Greek Orthodoxy

When I first visited Greece as a tourist, it did not occur to me to attend the services of the Orthodox Church as a worshipper. My view of the church was that it was so far removed from primitive apostolic truth that no useful purpose could be served by association with it. After moving here to live and work, this view survived a month or so, but eventually curiosity and the need for some sort of Christian worship drew me to attend the liturgy in one of the many orthodox churches here. So integral a part of Greek culture is this body, that one cannot truly understand Greek life without being familiar with it, so I decided to find out where Orthodoxy and I would meet, if I suspended all my doubts and headed in the direction of the Greek church as far as I reasonably could – this involved praying in churches, attending services and speaking with orthodox Christians including a priest. A lot of water has since passed under the bridge, and most of my reservations have proved valid. The bare fact that a large number of people believe and practice things, and that they are accepted norms in society, does not clear those things from the charge of being superstitious and unedifying.

Is there then, anything left after the razor of scriptural truth is applied to this ancient tradition? It seems, after all, that there is. If I am in the Acheiropoiitos Church in Central Thessaloniki between 9am and 9.30 am on the Lord’s Day morning, I will witness a fine-looking bearded young priest ascending to the lectern, and reading from one of the gospels in the original Greek. This is what no other organisation provides, a Greek reading (and at points chanting/singing) the scriptures in the form that the Holy Spirit inspired them. Besides this the choir and the priests continually address the Holy (“agios”) and Immortal (“athanatos”) God, asking him to have mercy ("eleison") on and save ("soson") us. These are wholesome things that discreet Christians can receive from Greek Orthodoxy – they can take their Greek Testament to the service and follow a passage being read in the most natural form possible, and before and after this they will be reminded of some of the most significant attributes of God and the nature of His dealings with men through the gospel. I use the word “discreet” because there are members of the orthodox community who believe that those who are not members of it should not even be allowed to be present when a service is in progress – I was once expelled from a small church because of this. Most do not take this position and in larger congregations, there is an anonymity which such misguided zeal cannot find expression anyway. I would also add that it is only attendance at the pre-eucharistic part of the ceremony that I am recommending – for my part, I feel that once the Gospel has been read, my business in the church is over and I am ready to go home, happy to be able to take away something from God, whilst not being bound to observe accompanying burdensome human inventions.

"Use" in Greek, Blue Flag Beach, Non-Pauline Spirituality

An interesting reflection on the difference between English and Greek can be found in the word for our verb "use". In Greek this is "chrisimopio" - that's five syllables instead of one, so it takes some remembering. Also the tendency for stress to fall towards the end of longer words takes some getting used to.
The nearest beach to here is about 25 minutes away if the roads are clear. It's on the other side of the airport heading west. It is actually one of the best beaches I know - not too windy, water warm, clean and a good depth for swimming in, lifeguard service, toilets, showers, changing rooms, nice big grain sand, and so far it hasn't been at all crowded. It has a blue flag, which is a quality system they have set up here to try encourage good beach management. I saw a Red-rumped Swallow there yesterday and Hoepoes, which I have seen all over the city. Also of interest in a the Seichsou forest near the city was a Woodchat Shrike.
I added a page on non-Pauline spirituality to my website today.

Greek-Russian Relations, Fighting the System, Stolen Gold, Saul of Tarsus - divinely commissioned?

I've just been to a seminar on Greek-Russian relations. The keynote speech was given by the Russian ambassador (I think). I hadn't realised how badly hit Russia was by the recent economic crisis. My last impressions were of the the gas and oil boom, and extravagant building projects in Moscow. Well that must have been just before everything turned turtle. The ambassador mentioned that Rouble had fallen from 22 to 35 roubles per dollar, large amounts of capital have been withdrawn from the country, loans to the construction industry have dried up, and many banks have gone to the wall. The long-term prospects are of course brighter and he pointed out that Russia's mineral reserves include practically every element in the periodic table. Also the link with the Greece is strong, Russia being this country's third largest trading partner after Germany and Italy.
I must mention one of my students, a semi-retired pathologist and agricultural science researcher. Our lessons are often taken up with discussing his single-handed struggle with the Greek "system". He is, despite blackmail threats and various other pressures, taking corrupt colleagues in the medical profession to court on such charges as drawing a government salary for 10 years without once coming into the office, and using expensive medical substances owned by the state to make big profits in a private clinic.
Today's revelation was that whilst playing cards in someone else's house in his hometown in 1960, he went out to wash his face and inadvertently opened a draw full of gold coins. The story behind this is that nearly 100kg of gold (current value around 2 million euros), brought here by the British army in WWII to fund the resistance against the Nazis, were stolen by locals after a German raid on a mountain village. After all these years, my student is handing in documentation to the local authorities saying who was responsible for the theft. He hopes for local press coverage so people know which families benefited from the misappropriation.
I have stumbled across startling insights into the life and work of Saul of Tarsus, which mean that big changes will be taking place on my website, I've summarised what's happened on the homepage.
Otherwise, I'd just like to say that after a spring/early summer hiatus, I now hope to be blogging more regularly - there's plenty to write about.

No leisure

As a result of gravely underestimating the amount of work involved in the translation of a website that I have undertaken, I am now in a situation where nearly every moment of my free time has to be devoted to it.
My computer was out of service for most of the week before last, and was finally put right with the help of remote screen sharing from India - about 20 hours of it, so I certainly got value for my 35 USD.
Weather is now warm to hot here, so as it should be in Greece, unlike the cool late winter and early spring we finally came out of at the beginning of this month..

Orthodox ordeal, Evangelical milieu, Purpose, Squids in

My patience with Orthodoxy was stretched to the limit yesterday evening. I had agreed to meet my priest acquaintance for a chat after vespers. After a day of work and rushing around without having time to eat properly, I hopped on the bus and made my way to the church in the expectation of a short vespers service with a handful of people and then an hour or so in the office to talk over a few issues. As I came through the gate I was somewhat surprised to see a child on the steps. Vespers, as I've mentioned before, is generally the preserve of the retired stalwart - families simply don't go. Inside, the church was fully illuminated and humming with life - half or more of the seats were occupied by folk from different generations. Thanis, the choir leader, came up to me and we started to chat - it soon emerged that this was the church's "name day" - it is devoted to all the saints of Thessaloniki. Obviously this was going to be no ordinary vespers. Proceedings started with a procession of the icon of the Thessaloniki saints around the neighbourhood - basically this meant going out of the front gate of the college campus and coming back in on the other side. Eight or nine priest accompanied the image as did the choir, deacons and altar boys. A megaphone was used to broadcast prayers and chanting - one priest went ahead with a censer. There was a rather jovial atmosphere - the clerics smiled, chanted, fiddled with the less than perfect sound technology....creating a larky, "and we get paid for this" ambiance.

Once we were back in the church Thanis's choir performed as I had never heard them before, with tremendous strength and harmony. However as the service went on, the tiring week and day took its toll on me and I nodded off for a while. It soon became apparent that there was no hope of it being remotely as short as a typical vespers service. At one point relief seemed in sight when a priest came out from behind the iconostasis and indicated the need to change the singers' score. This brought on more quickly the priestly celebration, headed up by a senior cleric who was in red in contrast to the rest of his colleagues in white. This involved the clergy standing around bread to be blessed and lots of candles, including three on the top of the icon, which was held facing the congregation by a priest, who had to jump back suddenly to avoid getting his vestments burnt when one of the candles fell off.

After about two hours and the sermon from the senior priest, and with no immediate end in prospect I decided to head home to have something to eat. The Number 11 bus came into view as I got to the bus stop.

This morning I went to the Greek Evangelical Church for the second time. I felt a bit more at home than on the first visit. The sermon was mostly focused on Paul's teaching on the resurrection. At the end I had a chat with a guy a few years older than me called Phokian. In the afternoon I translated the medieval history of Szombathely, and followed some self-improvement blogger's idea about writing your Life's Purpose in Word. I didn't experience the tremendous emotional convergence he writes of, but putting down 12 items, many of them quite similar, seems to have been helpful.

I had squid (bought yesterday) for dinner. I just love the market here. If you go down after 2pm they have to sell off their fish. You can pick up all sorts of interesting things for one or two euros a kilo.

Today's youtube link is Hungarian a Koncz Zsuzsa number, Kárpáthelyek Lánya, from the 1970s when it's content was very daring, being about the taboo subject of emigration.

New Online Era, Beautiful Balkans, Stobi, Various Links, Vespers, How much does it cost to build an Orthodox Church?

I arrived back in Thessaloniki on Friday after a beautiful (all be it long -13 and a half hour) drive through the Balkans. The plains, hills and mountains were magnificent in various shades of vibrant green, intensified by the warmth of a glorious spring in the region. Thessaloniki, despite blue skies, was actually a bit cooler than Hungary and Serbia, presumably because the sea takes longer to warm up. Prayer was answered in that border crossings were remarkably quick. I'd heard stories about people having to pay duty on washing liquid, and was a bit concerned that I would have to jettison, or shell out on, my few little domestic bargains picked up in Hungary (how many packets of wholemeal spelt pasta attract tax?). Opening up the hatchback and saying I was going to Thessaloniki was sufficient for the customs man in Serbia. His counterpart in Macedonia (FYROM) asked if I was "magyar" - the reply "English from Hungary" was enough to see me on my way with a "ciao". The combination of British passport, Hungarian Car and Greek domicile makes me something of a curiosity.

I drove past a place in where I had stopped for a quick rest on the way north. It is an archaeological site called Stobi, and when I arrived there at about 7:30 on Saturday morning two weeks ago, it was teeming with men with spades and wheel barrows - working on the dig seems to be a major free time activity for a lot of folk. http://www.gomacedonia.com/stobi_descr.shtml
This reminds me of one of the funny quotes by Steven Wright I stumbled across:
"I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums." One that made me laugh a lot was this: "I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, 'Hey, the sign says you're open 24 hours.' He said, 'Yes, but not in a row." You can check out the collection at:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/steven_wright.html
At the beginning of the week before I left for the Easter break, I got a phone call from OTE the telecom company to say the engineer could come the next day. It was a bit like a dream, I had ordered the internet 6 months earlier and subsequently given up hope of ever having it. He came, much to my surprise, at the agreed time and turned out to be the same guy who checked it and gave me the bad news when I first moved in here. He noted that my Greek was somewhat better, which was more of an incentive to harder work than anything else, as it's a lot worse than it should be.
Anyway, I went down to the OTE shop the next day and got my router box, which worked in itself but the interface with the computer was problematic and without a phone at home (I didn't want to buy a set here as I had two in Hungary, which are with me now) I didn't have time to sort this out before departure. Coming back this weekend I started dealing with the glitch, expecting frustrations and delays. In the end it turned out not to be so bad. The staff in the shop had not given me the paperwork with the password and since it was now Saturday my only option was to go down to a photocopying shop to send a fax with my signature and a copy of my passport. To my amazement, I was online about 3 and a half hours later.
So this means, all being well, an improvement in the quality and frequency of my posting from now on.
I'd like to share a few of my wanderings with those who have time for them:
Cream using the verb "barrelhouse" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l16jlallBMs
Robbie Williams on Parkinson - insight into the pitfalls of stardom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BZO84Wc1A0
Greek beauty with incredible voice. Επικίνδυνα σε θέλω: "I want you dangerously". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AE9aHtHck&feature=related
Shocking revelations about JFK: scroll forward 12.30 mins to get to the interview:
http://www.pidradio.com/?p=133


This morning I went to the Αχειροποίητος (ahiropeeitos) the name of which I have at last properly learnt as it is now my usual destination on the Lord's Day. I recorded some of the singing - rather amateur sound quality of course but maybe it conveys something of the beauty - click http://www.mediafire.com/?nm1hlmyz4fm I have arranged to have a chat with Father Gregory this evening, so maybe I will be able to better organise my many thoughts on the big subjects in question after that. Half a day elapses...
Just got back from my Vespers excursion. It was in an unassuming building, next to which they are slowly building a more splendid structure - 500,000 spent, another 2 million to go on, current estimations. Vespers is quite unlike the morning liturgy in that there are just a handful of stalwarts in the church. There were two priests, Father Greg and a younger colleague. The three of us retired to the office at the rear of the building after the service and chatted over chamomile tea. We talked about the calculation of the date of Easter, the Metropolis website, which is being enriched with 3-D views of churches (I'll get the link) and opportunities for postgraduate studies. Just as we were getting to the heart of the matter, a very distressed lady came in and told Father Greg about a seriously ill relative, so both my clerical friends were to head off to the hospital in five minutes. Somewhat tongue in cheek, Fr Greg asked if I had any questions about Orthodoxy. My reply was to the effect that three years would be closer to the required time than three minutes. However, he was insistent on getting the essence, so I gave him something to be chewing on till next time. The general thrust of what I said was that my heart is in Orthodoxy but my head is so convinced of the logic of a highly simplified, Bible and exposition focused protestantism, that I find it difficult to reconcile the two.

Today I went to the Greek Evangelical Church here after going to Axeiropoitos. I came across the former by accident during the week. It was striking how central the minister is during a protestant service - this one smiled throughout the sermon. In the afternoon I did a bit of sunbathing - met my first tortoise of the year. There was a party in the park - lots of people sitting around or playing sports/games. When I went past they were listening to reggae - Haillie Sallasie - the song has lots of Messianic language about him.