Plgrimage to Holy Mountain 34

34

Touring the Peninsula:

During my fifth week at Saint Anne’s, Father Athanasius suggested that I take a few days off and walk around the Holy Mountain peninsula to see what the other monasteries are like and to get a more general view of the land. Though my life at Saint Anne’s was far from boring, I thought it would be interesting to see some of the other monasteries, so I willingly went.

Free meals and lodging are provided for pilgrims at all the monasteries, so I didn’t need to carry anything except water and a snack. The footpaths are occasionally marked so it would be difficult to get lost and any sort of crime–robbery or any such molestation of pilgrims is absolutely unheard of. There are no predatory animals, snakes or poisonous plants. This is one of the few places on earth where you can walk without fear.

Father Athanasius gave me a simple map showing where the major monasteries are. Saint Anne’s is on the southwestern side of Holy Mountain near the tip of the peninsula, so. I decided to go around the southern cape of the peninsula to Great Lavra, one of the oldest and largest of the monasteries. Most of the Greek pilgrims go by boat from monastery to monastery, but I preferred to go by foot in order to really get to know the countryside. Besides, it is an easy walk of only a few hours between monasteries..

Hiking on undemanding dirt paths is one of things I dearly love, and the Holy Mountain trails, though sometimes a little stony and rough, are seldom out of the sight of the sea and are always interesting.

I left early in the morning and arrived at Great Lavra in time for lunch. I checked in with the Guest Master, ate quickly and, since I am a library enthusiast, immediately went in search of the legendary library since I had heard that there is an unequaled collection of ancient manuscripts here.

Great Lavra is as large as a small town, but, just like Kyries, there seems to be no one around. Oddly enough, it takes me the better part of the afternoon to even find the library which turns out to be closed. But I do eventually meet another American pilgrim who is here with his fifteen-year-old son. The American is Orthodox and is fulfilling a vow he made when his son was born: to bring him to this sacred place. He told me the high point of his pilgrimage occurred this morning when his son was allowed to hold and look thru a manuscript completed in 800 AD.

Great Lavra is certainly impressive, but I like the small, more personal, friendly and “homey” Hagia Anna much better.

Tomasito, 2009


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Plgrimage to Holy Mountain 33

33

Rite at the Top:

Some days later Father Athanasius suggested that I attend another celebration–this time at the little stone shelter at the top of the mountain where I had earlier encountered the outlaws.

This was to be another all night session but I would be the only person from Saint Anne’s to attend. He said I should carry a blanket since the nights got cold at the top.

After the evening meal but before the light faded on the day of the celebration, I made my way once more up the slope to the summit–but what a change had taken place!

Where before there had been only the three outlaws and myself, now there were maybe a hundred or more priests and monks milling about. The ceremony was to take place in the same little stone hut that I had so casually occupied with the outlaws for tea and biscuits but now there was such a crush of monastics that I could scarcely approach.

A fierce monk was guarding the water cistern and food and he very grudgingly allowed me a cup of water and a piece of bread

These celebrants, I thought, could only be the bureaucrats so scorned by the outlaws.

And, of course, there was no trace of my outlaw friends.

After I received the bread and water, I spent most of the long, dark night hanging around the edges of the celebrants—never again entering the little building-- but it was cold and miserable for me and not at all the uplifting ceremony I had experienced just a few days earlier at Saint Anne’s.

In the small hours of the morning I crept away from the noise and commotion at the hut and climbed down from the summit. It was bitterly cold so I found a sheltering crack in the rock, wrapped myself tightly in my blanket and slept.

At first light I found my way back to Saint Anne’s and joined my familiar “brothers” for breakfast.

Tomasito 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 32

32

Saint Anne’s Day:

Father Athanasius told me he would like me to help some of the monks prepare for the special celebration of Saint Anne’s Day at the monastery.

And so, a few days before the celebration, we “turned to” cleaning the church: sweeping, mopping, dusting and polishing it high and low. The church was not very big compared to some of the others on Holy Mountain but was sizable enough to keep a lively cleaning party busy for a couple of days.

The floor plan of the sanctuary is cruciform, I think it is called, but more of a square shape actually and without the extended nave of most other European churches. The central part of the church was topped by a high traditional Orthodox dome and there were big square pillars supporting the superstructure. The pillars and walls were covered with murals featuring life-sized full length portraits of historic Orthodox saints.

One of the branches of the X shaped room was filled by an elaborate altar with doors at the sides for priests to come and go, and polished individual wooden stalls lined the walls of the rest of the room. These stalls were for the monks to stand in during long services and the stalls were equipped with a small bench-like protuberance where a monk could rest part of his butt and get a little rest during the hours-long ceremonial rites.

On the morning of Saint Anne’s Day itself, we covered the floor of the sanctuary with sweet smelling leaves (bay leaves, if I remember correctly) and throughout the day guests from many other monasteries began to arrive.

I had been warned that the ceremony would start in the afternoon and last all night. The word was that if you wanted to get the full benefit of the ceremony you should spend as much time as possible in the church during the service, and, by all means stay up all night. This staying up all night was stressed so I thought I would try it.


The service was splendid. Gifted monk singers had been brought in and a tall, stately and stout high priest with a fluffy white beard-- dressed in a marvelous heavy-looking robe--officiated. He read and chanted with a beautiful rich bass voice, sometimes solo and sometimes with the choir. Other priests and monks took turns reading or chanting. Occasionally a monk swinging a billowing censor of incense would walk around the room leaving a haze of sweet smelling smoke.

The sanctuary was lit by dozens of candles and sometimes during the singing a monk would lower the main iron candelabra, brilliant with candles and suspended by a sturdy rope from a pulley at the center of the dome, to just above head height. Then, using a long pole, the monk would set it spinning in slow circles around the room. The motion would cause the candles to flare in the breeze creating a medieval “sound and light” show of hypnotic beauty.

The murals on the walls and ceiling and the robes and eyes of the celebrants reflected this marvelous torrent of light from their gilded, painted and living surfaces, blending art and life in a wonderful way.

I stood in one of the stalls for as long as I could and then went out to walk in the courtyard. I did this all night long as had been recommended, the only non-Orthodox witness of this extraordinary ritual.

The performance could not have been improved by an Hollywood impresario–the casting was perfect, the performance by all players magnificent. I have never seen nor will probably ever see better or more meaningful theater. The celebration communicated in some mysterious way a profound echo of the grandeur and splendor of a long departed age of faith!

Tomasito, 2009

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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 31

31

The Icon School:

After living at Saint Anne’s for about three weeks, Father Athanasius told me after breakfast one day that taking care of Saint Anne’s monastery is a rotating job. Both he and the monks presently on duty here only remain here for one year. During this year they serve the pilgrims who appear at the gate daily and do the maintenance work of the church and related buildings. But for the rest of their lifetime stay on Holy Mountain, they live at one or another of the sketes nearby pursuing their vocation as icon artists.

Then he asked me if I would like to visit a studio where icons were being produced. Though I had claimed to be most interested in the production of icons when I asked for permission to remain on Holy Mountain, this was the first time I had been invited to see one. Of course I said I would very much like to visit such a school and he asked me to follow him.

I thought we would have to walk to another monastery at least, but to my surprise Father Athanasius led me to a large sunny workroom where some of the same monks I had helped make up pilgrim’s beds that morning were gathering to create world famous icons.

This icon studio, I learned, one of the most important on Holy Mountain, was right here at Saint Anne’s!

The monastery, though small, was composed of such a maze of corridors and rooms that if you didn’t know where something like this studio was it was next to impossible to find without a guide.

I had noticed that every day after breakfast and morning chores, most of the monks not needed for other work would disappear. I had supposed that they went out to the garden, maybe even fishing or to other tasks, but now I saw them assume work stations with the same calm deliberation with which they performed their housekeeping duties.

Father Athanasius recited a prayer and after a short silent meditation the monks silently began work.

I had been told that the creation of an icon was a religious act and now I saw that it was really just an active form of prayer. The monks’ prayer mode continued seamlessly into their production of the works of art. To my great surprise, Father Athanasius was not only Abbot of the monastery and cleaner of toilets but also an accomplished artist.

I saw that these exquisite icons are produced as a community effort rather like an assembly line.

Some workers prepare the wood boards which are the icon’s “canvas”, others prime the wood with a gesso mixture. Some prepare paints. Some artists are experienced in painting backgrounds, coloring figures or applying gold leaf and others do the finest details and lettering. The icons thus manufactured are donated or sold to Orthodox churches, believers and art collectors all over the world. There is, I was told, a constant demand for them and some are quite valuable. Part of the money earned through sales of their icons goes to defray some of the expenses of the Hagia Anna monastic community.

To Orthodox believers, these icons, prepared with such diligent care and following ancient traditional models, are literally “windows into another world”.

They believe that contemplation of the icon is an aid to spiritual growth and understanding, and their icons are treated with the care and respect accorded to other “sacred objects”.

Since these icons are a sort of visible prayer, they are never signed by any of the artists responsible for their fabrication.

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Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 30

30

The Abbot’s Job:

One day I went into the pilgrim’s restroom and found Father Athanasius on his hands and knees scrubbing out a toilet.

He was such a distinguished man with such an exalted position in the Holy Mountain hierarchy that I thought such work was beneath his dignity so I asked him if I couldn’t do the cleaning work for him.

“Absolutely not!” he said, “Are you trying to take my job away from me?!”

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 29

29

The World Language:

Tourist pilgrims came and went daily at St Anne’s and there was always someone new to talk to.

Often in the evenings a group of a dozen or so men from all over the world would meet around a big table in one of the empty upstairs rooms to talk and enjoy each other’s company. It was especially interesting for me since the conversations were mostly in English and I was often the only “native speaker” of the language present–though, as you can tell from my writing, I am myself only a “colonial”, an American user of the English language.

Long ago when I was a high school student in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one of my teachers postulated that the English language might become the new “world language”, but that only time would tell.

It does seem now that English is at least a most useful “second language” and perhaps the world’s “language of choice”.

Tomasito

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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 28

28

My Hand Gets Kissed:

After I had been at Saint Anne’s a couple of weeks, Father Athanasius gave me standard-issue black work clothes and one of the monk’s black bill-less caps to wear. I was supposed to tuck my long hair up under it like all the unshorn Greek monks do. I had let my beard grow on my long pilgrimage from Germany to Holy Mountain so I suppose I looked just like any Orthodox monk except they all had black Greek beards and mine was sort of a Nordic brown.

As I have said, many Orthodox men from all parts of Greece love to take a free summer vacation away from families and routine life and make a pilgrimage from monastery to monastery on Agion Oros. One day, as I was helping stack a pile of boards near the main gate of the “close”, a new group of these Greek “summer vacation” pilgrims arrived.

One of the more devout pilgrims seized my hand, raised it to his lips and gave it a big kiss. No one had ever kissed my American hand before and I was so surprised that I snatched my hand away from him and hid it behind my back.

The brother monks behind me almost burst with silent laughter at my odd behavior and later on Father Athanasius suggested that I simply accept any hand kissing that came my way. “You look to the pilgrims like one of us and it is a custom for Orthodox men to show their respect for monks and priests by kissing our hands. Just let them do it. It won’t hurt you.”

Tomasito


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 27

27

The Dying Monk:

One day Max was called to visit one of his old monastic friends who was approaching death at a nearby monastery. Father Athanasius suggested that I go with Max for the afternoon since there would be no further assistant carpenter work for me anyway until he returned.

We walked for a couple of hours on a well-worn footpath along the cliffs and through the scrub trees with Max losing no opportunity to replace a loose stone or toss a fallen branch off of the path. He said it was up to every user of the paths to keep them in repair.

Max led me into the monastery in which his friend had long lived and was now dying. The emaciated and unconscious monk lay on a thin pallet on the stone floor of a large room encircled by a group of solemn, silent, black robed monks, perhaps praying, perhaps only observing this natural event which would come to each of them on some not so very far off day.

Max and I joined the silent assembly. I thought that perhaps the spirit had already left the withered and still body on the floor though no one seemed overly concerned wither it still lived or was deceased. The watching monks were all very “present” it seemed to me. There was no phoning 911 for emergency resuscitation, no shouting or screaming–just sort of a serene acceptance that this was the old monk’s proper time to go. It was dignified. Peaceful. Not such a bad way to go, it seemed to me.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 26

26

The Musical Woodblock:

There is sometimes a need to communicate with everyone in a community and for this purpose the monks at Saint Anne’s rhythmically beat a hollowed-out block of wood with a stick. The first sound we heard early in the morning was this rhythmic tattoo beaten on the woodblock. It was really quite a nice “wake-up call”—far better to rouse sometimes cranky old men from sleep, I think, than the military bugle or the civilian alarm clock.

On Holy Mountain, where there are no other sounds of civilization, the woodblock can be heard a long way off. When it is necessary to call monks in from their sketes (house-like residences for just a few men) scattered over the mountainside nearby, the block sounds from Saint Anne’s alerts them.

I think a similar device is used for a similar purpose in some of the monasteries in Japan.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 25

25

Seraphim Rings the Bells:

Greek Orthodox believers love to have bells ringing as a part of their worship and ringing bells is what Seraphim liked to do best. In this he was like “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” since as one of “God’s fools”, the bell ringer job was really the only one that he could do.

A rickety wooden bell tower stood on some rocks over the cemetery garden just outside the monastery compound with about fifteen bells of all sizes and shapes rigged up on it so that one very lively person, like Seraphim, could ring them all by pulling different cords or stomping on pedals. It seems that the only thing expected from Seraphim was to make a lot of noise and he was ready and willing to provide all the racket anyone could desire.

His music was nothing like the melodic bell ringing done by trained teams of ringers in Britain—Oh no, indeed! Seraphim’s exuberant ringing was unadulterated dissonance!

I liked to watch Seraphim leaping around his platform, stomping pedals and jerking cords to his heart’s delight. It was cacophony. It was madness. It was Seraphim Bliss!

Sometimes Seraphim would concentrate on ringing one particular bell he seemed to favor, but before the sound got too boring, he would fly off into the other jangling possibilities and make the air sparkle with sound. You wouldn’t want to buy a recording of this “music”–– I’m rather certain it would be unpleasant outside of its particular Holy Mountain environment—but at Saint Anne’s it was Mozart, Mendelssohn, Bach and Beethoven. Even better––it was pure Seraphim!

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 24

24

Pachomios & Seraphim:

There was a monk named Seraphim living at Saint Anne’s––a very small man of indeterminate age always dressed in the same ragged robe—a rusty patchwork of gray tatters– which must have once been black. He was one of those oddly cheerful “God’s fools”, and everybody seemed to like him or at least tolerate his rather curious behavior.

After I had been a resident at Saint Anne’s for a month, Father Athanasius asked me if I would like to have a “religious name” since all the men are given a new name when they live in the monastery. I said “Sure”, and he gave me the name “Pachomios”, the name of one of the heroic “desert fathers”, who founded of many monasteries in the early days of Christianity. The St. Anne’s monks all started calling me “Papa Pachomios” instead of “Brother Pilgrim”.

It was not so bad.

Seraphim was especially delighted since “Pachomios” and “Seraphim” had been buddies in the old days. Whenever we met he would talk happily to me in Greek, which I didn’t understand, but he let me know we would be pals.

Though a lot of Greek men are gay, I don’t think he was and I’m not but it was fun to have a special friend from the “Good Old Days”.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 23

23

That’s All There Is:

It was against the rules to smoke cigarettes inside the close wall at Saint Anne’s Monastery and I don’t smoke anyway, but some of the other pilgrims did.

One evening after dinner I was talking to one of the visiting pilgrims and he wanted a cigarette, so I went with him outside the wall on the mountain side of the monastery. We sat on a low stone fence enclosing a little garden while he smoked. Beside us on the wall was an old cardboard box containing some bones. For no particular reason I took one of the bones from the box and was turning it over in my fingers as we talked when Father Athanasius walked by.

“That’s Brother Johan”, he said, looking at the bone in my hand, “That’s all there is.”

It took me a moment to realize that I was handling the remains of one of Saint Anne’s monks and when I did I felt like I had not been very respectful to Brother Johan since I had mistaken his bones for the scraps of some dinner.

It seems that when a monk from Saint Anne’s Monastery dies, his body is buried in a shallow grave in that same little walled garden for one year—then his bones are dug up. If the ants and worms have polished them clean it means he has been a good monk, but if the bones still have some meat or tissue clinging to them, it is a sure sign he has not and they are reburied for another year. Finally, when just clean bones are left, the skull is taken away and displayed with other crania in rows like books on a library shelf in a little chapel next to the garden. I was shown the whole bizarre collection another day: some headbones decorated with the departed’s name or perhaps with a cross inked on what had been the forehead.

The rest of the monk’s bones are tossed out with the garbage to the foot of the cliff.

Indeed, that’s all there is.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 22

22

Praying for Everybody:

Being a pilgrim on Holy Mountain was a spiritually focusing period for me. Besides the simple daily chores to help the monks and the handyman assistant work with Max: “chopping wood—carrying water” as Buddhists might say––I did a lot of praying–more concentrated praying than I ever did in my life. I guess being surrounded by men practicing their religion in a life-and-death serious way and in a place where generations of men had sought spiritual comfort or illumination stimulated me to try harder myself.

I am still not sure what “prayer” is exactly because I suspect it is a different thing for everybody, but, since I had a lot of time with nothing much else to do, I did some, what was for me, intensive praying.

I thought at first it would be a good idea to pray for forgiveness for every wrong act I had ever committed against any other person I could remember which I did for several days. Then I changed the focus and started to pray for everyone I could remember from my past life. I started writing names in my notebook—literally everybody’s name that I could remember—relatives, friends and enemies, teachers, employers, just everybody—and then I would read through the list every day; “lifting them up in prayer”, as they say.

After a while though, even this did not seem enough and eventually I found myself praying for everybody in the whole world. I don’t really know if it did anybody, including myself, any good, but I did give it the Old College Try.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 21

21

The Last Piece of the True Cross:

The same morning that Father Athanasius told me about the compulsive pilgrim who had bitten off a piece of Saint Anne’s mummified foot he told me another story about the unholy propensities of some of the other recent pilgrims to Holy Mountain.

It seems that the summer before my visit there was another awful calamity. Two Greek thieves, pretending to be pilgrims, somehow made off with one of Holy Mountain’s most venerable treasures: the last authenticated piece of the True Cross.

The robbers, when apprehended in Thessaloniki, were still in possession of the priceless jeweled golden reliquary that had contained the holy fragment but unfortunately they had thrown the old piece of wood away.

Tomasito, 2009


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Biting St Anne's Foot 20

20

Biting Saint Anne’s Foot:

Preserving and regarding with reverence sacred relics is an important part of the Orthodox tradition and, following this tradition, the monks of Saint Anne’s guard and protect one of Saint Anne’s mummified feet.

If you don’t know who Saint Anne was, well, neither did I when I arrived, but Saint Anne was the Virgin Mary’s mother and so Jesus’ grandmother. The Orthodox truly believe that the object preserved at Saint Anne’s Monastery is verily that historic woman’s actual foot. Right or left I know not and it is not easy to tell when the article under consideration is so extremely antiquated.

Greek Orthodox believe that this relic has a notable miraculous quality: Saint Anne, they say, was past menopause when her daughter Mary was conceived—another miracle in that miraculous family—and many believe that kissing Saint Anne’s mummified foot increases the fertility of, or makes more potent, the believing male. That this relic has indeed this miraculous power is confirmed by the literally hundreds of baby mementos that decorate the chapel altar attesting to successful pregnancies: little shoes, photos, baby toys and such.

As I have said, only male pilgrims ever visit these monasteries—usually only Greek males since few outside the Greek Orthodox community know of the existence or have the slightest interest in Agion Oros. But pilgrims and even the most devout resident monks have to be somewhat interested in women–they all had a mother, after all– and Holy Mountain in it’s entirety is dedicated to a woman: Mary, “The Mother of God”. So women, at least women of the imagination, figure in the story of Agion Oros.

Naturally, most of the pilgrims to Saint Anne’s want to see and pay reverence to the famous foot, so every afternoon there is a short ritual wherein a monk holds a showy reliquary box, opens the hinged lid and displays the relic. Then those pilgrims who wish are invited to come forward one by one to kiss this object of veneration.

Since I am not a sanctioned Orthodox believer, I didn’t kiss the foot, but I did attend the interesting ceremony on several afternoons and watched other reverent believers kiss the relic.

One breakfast the monks were even more serious and silent than their usual serious and silent selves, so I asked Father Athanasius if there was something wrong.. He admitted there was.

“Something very bad happened at the foot ceremony yesterday which has shocked us all. One of the pilgrims whose wife can’t get pregnant, pretending to kiss the relic, bit off a fragment and swallowed it in the despairing hope that, like a dose of medicine, it would increase his virility. We will have to stop allowing the pilgrims to kiss the relic if this barbaric behavior does not immediately cease.”

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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 19

19

The Square-rigged Ship:

Restoring this ancient building was fascinating for me.

I appreciated how craftsmen long ago met and solved their building problems because I was allowed to take their work apart and put it back together with new or more sound pieces.. I had helped restore some antique buildings on the northern California coast , but nothing this old.

Saint Anne’s was established centuries ago so there is some professional archaeological interest in the buildings. There was another restoration project underway the summer I visited the monastery. Layers of stucco and paint were peeled off some of the exterior walls and archaeologists made photographic records of each layer.

The level of plaster that was exposed when I visited had a graffiti image of a square-rigged ship under full sail that had been drawn on the wall long ago by some visiting old-time sailor. The archaeologists were not there during my visit, so I don’t know how many years ago they estimated the ship drawing to have been made—but even I could see that it was very old.

In fact I had some very odd personal feelings about it. I knew it wasn’t recent because I could vaguely “imagine” my own hand sketching that ship on the wall when I visited Holy Mountain in a different lifetime long ago.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 18

18

On the Edge

My next project with Max is something far grander. I will help him in re-building the porch roof that protects a staircase leading to some upper rooms attached to the main church

I like this kind of work. I like working in odd locations out of doors with hand tools and to say the least this was one of the most outstandingly odd locations I have ever worked out of doors with hand tools in!

Max was fun to work with too. A lay worker, not a monk or a priest, Max was a clever workman who liked the uncomplicated life at Holy Mountain, but also liked to get back to civilization during much of the year. I would guess his age at about fifty
.
Evidently Max had a drinking problem when he was on the loose outside so he would retreat to Holy Mountain to help the monks when his outside problem got too serious. This is part of what Holy Mountain is, by the way—a sanctuary in the old sense of the word, where men in trouble on the outside can come to let things cool off for a while and then go back when the heat is off—sort of like serving a voluntary prison sentence.

I guess Max had a family of some kind on the outside, but he was doing time here and he was a very good worker. As a matter of fact Max had been trained in Germany, picked up some of the language and had absorbed a Teutonic obsession with quality workmanship that is not very Greek. I speak a little German, so that is the language we communicated in—though I like to think I make a very good assistant anywhere because I have worked in foreign countries so much that I can usually see what needs to be done in advance without any talking at all.

I always try to learn as much as I can from masters too—and Max was not only a master of his craft but a fun guy to be around. He was very religious and very respectful to the monks and priests, but when we were working alone together he would sometimes point out some of their more humorous foibles and make gentle fun of them.

Max also loved to eat and always made sure he and I had plenty of the best food. “They’re not paying us anything for our work, so at least we should eat all we want.” he told me. Breakfast was very important to him and since we would eat together in the refectory he would pile my plate with halva and black olives and make sure I had lots of fresh bread with olive oil and coffee. I was pretty lean after my bicycle pilgrimage, so the extra food probably did me good.

Some of the work we did was in what you would call dangerous places. If you have ever seen photos of Holy Mountain (National Geographic did a story about the place with their usual great photographs a few years ago) you will know that most of the monasteries are built on high cliffs overlooking the sea. When you work on the cliff side of the building, you are working literally hundreds of feet above the brush-covered stones of the mountain below.

As I have said, Max was a German-trained perfectionist.

One day my task was to stand on the wooden handrail of the outdoor staircase and hold a very heavy length of wooden beam over my head while Max tried to measure and cut the butt-end so that it would fit snuggly into a very complicated wooden socket on the building side. This was a bearing corner beam and so the fit had to be just right he said. Max was doing the main cutting of the heavy beam with a chain saw and we were recycling some beautiful aged wood that had been cut centuries before. He said that the wood of the beam was at least four hundred years old and probably much older since it came from a very old part of the church—he was also re-using ten to fourteen inch hand wrought iron spikes for nails and he said he had no idea how old they were but that they were probably ancient. He bored new holes for the nails with a hand auger so we could see that the wood was sound all the way through and in such excellent condition it would probably last another two or three hundred years more, he said.

So I balanced on this rickety handrail with my heels hanging out over the edge and nothing behind me but air for several hundred feet straight down to the rocks below lifting this heavy beam over my head while he measured, took it down and cut, put it back up and measured some more, took it down again, cut and measured and cut and measured until I was exhausted. At first I didn’t notice the danger of the situation so much, but as my arms got tired I started to be more aware that the slightest mistake on his or my part would be the last mistake I would ever make in this body! I began to wish he was not quite so quality-oriented! “Close enough for rock and roll.” As we used to say in my musician days—but no, I had to be working with a Prussian Greek!

The men on Holy Mountain all wear black for mourning—all the time. They are not exactly suicidal, but they do say and believe that they “do not come to live on Holy Mountain, but to die on Holy Mountain”—and working with Max that day, I probably missed my very best opportunity to die on Holy Mountain.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 17

17

Living at Saint Anne’s:

My life at Hagia Anna soon becomes more routine and it is a very pleasant life indeed. There are definite times for doing everything–rising and eating, work and prayer, but since I am not a professed Orthodox Christian, I am not expected to do anything “religious”, though I am invited to join the monks anytime if I wish.

Before long I realize that the steady, orderly pace of life at the monastery is very conducive to a tranquil sprint.

And, I also notice that, though there is never any rush to do anything, everything seems to get done and to get done well.

I had expected that without a woman’s touch things would be more than a bit dirty and work would be carelessly done, but to my surprise, though most of the buildings, gardens and such are extremely old and somewhat faded, everything is neat as a pin.

I like to help out wherever I am so the first morning I grab a broom and help the monks prepare the quarters for the next daily crop of pilgrims, but when they find out I have some basic carpentry and building maintenance skills, they ask me to assist a lay member of the staff, Max, with some repairs to the buildings.

For our first project together, Max and I pour a concrete pad and construct a practical wooden gazebo where the day’s crop of pilgrims can sit in the shade in the heat of the day. This structure now stands on a plot of earth within the monastery enclosure where there is a spectacular view of the seacoast and the mountain behind the monastery.

This project takes several days and already the days of my first week are drawing to a close. I am hopeful that my stay on holy mountain will be extended since I am beginning to feel useful and I am becoming acclimatized to the specialness of the place. So I am delighted when Father Athanasius says I can stay on for another week and, with his weekly permission, perhaps longer as a guest of the community at Saint Anne’s. I will continue to sleep in the rooms assigned to pilgrims and to take my meals in the refectory with the monks.

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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 16

16

Outlaws at the Top:

I wake at first light feeling fine. Breakfast with the monks and the handful of pilgrims that stayed overnight at the monastery: coffee, halva and fresh bread with olive oil.

All of the Greek pilgrims are continuing their pilgrimage which means they will hike back down to the dock and take the boat on to the next monastery–or they will hike to the next monastery which is seldom more than an hour’s easy walk away. But, since I have been invited to stay on at Saint Anne’s and since I have been assigned no tasks for the present, I am free to wander.

And what I want to do first is to climb to the top of the mountain.

Saint Anne’s is one of the closest monasteries to the Holy Mountain itself– right below the peak–so I take a plastic bottle of water and some bread and start off.

Outside the main monastery gate there are mazes of paths to chose from–some leading to gardens and the dwelling sketes of solitary or small groups of monks living nearby– but I follow a dry and dusty path heading upward between stones, desert shrubs and trees which I hope will take me to the summit. There are many paths branching off the one I take but I always follow the one going up.

After about an hour’s climb I reach a stone shelter near the top. Three young men dressed, not in robes, but in well-worn hiking clothes, are lounging at the door of the shelter. They welcome me to the highest shrine on Holy Mountain and invite me in. They are Greek but speak passable English. They have removed the concrete cover of a water cistern beneath the floor of the shrine and, using a small kettle and a little wood fire, are making tea-- they offer me a cup. One of the men has just returned from England and has brought back a package of the British “digestive biscuits” which I grew to love during my pilgrimage in that country. He gives me a couple to my great delight. Tea and digestive biscuits on the top of Holy Mountain!

These young men describe themselves as “outlaws”, but not bandits. They say they spend several months of every year living up here–since almost no one visits this mountaintop shrine. The Holy Mountain government knows they are here, they say, but does not bother them since they do no harm.

They are rather scornful of most of the monks living on Holy Mountain whom they describe as mere Greek retirees and not religious persons at all. They dislike the bureaucracy of the Holy Mountain theocratic government and declare that they are the “true seekers” in the pattern of the old desert fathers.

They remind me of the idealistic young students of the Viet Nam War protest days I knew in Hawaii during the short-lived “greening of America”.

I spend an interesting hour with the outlaws listening to their theories, for example their explanation of the real meaning of making the sign of the cross which they claim is more of a yogic exercise than a purely symbolic gesture and then I make my way back down the mountain to Saint Anne’s.

Tomasito, 2009

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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 15

15

Saint Anne’s Monastery:

Hagia Anna is near the larger monasteries of Gregoriou and Dionysiou on the southwestern side of the Holy Mountain peninsula, but you won’t find it on the usual maps of Holy Mountain, probably because it is too small and unimportant.

It is situated on a precipitous cliff perhaps three hundred feet above the sea near the end of the peninsula. The cliff itself is a part of the steep mountainside which continues to rise above it to the hidden summit of Holy Mountain.

Hagia Anna presents a bizarre, fantastic and beautiful sight to those approaching as we did on the calm sea far below.

We pilgrims and a few cases of supplies are put ashore at a small wooden dock at the foot of the great cliff and the boat soon continues on its way to service other monasteries.

We pilgrims scramble together up a steep footpath following a dry gully. The hike is a strenuous and hot exertion for myself and the other four or five pilgrims from the motorboat--all of them Greeks and all apparently townsmen on pilgrimage/holiday wearing slacks, dress shirts and polished shoes. After a forty-five minute climb we arrive sweating and panting before the stone walls of the monastery.

We are greeted at the heavy wooden gate by a black-bearded monk wearing a full-length black robe, a black brimless cap and leather sandals. We are invited in and asked to sit in a plain but comfortable waiting room. Soon w e are served great pitchers of iced water, Turkish Delight candies and for each, a small glass of arrack,

Then we are led to a clean, airy dormitory room and are assigned beds for the night.

The abbot, Father Athanasius, soon appears. He welcomes all of us warmly, noting me especially I think and using excellent English to welcome me. Since I am nothing special, I think this is very gracious of him.

Father Athanasius is a youngish looking man–perhaps younger than forty years old--and he appears to be very vigorous and healthy. His black clothing is no different from the other monks’ but he seems to bear himself with the authority and self confidence of a leader of men. He has the usual black beard and eyebrows of the classic Greek and his dark eyes are particularly bright and clear.

He is rather surprised that I paid for my first night’s lodging in Kyries since all food and lodging–at all the monasteries–are provided free to all pilgrims. I never knew this so I stayed at the only lodging on the entire peninsula which charges a fee for bed and board!

He gives me the welcome news that he will extend my stay for a week and after that we can discuss further extensions–if I need more time to “discover” the place.

I take the rest of the afternoon to explore the old church and the monastery quarters, then join the monks and pilgrims in the refectory for dinner-–fried fish with tomatoes and eggplant, bread and olive oil (instead of butter), and pure ice water to drink. The night falls softly; warm, peaceful and absolutely silent– -there are no radios, TVs, computers, canned music or traffic noise on Holy Mountain. Gratefully I sleep.

Tomasito, 2009



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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 14

14.

Daphne again: Kyries and Holy Mountain:

I check with the Thessaloniki Office of Holy Mountain Autonomous Monastic Republic several times a week and after a month and a half wait, using Kalogiros’ little apartment as a base camp, I am issued a visa for the foreigner’s maximum four-day visit. The officers suggest that if I want to stay longer I should apply directly to the authorities at Kyries, the capital of Holy Mountain, when I arrive.

I have enough money for a bus ticket to Daphne, the entry seaport, so I leave my bike with Kalogiros and make the three-hour trip by bus.

My Greek friend loans me a Russian camera and gives me some film since he says no one should go to such a picturesque place without a camera. He also loans me a couple of nice long-sleeved shirts since he says I should not tempt the monks with bare arms. He carries me to the bus station on his motorcycle and waves goodbye saying I will be welcome to stay with him again after my pilgrimage.

The bus goes right to the dock where pilgrims to Holy Mountain catch their boat.

The captain of one of the small motorboats which carry pilgrims and supplies to the various monasteries on the coast of Holy Mountain checks my visa and allows me to come aboard with no problem. After a smooth thirty minute voyage I debark with one or two other passengers at the Kyries dock and hike alone the half mile or so up the hot, dusty road to the capital city, Kyries itself.

When I walk into town I seem to be the only person alive. There are buildings , seemingly built in different periods and for different purposes, but all seem abandoned and empty. There is none of the usual bustle and noise of other Greek towns or cities. There are one or two shops with dusty windows displaying merchandise which I suppose would interest a monk: black socks, black shoes, black leather belts, black cloth, black caps, a few books, candy and soft drinks, but the hustle of business does not exist even a little. I see no advertising and, though I knew it would be the case, not a trace of women or children.

This lack is the strangest thing of all.

I suddenly realize with a shock that I have never been in any town anywhere where women simply did not exist . This feels extremely strange to me.

I have lived in monasteries where women were not allowed and I have been in Moslem villages and towns where women were not much in evidence., but even in the strictest Moslem villages there will always be some children about, but here there are no children at all–and there never have been any. This is the first entire town I have ever experienced where there are no women and where no women have ever been!

This is very different and very odd!

I find the pilgrim’s office in one of the faded old buildings and ask the clerical monks for an extension to my four day visa. I am asked to return in the morning.

I have no idea where a pilgrim can stay in this town but discover a very small and very run-down “hotel” where I can rent a tiny rickety room with a bed and where I can also buy a simple, cheap meal.

I stroll out in the evening and follow a narrow dirt road. There is no vehicular traffic of any kind. One or two pedestrian monks come or go but they pay not the slightest attention to me. Still, as I become more adjusted to the strangely different pace of Kyries, being thus ignored seems not too bad after all.

I walk to a low rise in the land and see through a break in the sheltering trees, a distant sight of supernatural beauty: the perfectly shaped peak of Holy Mountain. I can almost hear the expected movie-track sound of a gong! If the word had not been destroyed by skateboarding juveniles I would certainly say, and reverently: awesome!

As night falls I return to the hotel. The other residents of the hotel have gathered in the dining room: three or four black-robed Greek monks, elderly, bearded, and, to me, very bizarre!

One fat gray-whiskered monk seems to be seized by a paroxysm of crossing himself whenever he catches my eye, making the crossing gesture dozens of times with lightning-like speed and staring at me with wild round eyes all during the exercise. I don’t know why he does this and it certainly seems like crazy behavior to me. But then the entire scene seems sort of crazy to me!

At any rate, since I still speak little Greek, there need be no conversation.

I am exhausted from the day’s trip and from the strangeness of Kyries, and so retire early and sleep well in the absolute silence of this most unusual capitol city.

After a breakfast of good coffee and bread at the hotel, I return to the Pilgrim’s Office where I am told I can go down to the dock and proceed directly by motorboat to Hagia Anna (Saint Anne’s) monastery and stay there for a few days. My four day’s visa time will be extended as necessary with the permission of the abbot of Saint Anne’s.

I hurry back down the dusty road to the dock and clamber aboard a little wooden boat with a half a dozen apparently working-class Greek pilgrims and we soon depart for the monasteries which can be most easily accessed from the shore.

We pass several monasteries on the way to Saint Anne’s.

I had seen National Geographic's photographs of the outlandish monasteries perched on the cliffs of Holy Mountain, but it is most thrilling to see with my own eyes these unique and seemingly enchanted structures perched on cliffs high above us or graciously set back in green, spacious valleys.

Tomasito, 2009


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Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 13

13


I meet Aristotle

Another day Kalogiros asked if I would like to meet Aristotle.

I said I would certainly like to but that it was rather impossible because Aristotle was long dead. “Not so”, replied Kalogiros. “Aristotle is simply the title of a very special person. An Aristotle type of person.” He explained to me that there is an “Aristotle” in every living generation of Greeks and he happened to know this generation’s Aristotle very well. He also said that the other famous Greeks I had heard of like “Sophocles”, for example, were not historic individuals at all, but simply living persons “holding” the title for a time and having the attributes of a “Sophocles” type of person.

Kalogiros explained to me that our generation’s Aristotle is a gentleman educator and writer living on a beach near Thessaloníki. That afternoon we rode his motorcycle in tandem out to Aristotle’s place so I could meet the great man.

I discovered that our Aristotle had a small house with the things a house typically has, but that he himself could usually be found near his house seated on a six foot square platform on top of a steel tower maybe thirty feet high engaged in writing using a small mechanical portable typewriter —and sure enough, on top of the tower is where we found him. Kalogiros called up asking permission for us to climb the ladder to his platform. He invited us to climb on up and I was soon being introduced to someone I had never thought to meet in this life: Aristotle.

The day was very hot so Aristotle was only wearing a pair of tattered tan shorts. He was a man of about seventy, I suppose—short, very brown and bald but with a long white beard, brilliant Santa Claus eyes and a congenial smile. At the time of this visit I had long brown hair and beard since I had been pilgrimming by bicycle for many months. I was wearing rubber sandals, shorts and a tee shirt. Kalogiros was also simply dressed.

Aristotle spoke no English but was obviously delighted that I had come with Kalogiros to meet him. He and Kalogiros had a lively discussion in Greek for half an hour and then it was time for us to go.

I was absolutely charmed by the whole incredible meeting and before we climbed down from the platform I reached down to touch the feet of the great sage as a sign of respect. He laughed joyfully when I did and reached down and touched my foot! Then he climbed down the ladder with us, went into his little house and brought out a bound copy of his book—a most unusual professionally printed book using several colors of ink with one layer of writing superimposed upon another in a different color. (Oddly enough, I had dreamed of holding pages of similar multi-colored print and pictures on and off for years.) He gave me a copy of his book and asked me to take it with me back to America—which I did.

Later at his apartment, Kalogiros found me painstakingly translating the book with the aid of a Greek/English dictionary. “No. That’s impossible,” he said “There are only about four people on earth beside me who can understand Aristotle’s writing at this time, and we are all very familiar with classical and modern Greek. It is an encoded book—not intended for just anyone to understand.” Kalogiros told me that he had been a student of Aristotle at a university before Aristotle left his position as a professor to write in freedom on the beach.

He said that Aristotle’s writing was not for this age anyway, but for a future time when people were ready for it.

(Several years after this meeting, I carried the copy I received from Aristotle to Albuquerque, New Mexico and gave it to a professor of Ancient languages at the university there who was an old friend of my father. Perhaps this singular copy of Aristotle’s mysterious book will be preserved for that future day in the dry New Mexico desert.)

Tomasito, 2009


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