I'm Fine, But This Was Scary Stuff

It's something every woman dreads: the notification that the mammogram was not entirely satisfactory and please come back for further investigation. You call up, you make your appointment for the earliest possible time, you wait it out, you pray a lot, you prepare for the worst. You remind yourself that this has happened before, to you, to your sister, to others you know, and it's almost always nothing.  On the other hand, the family history is there...  You remind yourself that if Barbara could do it, so can you, if need be.

The hardest part of the waiting, for me, was all the extra attentiveness from Demetrios. The long, loving looks, the "Let me do that," the wanting to be constantly near. Oh, yes, of course, it's sweet, it's kind, it's wonderful to have such a lovey-dovey husband -- except when you know there's fear behind it.  He's cheerful, but he's scared and you hate that. And he's a doctor.

So the day of the appointment comes, and you go into the x-ray room, and here comes a second shock: they want to re-check BOTH breasts. OMG, has the thing already metastasized? And the x-ray technician says, "Next time, don't wait and do your mammogram the day before you're going away for six months; it give us heart failure."

She takes the pictures and the pain is so bad it gives you your excuse to cry. She goes back to speak to the radiologist. You wait some more, wiping away your tears because the sight of you crying over this is something you are NOT going to inflict upon your husband.  Not yet, anyway.

She comes back. There's no smile, but her words begin with, "The GRRREAT news is..." You still can't smile. She says, "...it's only cysts and we want to see you back here in six months."

Thank You, thank You, thank You!

Kyrie, eleison!

Happy Thanksgiving!

What is the Church?

The Church, in a word, is Christ. She is His Body; she is Christ in all His fullness (Ephesians 1:23); that is, Christ filled up with all His members. Christians are members of Christ. Only in that secondary and derivative sense can it be said that we are the Church; but to put it that way is still misleading. The Church is not us, but Christ-containing-us, as it were.

Note that the inverse is not true. It doesn’t work to say Christ is the Church, for He is far more than the Church. But the Church is no more – and no less – than the body of Christ, sharing His flesh and His blood (Ephesians 5:30), animated by His Spirit (1 Corinthians 3:16).

The whole Church is the Body of Christ. That is, the Church is not some other body from the neck down, while the Head alone is Christ.  No, not merely her Head, but the whole Church is Christ.

Because the whole Church is Christ, and not only part of it is, the clergy are not a separate, privileged class within the Holy Orthodox Church. They do not stand in the place of the invisible Head; He Himself stands in that place.  They do not act in His Person; He acts in His own Person.  Rather, the clergy act jointly with Him, performing the visible counterpart of His invisible ministry.  When we say, "the Church" we are not using the word as a synonym for "the clergy" but we mean the entire Church. No bishop is the "head" of any Orthodox Church but her shepherd and minister. The Head, like the Whole, is Christ and only Christ. The priests and bishops and patriarchs are not infallible; only the whole Church is, in the consensus built over the span of her whole life and not at any given moment or era in her history. The clergy are not the only ones called to proclaim the Gospel. They are not the only ones to whom the Holy Spirit is given. (1 John 2:27) The clergy are not even necessarily our leaders. That is, we follow whoever manifests the life of Christ in his or her own flesh, whoever speaks in His Voice. We hope our clergy are among those, but it isn’t always so. Ordination is thought of more in functional terms than structural. Priesthood is a particular role, not a special status. If it were a status, it would be wrong to withhold that status from, say, women. But it is not; it is a very particular function, and one that needs a man, and a very particular sort of man. (If you want to acquire status among the Orthodox, humble yourself and strive to become more and more like Christ, allowing Him more and more to live His life in your flesh. Succeed in that and we will revere you and follow you, no matter who you are.)

Another biblical metaphor for the Church is the Vine and the branches. (John 15:5) You cannot separate or even rightly distinguish the two. And the destiny of Christians is to be so transfigured into the image of the Son (Romans 8:29-30) that it will be just as problematic to tell where Christ leaves off and we begin, or where we leave off and He begins.

A third biblical metaphor for the Church is marriage, the union between a husband and a wife. The Church, here, is called the Bride of Christ. Many non-Orthodox people misuse this metaphor to make a distinction between Christ and His Church, but the purpose of the metaphor is the opposite: to speak of the union, of becoming one flesh in the sweet bonds of love.

The Church is not, properly speaking, an institution. The Church has her institutions, and they are all human and suffer from the frailties attendant thereupon. Those institutions may even from time to time be found to be corrupt. But they are not the Church. The Church is the body of Christ and as such, is holy and pure. Even when her members sin, she is always the sinned-against, and not the sinner. The Church is Christ.

Because the Church is Christ, we Orthodox do not speak of Christ “gathering” His Church. Christ is not “gathered”. Rather, He gathers us into His Church; that is, into Himself. Christ, in baptism and chrismation (confirmation) simultaneously incorporates us into Himself and seals our own individuality.

Because the Church is Christ, we do not suppose her subservient to the Holy Scriptures. Christ is not subservient to them. Rather, from within her life in, with, and as Christ, the Church produces the writings; by comparing them with her life in, with, and as Christ, she discerns and proclaims which of the writings to regard as canonical and how to interpret them. The Holy Scriptures are more like an instrument in the hands of the Church than a weapon held over her. It is because of her life in, with, and as Christ, filled with the Holy Spirit, that the Church, according to Scripture is “the pillar and foundation of the truth.” (1 Timothy 3:15) The Church, having been given the mind of Christ (I Corinthians 2:16), is the guarantor of Truth. The Scriptures bear witness to this Truth. By divine intent, even the angels in heaven learn the Truth “by the Church”. (Ephesians 3:10)

If your denomination doesn't experience itself in this way, it may not really be the true Church after all. 

I believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church.

Weirdness Happens (An Illustrated Triple Whammy)

So I designed a small baby blanket to use up my leftover yarns, because I really couldn’t have a stash in the tiny flat in Greece; there’s no place to store it.

The plan was simple: start with 4 stitches on 4 needles and knit in rounds until you run out of yarn. That way, even if the blanket is rather small, it will be perfect for a very premature baby.

I alternated one knit round in coral and one purl round in pastel pink. That way the two colors became thoroughly mixed and to the eye looked like one color.  I put in a cream stripe, and that’s where the first bit of weirdness showed up. Was it just me? I laid out the work and asked Demetrios what colors he saw, and he, too, saw bright pink and pale green! An optical illusion. He could hardly believe me when I said there was not a single stitch of green in the whole thing. (And the more you stare at it, the greener it looks.)

The second weirdness showed up because I decided to make a spiral. So picture this. We start out with a simple square.

We shift the corners one stitch to the right as we go, making a pinwheel pattern.

To use up all our yarn, we make stripes, which worked in the round become squares – and voilà.

Oops.

Apparently pinwheel patterns need to be done without stripes, or else with very narrow, very close ones.

I decided to throw out the entire project. It was a pity, because the blanket was already 17 inches across.  I took if off the needles, laid it flat, and smoothed it out. That’s when one more surprise then showed up. Each edge was shaped like stretched-out, distorted S.

Oops.

The “squares”, still not aligned with one another, were actually the same shape as the edge, the curves becoming more and more pronounced as the project grew larger.

EPILOGUE:  I actually salvaged this one!  I added more stripes, so instead of looking like mistakes, they formed a progression.  Instead of trying to correct the curves of the edges, I exaggerated them, pinning out the finished blanket and steaming the curves permanently into place.  No way to fix the weird color illusion, but that's kind of fun, I decided.




The Finished Result.  Not Great, But Not Too Bad

 My neighbor took this for you because I don't know how to use a digital camera!  She uploaded it, too, and e-mailed it.  As both sides are alike, I accidentally laid it backside up, so the spiral is going in the other direction, but never mind.  Click if you care to enlarge.  Lean back from your computer a bit if you want to see the "green" effect more clearly.

Why He Wept

You simply must read s-p's  post, here, and that's all I'm going to say about it.

More Kid Quips

My granddaughter, Sydney, is learning to read in kindergarten.  She has been taught to sound out words.  She has a set of flash cards her parents hold up for her to read.  The words are very simple ones.  When her mother held up the card that read BUT, Sydney began sounding it out:  "B, U, T -- beauty!"

* * *

Also a few days ago, Sydney said, "I know how to spell knee."

This surpised her mother, since knee was not among her spelling words so far. 

"You do?" she asked.

"Sure.  N-E-Y."

That was a very good guess, said her mother, but it's not how knee is spelled.

"Yes, it is!" the little girl protested.  "Syd-NEY!"

To Be or Not To Be on Facebook

Deb has a new post on why she has quit Facebook.  It's very worth reading and so are the comments.

My brother-in-law recently got himself and his two young daughters off FB; he said too many posts were raising too many questions in his household.

I'm very inclined to do the same.  I despise Facebook.  I seldom post anything there, and seldom check it.

Of the posts I receive, perhaps 1 in 10 is worth reading.  I love you, dear friends and relatives, but that doesn't mean I want to read about every time you burp. It means tell me something significant happening in your life, in your mind, in your heart.  Very few people ever do; perhaps Facebook isn't the right medium for it.  (Surely people don't  really live such dreary, banal lives!  Do they?) 

I do not have time for those fantasy games.  And unless you are sick in bed or unemployed or something else is wrong, you don't either.  Life is full of so many better things! 

In short, Facebook is a tool for which most people haven't figured out any more than an exquisitely vapid use, at best, and an evil use quite often. 

But -- it's on FB that pictures of my children and grandchildren are posted.  It's also an easy way to stay in touch with people, marginally at least.   So I'm thinking about it.  Maybe I'll de-friend all but my immediate family and as for the others, if we really want to stay in touch, we will, in other ways. 

Thank you, Deb. 

P.S.)  Never been on Twitter.  I wonder, is it even worse?

Packaging Jesus

The problem, when trying to re-package Jesus, or even package Him at all, is to find some sort of wrapping that is more enticing, more attractive, more beautiful, more delightful, more glorious than Himself.

If you can, then you are "selling" the wrong Jesus.

If you can't, then it is better to leave Him unpackaged, as any packaging will appear (and be!) tawdry  in comparison.

Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands,
Robed in the blooming garb of spring;
Jesus is fairer, Jesus is purer,
Who makes the woeful heart to sing.

Fair is the sunshine, Fairer still the moonlight,
And all the twinkling starry host;
Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer
Than all the angels heaven can boast.

--from "Fairest Lord Jesus", a hymn Protestants used to sing

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION:  I love this hymn!  Well, most of it.  I quote it not as an example of trying to package Jesus, but in contradistinction to that.

Belatedly but Safely Back in Richmond

We arrived here at 2:10 this morning after a very long journey in which amost everything else that could go wrong did.

Hint: Do not stay in a Travelodge Hotel. That is, unless every other hotel is already overbooked because half the people staying in them didn't intend to but had to because the fog caused their planes to arrive so late.

Thank you: to Andrew Kerr, for driving two foreign strangers to the Travelodge after the shuttle bus service had ended for the night. We shall never forget your kindness.

Hint: Do not fly USAir. (We ignored the advice of a friend on this matter and now regret it.)

Hint: It would be really good if everywhere you went your carry-on bag didn't have to contain 19 medical books plus a laptop computer.

Complaint: London's Heathrow Airport only informs you of your gate number 20 minutes before the scheduled departure time. Departure time, not boarding time. Then you have 20 minutes to find that gate and walk a mile or more (no exaggeration!) to get there, towing carry-ons.

Hint: If you do fly USAir, be aware that their policy nowadays is that every plane shall push off 10 minutes earlier than the scheduled departure time. Of course, that's only for your connecting flight. Your original one is more likely to be 3 hours late.

Hint: Your gate number is actually printed on your boarding pass. Of course, it's only the planned (as distinct from the actual) gate number, so if you go there in time to board, you may find yourself further than ever from wherever your plane really is boarding.

Hint: Phildelphia's airport also has mile-long distances (yes, really) between concourses. Take the electric shuttle cart. It isn't only for the aged and the infirm, and it's free. Tip the driver anyway because she will probably be the only person at the airport who is going to treat you with a kind and cheerful attitude.

Hint: Major road work on interstate highways is usually done late at night and into the wee hours of the morning, causing lane closings and hour-long traffic jams.

Thank you: to my brother-in-law, Daniel, for picking us up at the Baltimore Airport, later than planned. Also for keeping our car all summer. And returning it to us cleaner (and with more gas) than we left it.

Hint: A hot bath will (temporarily) soothe leg muscles that have been running several miles and arm and neck muscles sore from getting carry-ons (with 19 medical books and laptop computer) in and out of overhead bins.

Counting Down

Our days here are rapidly dwindling, as are the hours I’ve purchased at the internet café. We’ll be back in Richmond late Monday. Meanwhile, the usual round of farewells is going to keep us very busy – and tired. I don’t know when I can post anything again; possibly not until we are back in the U.S.

I miss my family, especially the children, so much it hurts, and I will be very glad to be within visiting range of them again!!

How Should Church Decisions be Made?

How about by casting lots?  There are 21 verses in the KJV in which this is done.  In Leviticus 16:8, it is commanded by God Himself.  Lots are to be cast to choose which of two goats shall be slaughtered and burned upon the altar, and which shall be the scapegoat, sent out alive into the wilderness, symbolically bearing away Israel's sins.  In Acts 1:26, Matthias is chosen as an apostle by lot.

So there's plenty of biblical precedent, or warrant, or whatever, for making decisions this way, including very important ones.

Or how about by dreams?  St. Peter had one that convinced him Gentiles should be accepted into the Church.  (Acts 10, 11).  St. Joseph had one that caused him to flee to Egypt with Mary and the newborn Jesus.    Joel 2:28 says, "And it shall come to pass afterward, [that] I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions," and this verse is quoted in Acts 2:17, in St. Peter's sermon.  There are dozens of places in the Bible in which God appears to people in dreams:  Pharoah, Nebudchadnezzar, Jacob...

Just food for thought when issues of "authority" arise.

A Visit to Halkidiki

Saturday, 06 November

It’s not really that there’s so much going on I have no time for blogging; it’s that I’ve spent my spare time finishing a baby blanket because I find I don’t like coming back a year later and having to finish up some old project before beginning a new one. So now I have a pair of blankets, alike except in minor details, to donate to the hospital for preemie twins, in gratitude for the excellent care my twin grandsons received when they came a month early. Been meaning to do this for six years!

It’s been a low-key week for me, although Demetrios has been somewhat busier meeting friends he had not yet caught up with on account of being so busy writing, plus doing his usual round of doctoring. Usually at least two or three people seek his advice while he’s here. So one of Leonidas’ 76 quadrillion relatives has a bad leg and one of our friends has high anxiety resulting in high blood pressure and another, to my distress, is under the care of a homeopath, which would be okay except when it means rejecting standard medical care that seems obviously indicated. What complicates the situation is that this homeopath is also a priest, so now it becomes not only a medical matter but also a religious one. Trusting the medical advice of a homeopath has become a test and/or an article of faith.

Yesterday one of my dreams came true when Pelagia and George took us to their house in Halkidiki for the day. Their house is near the southern tip of the Cassandra Peninsula, the westernmost of the three “fingers” of Halkidiki that juts out into the sea. (The easternmost finger is Mt. Athos.) It’s in a picturesque town called Kardia (yes, ”Heart” just south of the better known and charming tourist town of Hanioti. So we drove to Kardia, meeting Kostas and Mena at the house.





Map of Greece with Halkidiki in Yellow




Cassandra Peninsula


It’s a big house, but divided into two smallish apartments, completely separate from each other, one downstairs and the other upstairs. Downstairs, as you walk in the front door, is a small reception room with a bathroom off it, full of cleaning fluids, mops, brooms, buckets, basins. Then to your right, a living room with fireplace, and further right, a dining room. There is a kitchen for one person at a time, which is all they need in a vacation home where they do a minimum of food preparation.

Upstairs are a living room, bathroom, and two bedrooms, one with a double bed, one with 3 single beds. No kitchen has as yet been installed.

I don’t know how to describe it any further; it was, in fact, rather nondescript. It doesn’t look like your idea of a vacation home by the sea.

We walked a few blocks down to the sea, for Pelagia and George don’t live in the touristy part of town, which in summer is jammed full of thousands of people, and where the noise never stops until the wee hours of the morning and the traffic is bumper to bumper. They live in a quieter area, where actual residents live.

The sea was clear as glass, many shades of blue: turquoise, azure, cyan, indigo, navy, cobalt. And there’s so much of it! From the tops of hills, driving down, you can see such vast expanses of shining water!

Mena has pain when walking, so once we came to the beach, we didn’t walk far, only about a quarter mile to a taverna, where we had our one and only meal of the day – but what a meal it was! Six different kinds of seafood, three salads, fried potatoes, fresh. Plus dessert on the house, cake, ice cream, and baked quince, which tastes a lot like baked apple but more fragrant.

Then we walked slowly back toward the house, through quaint little streets, where many of the shops and eateries are closed for the winter. “What do the people here do in the winter?” I asked.

“They sit around playing cards!” said Pelagia. They make more than enough money in the tourist season to keep them all year long.

“Anastasia!” I heard Demetrios calling. “Come here! Look at this!”

I took me a moment to spot the thing that had caused him such excitement. It was a calico kitten asleep atop an old canvas bag that had been thrown into a dumpster.

The kitty was snoozing and showed no sign of awareness of my approach. So I reached out a hand and petted it, very softly, on the rump.

To my surprise, the kitty didn’t startle and then jump down and run away. Instead, she mewed and asked for more petting. I think she must have smelled seafood on my fingers. (Yes, of course I used a fork, but you know how it is; there are bones to remove from your mouth.)

She was pretty and friendly and scrawny and Demetrios was completely taken with her. We would have adopted her, had it been at all possible. But it just isn’t. Last year we had to find new homes for the cats we already had.

We intended to start home by 5:00, long enough before dusk to be able to see some more sights along the way, but we didn’t actually get underway until 5:30. It was still light enough to see a lot of the pretty scenery, pine trees, palm trees, Mediterranean houses, hills, bays, and the next peninsula over.

It was dark when we came to a little church Pelagia and George wanted us to see, but fortunately, the church was open and an old man, apparently the caretaker, we sitting in the narthex.

So I’m willing to believe a lot, but the story that goes with this church and its special icon seems to me a little too pat, a little too predictable and a little too much like the way popular imagination would have it be. (Matter of fact, quite a few stories like this share these characteristics, it seems to me.) Anyway, the story is that a man walking toward his home one evening saw a bright light out in the sea. As he walked along, he looked at the light from time to time, wondering what it was, and it seemed to be moving in toward land, and finally it seemed to have reached the beach. He pointed it out to the other villagers when he arrived home, and they all watched it until late at night.

In the morning, they went down to the beach to see if they could see what had happened. And there they found a large, flat stone (about 4 feet high and two and a half feet wide) with an image of the Theotokos painted on it.. They wondered what they ought to do, discussed it at length, and then hauled the stone up the hillside a little, further away from the waves. Next morning the stone had moved back to where the people had found it. They moved it away, back up the hill a bit. And (as you can already predict if you’re familiar with very many of these stories) this kept happening several times, until the villagers concluded this was where the Theotokos wanted her icon to be. They thought they should build a church there to house it.

They asked the Turkish authorities for permission, but were turned down. The Turkish ruler and his assistant came to see the rock with the icon and ridiculed it and began stomping upon it to show their contempt.

Mistreating an icon is always a bad idea, as you also know from multiple other icon stories. The Turks’ feet got stuck in the stone as if it were dough and they couldn’t get out. Finally (you could predict this, too) they asked the Christians to pray for them to become unstuck, and promised to be baptized, together with their families, if God should release them from this stone. So the Christians prayed and God freed the Turks and they were baptized and gave permission to build the church you can still see today.

The icon is still there, too, or at least the stone is. There are a few traces of paint remaining, but you cannot see any picture. Normally, that is. Sometimes it re-appears for a few days at a time. There’s a photograph on display that purports to show this.

Sometimes the icon weeps, too. It wept in 1940 just before the Greeks were invaded by Italy. It wept again in 1974 when the Turks invaded Cyprus. Most recently, it wept in 1993, during the events in the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia).

And you can still see in this stone, clearly and with absolutely no room for doubt, two deep human footprints, each toe distinct.

What I think is, the rock was obviously thick mud at some primordial time when someone stepped in it. Then, over eons, the mud became petrified and one day this stone showed up on the beach. And the villagers considered it a marvel, which in its own way it definitely is. So they painted an icon on it (the remnants of which look very much like the remnants of the frescoes on the church walls) and the rest of the story is embroidery — except perhaps the weeping.

“A stone that big doesn’t wash up on a wave,” says Demetrios. So maybe the tide brought it in. I don’t know!

Demetrios bought an icon from the church to give to Stelios and Anastasia when we see them tomorrow.

At least, reading this story (on an enormous plaque on the wall), I did learn the answer to one question I’ve had for a long time: how is it that Greeks, mainland Greeks anyway, having so much gorgeous shoreline, didn’t usually build their houses along it? Most of the waterfront real estate is only now being developed. Most villages, except fishing villages, are built away from the sea. They don’t take advantage of the gorgeous views. Why not? The answer, obvious but only in retrospect, is a single word: pirates.

We came home exhausted and it was only 8:00. We were ready for bed, but made ourselves stay up a couple of hours before we crashed.

Election Day, etc.

In the early afternoon we had lunch with Stelios and Anastasia. Stelios is one of Demetrios’ Old Friends from their university days, and they also happen to be near neighbors. So they walked toward our flat and we walked toward theirs, met somewhere in between, and walked together to a nearby taverna.

We wanted to be the hosts, but they said no, because this was in lieu of their son’s wedding feast, which we couldn’t attend because we were in America at the time. So we said we’ll all come back to our house afterward for dessert, but Anastasia said no, because she had already made us a special dessert.

Anastasia and Stelios are such special people, so good-hearted, so warm.

They have a knack of what psychologists call “Active Listening;” saying back to you what you just said so you know they understood. They also have a most congenial way of agreeing with whatever you say.

“…so it was all rather unfortunate,” you say.

“Very unfortunate!” they say, in unison.

“And we didn’t know what to say,” you continue.

“No, of course you didn’t,” they say.

“The book unites psychology with neurology and anatomy and anthropology…” you say.

“Ah, a synthesis of so many things,” they say.

“the first chapter was so difficult to write.”

“Very difficult! Certainly. It’s a deep subject.”

“But the rest,” you say, “should be easier.”

“Easier, of course. Once you have a good beginning, the rest follows.”

We had a good time and a good meal, the usual taverna fare, cooked over charcoal. Then we went to their house. We gave them the icon Demetrios bought at the church last night. They have virtually the same one on their wall already, but this one is fancier.

Their apartment has an open plan; the living room, family room, dining room and kitchen are all one space. The living room is divided from the family room by back-to-back sofas. The dining room is defined by an oriental rug in earth tones, but bright. The kitchen is big enough to include a breakfast table (making two tables, because the dining room has another. There are bedrooms off a hallway, but I haven’t seen them so cannot describe them. All the furniture has a walnut finish; even the refrigerator is housed in a walnut cabinet, and so is the dishwasher. The radiators, too, have walnut-colored grilles over them, on the top of which are set family photographs. There is a lot of furniture, as compared with our flat, which is sparsely furnished; and I notice the plethora of furniture makes the place look more like a home. (Of course, their space is greater than ours, so more fits in it.)

The walls are covered with Stelios’ paintings. Two of them are of subjects my father also painted; a mountain called the Vetterhorn and a church by a stream with an onion dome. Stelios, unlike Dad, uses bright colors, and warmer ones. I wish I could commission two paintings from him!

Anastasia served her homemade cherry liqueur. She took a kilo of cherries, washed them, put them in a large jar, added a cup of sugar, a stick of cinnamon, and 10 cloves, closed the jar, and set it out in the sun for a month. The she strained the contents of the jar and added brandy to the mix; I forgot to ask how much, but only a little. Anyway, the result is beautiful!

Her dessert was what the Greeks call a tourta, something like a cake, but not necessarily baked. It had layers of chocolate cookies, chestnuts, cocoa and cream. It weighted about 4 pounds, but only contained 10 milligrams of sugar, on account of Demetrios being diabetic. Somehow, you didn’t miss the sugar one bit!

So we chatted for another hour or so and them came home for a nap. On ur way out the door, though, Anastasia handed us a large, heavy bag, for a gift. It turned out to contain six saucers, 6 demi-tasse cups, and 6 coffee cups. !!!

In the evening we went out atain, this time with Kostas and Mena and Pelagia and George.

It is election day in Greece, for local offices, that is. So this was a get-together with Mena and Kostas and some other friends, Eleni and Anesti, ostensibly to watch election returns. I thought it would be a nightmare, a whole evening devoted to the discussion of Greek and international politics. It turned out to be highly amusing, though, with much shouting and gesticulating, the surest indicators that the Greeks are having a ball. I even added my two cents’ worth from time to time.

We didn’t watch much television and we broke up around midnight.

The Other Annoying Thing About Greek Time

...is that you cannot count on it.

You cannot calculate it by projecting from your many years of experience and observation. That would be a misguided attempt to employ scientific method. Don’t do it! Greek time has nothing to do with science. Or any other method.

It’s not that the Greek tells you one thing while intending another; that would be a lie. He’s not intending to deceive you; the thing to recognize is, he isn’t intending anything at all. A Greek totally improvises his life. He will arrive when he arrives and he hopes that may possibly be about the time he tells you – or not, but since you try to pin him down he feels he has to give you some answer and he tosses out a time that seems to him reasonably plausible.

Do not say to yourself anything like, “Well, let me see… my husband and brother-in-law say they will be back for lunch by noon, so about 12:30 I’ll start cooking and it should be ready about the time they come, somewhere along about 1:00 or 1:30.” That’s the very day they will come home at 12:15, starving.

Baby Porcupine

One of our wildlife rehabbers in Richmond sent this photo. Is this adorable or what?

David and Julia Visit Us, Part 2

Sunday, 31 October

Attending Divine Liturgy was just part of it all, part of the Cultural Experience. We took Julia and David to St. Sophia, since it is Byzantine and for all the sightseeing we did yesterday, we didn’t manage to show them a single of one the 14 Byzantine churches here.

We had given them print-outs of the service in English, but still, it has to be difficult when you don’t understand the language. I hope it was at least interesting.

Julia said the sermon had been interesting, “But I had to disagree with the third sentence.” :-)

After church and a light lunch at an eatery just off Aristotle Square, we had time for a little more sightseeing. We showed them the Roman forum and the Church of. St. Demetrios. There was a baptism in progress, so we all got to see the infant immersed three times and named – what else? – Demetrios. A little girl was awaiting her turn to be baptized.

We went down into the crypt, where I had never been before, and it may be the most interesting part of the church. It’s the old bathhouse where St. Demetrios and St. Nestor were imprisoned and then martyred. The crypt also used to house St. Demetrios’ myrrh-streaming remains, although today they are upstairs. There was a stone trough from the space for the coffin to the outside of the church, about 8 inches wide (at least), for the myrrh to flow out. It used to flow all the way to the sea.

Lunch was lamb roasted over charcoal and it was delicious.

After siesta, Mena took us in her car to the kastro (“castle”) at the top of the ridge behind the city. It isn’t exactly a castle; it’s a huge tower, part of the ancient fortifications. If memory serves, the wall was built in Alexander’s time and strengthened in Roman times.




Demetrios, David, Anastasia, and Julia in Front of Castle Door



With Mena



Ancient City Wall With View of Thessaloniki Below


In the little town beyond the wall, there was a feast in progress. Today is the Feast of the Unmercenaries. What a translation! That isn’t even a word in English. I vote we call it, in English, the Volunteers, or the Unpaid, referring to several saints who were physicians and did not charge for their services, especially Sts. Cosmas and Damian.

Anyway, there was a procession underway through the streets of the village, no doubt with an icon of Sts. Cosmas and Damian, led by a marching band, which complicated Mena’s already tricky driving chore.

I assured David that Mena is an expert driver, but he wasn’t worried. “It’s not the same as Corfu, is it?” he asked. “It isn’t like having almighty drop-offs on either side of you just as you run out of road and are trying to figure out where reverse is.”

Then we briefly visited the monastery where Mena’s daughter Elpida was married, and so was Demetrios’ brother Christos, the one where the monks raise peacocks. There’s also a tame cat there, all white with one blue eye and one green. I picked her up and hugged her because it’s so seldom you get to do that here.

Then it was on to Leonidas’ house, where Ianna fed us a pre-supper supper and we sat around talking for an hour or so before going to the taverna owned, I said, “by one of Leonidas’ 78 cousins.”

“Oh, yes, right,” said David.

“Don’t exaggerate,” said Demetrios.

“I’m not!” I protested. “He really does have 78 first cousins!”

Nobody believed me and of course they were right. Leonidas told us he only has 76 first cousins. “But many more,” he said, if we count second cousins.”

“And one of them owns the taverna.”

“No, that’s a niece.”


At Ianna's and Leonidas' House:  Ianna, Julia, Anastasia, Leonidas, Demetrios







At the Taverna.  L-R:  Ianna, Rena, Mena, Julia, Anastasia, Demetrios, Kostas, Theodosios, Leonidas



At the Taverna:  Ianna, Rena, Mena



At the Taverna:  Anastasia, Demetrios, Kostas, Theodosios, Leonidas


The company was most of the people who were at Mena’s yesterday, minus three who live the furthest away.

David told about the time he was being treated for Bell’s Palsy and the treatment involved mild electric shocks to his face. He walked into the room, he said, and the nurse, preparing for the treatment, looked over at the equipment and said, “Oh! New machine, I see.”

Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it? So she fiddled with the dial some, and after a try or two, got it right.

Next visit, another nurse, looking at the equipment, said, “Oh, a new machine!” and David’s heart sank. She, too, got it wrong the first time or two.

Next visit, David found himself alone in the treatment room for a few minutes, and there he noticed his records. So he opened the folder to take a look “and there, on the sheet of paper was written, ‘TIMID.’”

Mena told the joke about Al Capone standing before the Pearly Gates, and St. Peter says, “You know you have to go to hell.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Since you are an Italian American, you can have your choice of the American hell or the Italian hell.”

So Al Capone goes down and takes a look. In the American hell, he sees all kinds of tortures and misery, so goes to inspect the Italian hell. But on his way to the Italian hell, he passes the Greek hell, where he sees people feasting and hears them laughing and singing.

So he tells St. Peter, “If you don’t mind, I would like to go to the Greek hell” and St. Peter obliges.

When he arrives in the Greek hell, he asks the merry-makers what’s going on. “I thought hell was supposed to be a place of torment.”

“Oh,” say the inmates, “It is. But our Greek demons are on strike!”

* * *

Another joke has Obama praying and asking God how long it will be before the American economy recovers.

“About a hundred years,” God replies.

And Obama begins to cry. “I won’t be around by then,” he tells God sorrowfully.

Then Putin prays and asks God how long it will take for the Russian economy to recover.

“A hundred and fifty years,” says God.

And Putin begins to cry. “I won’t be around by then,” he says sorrowfully.

Then the Greek Prime Minister prays and asks God how long before the Greek economy recovers.

And God begins to cry.

* * *

The thing to notice about both these jokes is that they are aimed at Greece and Greeks. They may be funny, but they are part of the “We are the worst, least-organized, most incompetent people anywhere” propaganda. We can’t even get hell right.

In spite of that, we laughed a lot; and with many jokes and stories and sharing of great friendship and love, the night grew late. We sang a few songs, concluding with “Goodbye and Joy,” for David and Julia.

Rena, so very kind, had little gifts for Julia and me as we departed, which turned out to be necklaces, a red one for Julia and black one for me.

We never even remembered it was Hallowe’en.


Monday, 01 November

We had breakfast with David and Julia at their hotel and then saw them off. That is, we put them in a taxi and Demetrios told the driver where to take them. It’s a good day for flying.

Nothing, absolutely nothing here was like the elegance Julia and David are used to. But I have a feeling it was at least interesting, maybe educational. And there’s no doubt the love and friendship lit and warmed all our hearts.

It was a great joy to see them again and now we’re going to miss them a lot!