An Athens inside

My socks had been cotton bayous in my tired shoes since leaving the hotel and I wanted nothing more than to lay down and read a book. But if it might be your only day in Athens, you have to walk up to the Acropolis. So I did.

View of Athens from near the church

Up stone streets where musicians played and babies sang, crowds of Greeks and visitors sweating in the same language, and onto the slopes of that historic place. Not yet to the big names, I came across a small church. Small. Too small to show up on any google map I can find.

Inside was cool and calm. Pillars and arches, some older than others, history’s refurbishment, and a few paintings whose holy figures have mattered much to many over the centuries.

I’m not much for dogma, and organized religion sometimes strikes me as distractions from any core message they purport to contain, but this place felt good, cool on a hot day, calm in a roiled month. I took a photo, then just relaxed to breathe the stillness within stone walls. It was just what I needed.

My wee chapel inside

And two tourists showed up, overly loud American conversation, clicking cell phone photos as they scanned for anything worth instagramming. Smacks of chewing gum and “OMG Sarah” clashed off the corners that had been quiet and they barged through behind the altar wall without any pause for deference or thought.

Bustled around, blabbered and dithered, then went on their youthful way. The lithic peace came back immediately. It hadn’t left. The calm of a longer perspective was there the whole time, no matter what jangling discordance of the moment intruded.

That’s how I’m trying to hold my soul today, as an Attorney General perjures himself and his party doesn’t seem to mind, as a sinister foreign plot contaminates my government, who receives it with open arms, and as common sense and human decency seem inadmissible to the court of public opinion.

They’ll probably bustle right back out again. In the meantime, I care, but I have within me a geologic permanence, as far as such things as stone can go. Quiet corridors of time that have echoed with centuries of errors and misfortune but come out sacred anyway.

Plus it’s Friday and life is good. Enjoy your weekends, my friends!

Greece, and a benediction on the eve of judgment day

I confess, my 1st impression of Athens was of spray paint.
Ugly tags on buildings once splendid, scattered splatters on
shells that used to be homes, and chemical layers on
anything that used to have a purpose. Kinda dark, I know.

Democracy, theater, and literature. Mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. Olive oil, feta, and loincloths. Greece is the birthplace of so many of western civilization’s highest achievements. But I had bandwidth for none of it.

All I could think of was the unthinkable, the pending, ongoing, seemingly unstoppable personal disaster that I somehow needed to fix. The right combination of words, the proper demonstration of the emotion in me, the right something to fix what was wrong. My lady’s flight would land in a few hours, and I had no idea what to do.

Okay so some of it was fun

My pen was useless, journal didn’t want to listen, and voices inside couldn’t agree on what to talk about. It was like Spain in there, everyone talking, no one listening. So I let my feet take over, step by step, looking for something to find.

Found a church. Went inside. Met a man who looked at me from the other side of our linguistic divide. Built a bridge of gestures, smiles, and a half-heft of my camera out of my bag, and he waved his hand in permission.

“Please. Yes. Photo ok.” He grew stern. “Please, five minute only. Then is… Greek economy.” He shrugged and I pretended to understand, until he moved a tapestry to reach the circuit breakers and flipped the lights on.

The Church of St Demetrius Psirri
Athens, Greece

Ah. No money for the electric bill. But economic concerns are no match for Greek hospitality and generosity, possibly part of what got them in the current mess, and certainly fundamental in what will get them out of it.

But I wasn’t thinking about the politics of unity or separation, the psychology of blame and castigation, or the economics of exploitation by the wealthy of the poor and by the poor of themselves. I was in a church. And what a church it was, this neighborhood chapel too unremarkable to show up on any maps.

Glittering chandeliers hung from fresco'd ceilings where angels watched over a gold-leaf landscape of heaven. Censers dripped their residual aromatic prayers, and the paint of ages flaked off the arches of history, all illuminated in the defiantly boisterous light of the electric lightbulb.

Don't you do it. Don't you
start humming Smooth Criminal

I was raised in Protestant simplicity, white walls and minimalist iconography, but here was a density of shining saints slaying dragons and offering their benedictions from behind ornate layers of polished silver. Saints with knowing eyes. A black madonna with a silver hand, and I tried desperately not to think about Michael Jackson’s glove.

It was impressive. But I still had no use for established gods, all of which still looked political. What I found holy was the smile of that man. His desire to show me something he found beautiful, and to give me a positive experience, no reward asked, no sinful motivation, just human kindness.

Now that’s an altar where I would light a candle. Even if it doesn’t solve my problems.