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.
