named Dionysios, who built a monastery there. The Germans destroyed it on suspicion it was harboring resistance fighters, and now there is a new monastery nearby, but the old one is also being restored, ever so gradually.

Our first stop was for lunch in a village at the foot of the mountain. We sat outdoors on a perfect day, admiring the views of the snow-capped peaks.

Then we entered the Mt. Olympos National Park. A ranger at the gate jots down your license plate number, “in case of fire,” Demetrios told me.

“Do they have fires very often here?” I asked.

“Oh, yes! Every year. They can’t prove it, but they think there are arsonists.”

Oh, great.

It’s a beautiful mountain, actually a group of peaks, heavily forested with hardwood and evergreen trees, with ferns and all sorts of other flora and fauna. Roula picked a handful of herbs and handed them to me, saying, “Rigani.” Oregano! Imagine, finding oregano growing wild. Roula says many species here are unique; they don’t exist anywhere else.

We stopped at the new monastery of St. Dionysios, had a look around, and continued on our way, stopping at one or two scenic overlooks. The road is somewhat narrow, with hairpin turns and no guardrails; Chrysostomos drove nice and slowly, so I was never scared. We weren’t in any hurry, after all. The idea was to enjoy ourselves, and we were definitely doing that!

We stopped beside a mountain stream and Roula and I went to collect a few pebbles each. We didn’t find any smooth ones, probably because that’s where everybody else also stops to look for pebbles, but we took three of four apiece anyway.

You can’t go all the way up the mountain by car, only as far as a café a little less than halfway up. You have to hike the rest of the way. I’m told it’s about a 4-hour climb for experienced people, plus four more hours back down. We just stopped at the café and had cold drinks.

On the way back down, we came to the older Monastery of St. Dionysios of Mt. Olympos. It is interesting to walk around through the ruins. The main church has already been restored, and so has the refectory, where meals are served to pilgrims after church; donations accepted.

What they do is shoot cement into the old stone walls with a compressor engine, and it spreads through all the cracks and dries into concrete, sealing and strengthening the structures. There are piles and piles of the original stones, which are used for re-building the destroyed parts.

There was a kindly priest-monk there, who chatted with us, then disappeared with Demetrios in tow. Demetrios returned to us 20 minutes later, his face all radiant, so we knew he’d had Confession.

Then, continuing back down the mountain, we came once again to the new Monastery of St. Dionysios. This time, Chrysostom made a request for the museum to be opened for us, and is request was granted. A monk took us there and unlocked the door and showed us around. The museum contains some very old, valuable manuscripts, some hand-written New Testaments, some very old vestments and church vessels. But its main treasure is a room full of bones. They range from a couple of large bones, a couple of skulls, to tiny slivers, most being somewhere in between. They are relics of 40 saints: St. John Chrysostom, St. George (yes, THE St. George), St. Paraskevi, and I cannot remember who all else. The elaborate silver reliquaries in which these bones are kept are of course also treasures,in their own right, of an altogether different sort.

Demetrios bought a book in the gift shop before we headed home.

We didn’t get there until midnight, the traffic was so heavy. The drive, which should have taken less than one hour, took four. The highway between Mt. Olympos and Thessaloniki was bumper-to-bumper, stop and go, and so were the city streets. Sunday night is when everybody returns from their weekends in their villages. Lesson learned.

But what a wonderful day, what a dream come true, to stand upon the shoulders of this legendary mountain, this mountain of ancient lore! And to do it with such dear people as Chrysostomos and Roula made it a hundred times more wonderful yet.

(Roula says someone recently mentioned to her something about wanting a cat. She will ask for me.)

What Does it Mean for God to Be Offended?

As readers/commentators of Fr. Stephen’s blog have illustrated, there is a very strange notion common to certain strains of Western Christian thought, that since God is infinite, any sin we commit constitutes an infinite offense against Him. Therefore, sin requires infinite punishment.

But how do we see the “Most Offended” behaving on the Cross? Here mankind has offered Him the ultimate offense, killing Him, and how does He respond? “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” What meaning does it have to be “offended” if this is the way the Offended One responds?

Or do we seriously think this attitude differs one iota from the Father’s own attitude, when Jesus Himself tells us, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father”? When St. John tells us Jesus was the exact imprint of the divine glory? (Hebrews 1:3) No, His forgiving attitude is identical to the Father’s and the Spirit’s, in every minute detail. There is no conflict in the Holy Trinity, none whatsoever. The Father no more takes offense than the Son does, for they are in complete harmony in all things, being two facets of a single God, and The Son is the Mind of God, the Wisdom of God.

And although it is extremely difficult for us who have been raised in the West to get this through our noggins (at least it is for me!), it really ought not to come as any surprise that God the Father NEVER changes His loving attitude toward us, not in the slightest. Why should this not surprise us? because after all, He is in no way harmed if we disobey His commandments. He only gave them to us for our own good. It is not as though He had determined which behaviors He likes and which He does not just arbitrarily, for no reason at all. Nor does He make this determination because it in some way serves Him. He is not self-serving. “God is love” (I John 4:8) and “love seeketh not her own.” (I Corinthians 13:5) Jesus did not say, “I have come that all men may know and serve Me and bow before Me.” Rather, He said, “I came not to be served, but to serve.” God does not need our service, does not even need for us to exist. He already has the all the fullness of glory independently of us.

Rather, God gave us commandments because the keeping of them would be for our own benefit, the same way a parent commands his child not to touch the stove or to look both ways before crossing the street. And if the child does touch the stove, does the parent get mad at the disobedience and therefore cause the stove to burn the child? If I jump from a skyscraper and hit the pavement and die, is it because God was angry with me for jumping? Or if I chain smoke for 40 years and develop lung cancer, is it because God is getting even with me because for some unknown reason He is opposed to smoking? Of course not! All these things happen just because that’s the way the universe works. It’s the same way with the commands God gives us; they are for our growth and happiness and if we transgress them, it is not He who is harmed, but we. It isn’t He who inflicts the harm, either. The harm just happens because of what we’ve done. The harm is inherent in the sin. (Otherwise, God wouldn’t have had any reason for considering it sin!) The harm is there independently of God’s attitude. God’s attitude toward us is constant and true, not fickle, not changeable.

And what is that attitude? He makes His sun to shine on the wicked and the good alike. He makes His rain to fall upon the just and the unjust, alike. He is kind to the wicked and the ungrateful. Those are Jesus’ own words (Luke 6:35), not the words of some liberal theologian. And to be like our Father in Heaven, Jesus says, we must bless those who curse us, do good to those who hate us, pray for those who abuse us. That is God’s unwavering, unalterable attitude. “God is Love.” “God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.” God does not add to the enormous harm we’ve already done by harming us further! No, the very opposite: He seeks to save us from ourselves and from the harm we do.

We often do not notice the harm we do to ourselves when we disobey God’s instructions. We blind ourselves to what is happening to us inside; we imagine we’ve gotten away with it. But the harm is still being done. We grow gradually alienated from one another, we feel increasingly isolated and lonely, we find life more and more bereft of meaning, we become depressed. Our character erodes, our ability to act freely is diminished as we become enslaved to our passions, our personhood suffers trauma, even our physical health deteriorates. We build ourselves a little, but growing, hell.

No, God is not infinitely offended; He isn’t offended personally at all.

But on behalf of the people or things we’ve harmed, He can be said to be offended, yes? Well, put it this way: He does not take joy in seeing harm done to any aspect of His handiwork. He does not approve of the harm we do and He labors to undo it – but all the while still loving us every bit as much as if we had never sinned. (That’s what grace is, when He still loves us no matter what, even though we don’t deserve it.) Again, if His love for us will never change, what does it mean for Him to be offended?

Doesn’t He require at least some payment for our sins? NO! No, for the very same reason: He does not take joy in seeing harm done to any aspect of His handiwork! He does not approve. Much less does He inflict yet more harm! That’s the devil’s doing and ours, and neither we nor he do it on God’s behalf, either. We may be sure that whatever the devil does, he does in opposition to God, in rebellion and in hatred, not in collaboration. WE are the collaborators with satan; God is not. What God wants, instead of payment for sins, is correction of them, a.k.a., repentance, so that we may become whole again, and holy.

Does that mean God actually DOES NOT give to each person what He deserves? That’s exactly what it means. He gives to each person far better than any of us ever deserved. Note the parable of the laborers in the vineyard in Matthew 20. Notice that “He died for us while we were yet sinners.” (Romans 5:8)

Does this mean everybody is going to be saved? No, not necessarily. It does mean that if you are “in hell,” whether right now or in the ages to come, it is entirely your own doing. Alexandre Kalomiros describes how this happens in his lecture, “River of Fire.”

Now if anyone is perplexed and does not understand how it is possible for God's love to render anyone pitifully wretched and miserable and even burning as it were in flames, let him consider the elder brother of the prodigal son. Was he not in his father's estate? Did not everything in it belong to him? Did he not have his father's love? Did his father not come himself to entreat and beseech him to come and take part in the joyous banquet? What rendered him miserable and burned him with inner bitterness and hate? Who refused him anything? Why was he not joyous at his brother's return? Why did he not have love either toward his father or toward his brother? Was it not because of his wicked, inner disposition? Did he not remain in hell because of that? And what was this hell? Was it any separate place? Were there any instruments of torture? Did he not continue to live in his father's house? What separated him from all the joyous people in the house if not his own hate and his own bitterness? Did his father, or even his brother, stop loving him? Was it not precisely this very love which hardened his heart more and more? Was it not the joy that made him sad? Was not hatred burning in his heart, hatred for his father and his brother, hatred for the love of his father toward his brother and for the love of his brother toward his father? This is hell: the negation of love; the return of hate for love; bitterness at seeing innocent joy; to be surrounded by love and to have hate in one's heart. This is the eternal condition of all the damned.

If you find yourself in hell, it is because you actually prefer to be there, and you prefer it knowingly. It is because you hate, resent, and reject God; because you fear Truth, hate what is Good, feel jealous in the presence of Love, and find Beauty unbearable. It will be your choice, which God will not override, because to do so would be to destroy you as a person and reduce you to an automaton. And God, Who is love, Who created you to become the opposite of automatons, will not do that to you. He will always respect your freedom, which is a part of His own image in you, even if you use it perversely. He does not want to see anybody in hell; far from it; He has done everything possible to keep us from that. But He will even let you have hell, if that is what you really want. If you are in hell, it is in spite of everything God has done for you, is doing for you, and would have chosen for you.

Does the fact that God always loves us, infinitely, eternally, and unconditionally, mean there is no justice? Well, yes and no. It means there is no “justice” in the sense of equality, of giving to each person a reward or punishment equal and only equal to his good or wicked deed. That never existed, either on earth or in heaven, as I will try to explain in an upcoming post. But that never was justice anyway, not true justice. True justice there is, which I will also try to describe in another post very soon.



P.S.) Actually, the fact that God is infinite means the very opposite of the idea that He is therefore infinitely offended. It's because God is infinite that His mercy is infinite. Search any online concordance and note how many times the phrase appears, "His mercy endureth for ever." I think it's 40 times, if memory serves.