When TV's "60 Minutes" visited the legendary Greek monastic island Mount Athos the other night I watched with rapt interest because I found myself so personally involved. Fifty-five years ago as a young Episcopalian deacon I spent an unforgettable month on the island prior to my ordination to the priesthood.What an opportunity. Did I make the best of it and learn important new things about life including my own?
For me this wasn't any kind of singular foray into monastic life and spiritual retreats. I'd become rather accostomed to them over a period of time. In 1953 I stayed three months at the Mt. Calvary retreat house of the monastic Order of the Holy Cross in Santa Barbara, California. Afterwards I made a similar and prolonged visit to the Taize Community in rural France. From 1951-54 I lived and studied at the Church Divinity Schooll of the Pacific in Berkeley, California. Shortly afterward I spent two years at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. This meant intense participation in these particular religious communities. This combined worship and study and and service is life changing.
The mentors and teachers involved in this process influenced my life immeasurably. Perhaps needless to say, their sheer examples were more productive than anything they taught. For these were role models who imparted a sense of passion about their spiritual vocation. One of my mentors was theologian Reinhold Niebuhr whose celebrated "Serenity Prayer" has been a godsend to us: "God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other."
My spiritual pilgrimage to Mount Athos came about as a result of my meeting the Greek Orthodox Patriarch of Constaninople. He invited me to lunch at his table in Istanbul. An old man, his eyes burned in his parchment dry face. He presented me with his personal invitation to the Mount Athos monasteries of Vatopedi, Coutloumous, Iviron, Great Lavra and Gregorion.
My trip to the island commenced on a bus ride from the city of Salonika to the fishing village of Ierissos. I boarded a small open boat. Sheep, their feet tied together, were carried aboard and placed in the hold. A donkey, forcibly dragged on, stood precariously alongside us. Early morning mists closed in tightly around the island. They slowly lifted to reveal surroulnlding hills as a backdrop for the blue Aegean Sea. Soon the peak of Mount Athos, often called "le petit Everest," appeared. A knapsack over my shoulder was my sole luggage. For the next few weeks I'd travel by donkey and boat around the island.
Visiting the monastery of Vatopedi I saw the sea sweep right up to its gates. I wandered along the beach with its millions of sea-washed and sun-bleached stones. I could see the walled monastery where chimes were now pealing. I looked out upon the open sea. I'll never forget standing there in a rare moment following sunset just when darkness is about to fall.
Later, in the monastery of Gregorion, my last stop, I stood one night on a wooden balcony looking straight down hundreds of feet at waves hurling themselves in unabated fury against the rock and stone base. A few hours later at 5 a.m. a young Orthodox deacon awakened me from sleep. "To church! " he cried. After worship I engaged in a last breakfast consisting of a small loaf of wheat bread, two pieces of goat cheese, a hard-boiled egg, ouzo and a cup of Turkish coffee.
Next I stood in pouring rain waiting for a boat to carry me to the port of Daphni where I'd conclude my visit to Mount Athos. Daphni neatly contrasted hints of intrigue with a cultivated appearance of plainness. Seated in Daphni's country store, which held all the mystery of a diplomatic center, I talked with a former Czarist priest and aristocrat who was now a hermit on Mount Athos. He had friends in the great capitol cities of the world and was an extremely old man who said he'd experienced deep tragedies.
My visit to Mount Athos was a youthful one. It required all my energy and spirit. I met wonderful people who were exceptionally kind to me, a young American on a stalwart pilgrimage. How did I appear to them? Perhaps as the zealous young man I was engaged on a starkly spiritual trek. I hope I didn't appear overly serious without a sense of humor or too stereotyped an "American" in a decidedly sophisticated global setting. Maybe I was exactly whom they expected and welcomed. Maybe I was not. Yet, perhaps best of all, I was able to take a really closer look at the mystery of life. At its heart I found a pervasive simplicity.
Antonio Lucio: Ode to the Termite: What I learned about leadership from an artist in old San Juan
Mount Athos - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mount Athos Home Page - Athos Map
One does not have to go anywhere except into the pages of the Bible to find the answers to what is needed to acquire Our Creator's approval.
Going to any humans can be a mistake, perhaps not totally wrong, but one should first have an excellent knowledge of the Scriptures so one can easily recognize signs the the ones one would be going to have little respect for the Words of Our Creator unless you know all you want to do is be just another phony baloney member of a religious team. Get a recorded copy of the Bible and listen to it.
M.G.
No need to visit exotic mental asylums abroad... Just go to any American church, synagogue or mosque and the result will be the same - you'll fall under the spell of semantic delusions induced
by a wishful misuse of the IMPOSTER NOUNS like "afterlife", "soul", "creation", "God" etc...
By the way, the first of such IMPOSTER NOUNS - NOUN "afterrlife" was invented some 50000 years ago, leading to a humanity-wide boom in Ritual Burials -
A proto-human shaman; "Want your Mo to live forever and ever... that'll be three ducks!"
A proto-human; "Ye, ye, ye, here's six ducks and an axe... just make sure she gets there"
The rest of the IMPOSTER NOUNS - "soul", "creation", "God", etc... are simply imaginative
elaborations on that first, groundbreaking "six ducks plus axe" = "afterlife" deal.
M.G.
M.G.
There are no doubt things you think you know, however, there are things you think you know that you cannot be absolutely sure of.
There're still folks who are "absolutely sure" that the Moon landing was a hoax
or that the Earth had been created 4004 years ago, etc, etc... How fast do you
want to run with this...
Consider something more interesting - could an empirical NOUN ever become IMPOSTER NOUN? Yep, I can think of at least one example...
Take our empirical NOUN "offence"... Most of us are roughly familiar with its
dictionary definition - the IDEA behind that word, and we use it as we see fit...
Not so in a legal setting... No Western judge would permit "Your Honour, with
regard to the offence Mr. Smith is being tried for, etc..."
No, this must always be stated as "Your Honour, with regard to the ALLEGED
offence Mr. Smith is being tried for, etc..."
Why it it so...? It is to prevent an empirical NOUN from becoming IMPOSTER
NOUN - a word which by the sole virtue of being a NOUN whispers to our brain
that the matter yet to be adjudicated is already an established fact.
Just imagine how many additional prison beds would be required had that pithy
Adjective "alleged" not been a compulsory part of our Western legal process.
OK, can you see a connection between the above example and the IMPOSTER
NOUNS like "afterlife", "soul", "spirit", "God", "creation", etc... and if so - what's
your solution?
Regards,
M.G.
Some men like to go to places where no women are allowed, convincing themselves that their god is a misogynistic male supremacist who eschews women, that men are superior to women, that only men shall be granted access to those lofty realms of spirituality where no earthy female feet have trod and spread their uncleanliness.
Some men hate women. Some men fear women. Some fear sex and life and birth. Some men flee women by retreating to patriarchals strongholds in the mind and heart and world.
Some men think racial segregation is wrong and discriminatory but think sex segregation is acceptable and even necessary to prevent the pollution of male so-called spirituality.
Some men travel about enjoying life without responsibilities while others support them. All the priests and preachers and monsignors and popes are perfectly happy to let women wash their socks, sweep their palaces, cook their meals and clean up their messes.
Some men like to steal whole mountains from the people and put up a "NO GURLZ ALLOWED" sign.
Some men forget that a woman gave them life and nursed them and held them and cleaned their poopy diapers. Some men forget that their Jesus was the result of an encounter between a woman and an angel and men had nothing to do with him!
Some men like to believe in fairy tales. Beats working.