An old Greek tragedy, held over by popular acclaim

Just finished dinner across the street from here - a Mythos beer, saganaki baked with garlic for entrée, calamari done pretty well for main course and a complimentary ouzo to wash it down. Wow, that ouzo was a challenge - I  wanted to finish it since he'd given it to me but I felt about to gag a couple of times. Too much of it. The food quality has leapt enormously with the crossing into Greece - silly, really - Turkish food can be brilliant. The Tabepna (Beta is pronounced as a V and Rho looks like a P) was (is) full of Dutch people, a couple of men smoking those cigarellos that Grandpa and Uncle Arthur were so fond of and the smell of which transports me back to childhood.

I hired a bike and rode every available kilometre of the bike trails of Kos. It was great - I listened to a selection of my favourite Al Stewart songs as I  pedalled very languidly along the foreshore then later through the town and way out along the beaches on the other side. I went for a swim a couple of kms further out this side of town - pebbly beach but the water was lovely. It was nice riding so slowly and listening to those evocative songs. They transport me to another world - one of warm, hazy summer days in England, lying under the shade of an oak tree next to a country lane and just a stone's throw from a little stone village. Or to an island such as this, in another time perhaps, living in a little cottage somewhere with the door always open to the sea, but with change, inevitable, inexorable, gathering in storm clouds on the far horizon.  Or to the gates of Constantinople as they are about to fall finally and forever, bringing down the curtain on that old Greek tragedy that was Byzantium 'held over by popular acclaim'. Or the stoney roads of Merlin's time - of all times the one I love the most - the age of saints and scholars between the old world of the ancients and the new, confused world of the autocratic medieval.

Christ is here, triumphant, dominant, aggressive even. What would you expect from the children of that greatest of empires, after living as a minority in their own land for 400 years? When a people is under threat, or feel they are under threat, their religion, their particular version of it, becomes enormously important as an essential, perhaps the essential component of their identity. There is a mosque in the centre of town here but it's been turned into a place for tourist stalls. I miss the call to prayer: it is replaced by the commercial songs of the real national religion: hedonism, the faith that most of Turkey follows avidly too.

I must be honest - even I cannot rid myself entirely of a football team-like sense of partisanship on the religious front. Christ triumphant stirs some martial spirit within me - I want Christ to win, not Mohammed. All this mealy-mouthed 'let's all get along together' rubbish - forget it. I want Christ to dominate everywhere, to win the battle for hearts and minds...

Isn't it amazing? It precisely this feeling, when left to run unchecked, that leads to so much death, destruction and evil in the world. Mr. NSW bigot from the other day probably hasn't darkened the door of a church since Sunday School days but I'm sure he would relish the chance to do his bit in the war between Christianity and Islam. People who ridiculed Christianity as they were growing up, who called any Christians at schools poofs and sissies, are now that religion's greatest champions. F***ing hypocrites! The actual beliefs and teachings at the core of Christianity are utterly irrelevant and probably unknown to such people - it's all about their football team thrashing the other one.

Here's what I hold onto from the indoctrination and brainwashing I received for the first 20 years of my life:

• It's what's in your heart that matters, not the outward observance
• All people everywhere are to be treated with respect and genuine love, regardless of what or who they are
• What matters in life is quietness and strength within and gentleness and honesty without

That's probably enough for now - perhaps this is my creed. I don't think it matters what the details are of what you believe or don't believe - it's all about how you live. The whole believe/don't believe thing has long been irrelevant for me: how can I make myself believe a particular thing? Or not believe it? Do I  believe Jesus literally rose from the dead? I can't say because I wasn't there and didn't see it happen. Do I believe Julius Ceasar was murdered by his closest friends? I also can't say for sure. How can I make myself believe in a literal resurrection? If I don't believe it, what do I think actually happened? Well, I don't know and I don't care. When did this accursed literalism start plaguing and ruining everything? Isn't it just a scientific mindset transposed onto something that it just doesn't fit? The thing I'm really interested in is the power that the resurrection invokes in me. "I arise today" with St. Patrick because of the resurrection and I can feel the spirit of the Divine coursing through me now just thinking of it. As I'm reading in my Tom Cowan book, my body is contained within my soul, just as my heart is contained within my body. And my soul, as Hildegard of Bingen says, reaches to the uttermost parts of the world, perhaps beyond. So every thing I encounter within the natural world is within my soul. No wonder I am drawn to nature. My soul is just one little member of the Great Soul, of that Divine Spirit in which I live and breath and have my being. Paul in Athens was at his most profound! The half moon, the slow rhythm of the Greek music from across the street, the murmur of voices in conversation, the chirping of the cicadas. I am. All who have gone before me are here now in this moment, as are all who will follow. I feel all of those lives flowing over me, through me, like a river of souls and Spirit, of which I am a part. Not far from here, John sat in a cave on Patmos and received visions of utter madness and chaos, but out of which came an end and a victory for goodness. Madness and chaos - that is our world, whichever age we live in. And with each generation, we must strive to bring a victory for goodness, for light, for gentleness, understanding. We must resist the urge within, which tells us to force our wishes on others. Even if it means that they "win". There is a higher way, a deeper way, the difficult way, trodden by so few. Islam means "surrender" - this is the way. It is the way of the true Christ, of the man Yeshua bar Yosef from Nazareth, the revolutionary, who was eliminated for his subversive ideas. To surrender the ego - this is also the way of the Buddha.

I spoke my first words of modern Greek earlier - "ef-ha-ri-sto" for thankyou, "ya-sas" for hello, "an-dio" for goodbye. I'm going to go for a brief bike ride now to have a look at the town at night.