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Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 08:17:06 GMT

"Let each one of us pray to God not for himself only, but for all the brethren, even as the Lord has taught us to pray, when he bids to each one, not private prayer, but enjoined them, when they prayed, to pray for all in common prayer and concordant supplication."

--Cyprian of Carthage
(Epistles 7.7)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

I have, at last, returned from both a blogging hiatus and a trip to Turkey. I'd hoped before leaving for fall break to detail a class trip I took to Eastern Attika, visiting the Amphiaraion, the Temple of Artemis at Vravrona, and the Temple of Poseidon at Sounion; as that didn't happen, I'll simply say that Sounion is splendidly scenic, and leave it at that. To do otherwise would make this post even longer than the monstrosity it'll surely be.

The morning of Friday, 23 October 2009, Micah left for the airport while I stayed behind. The reason we weren't on the same flight is simply that, by the time I decided to let him join me, the cost for my flight there had doubled, so the only affordable thing to do was to fly separately. Later that afternoon, after hanging out with my friend Aleka for a while, I walked to Plateia Syntagma, and on the way ran into my friend Jessie and her mother, who'd be visiting Jessie in Greece during the break. At Syntagma, I located the bus to the airport and got there without much hitch, though it was a remarkably long ride. The bus had this delightful bend in the middle. Upon arriving, I got in line after a quick stop at the bathroom, but got out of line when I spotted some friends. They were supposed to already be on their flight to Rome (after which they'd be visiting Amsterdam), but a strike in Italy had canceled that flight, and as a result they'd be put up in a five-star hotel in Athens until Monday, when they could actually go. In retrospect, it sounds like things worked out alright for them. Glad nothing like this happened to me, though!

So I got my ticket, made my way through the airport, and finally reached the waiting area. One Turkish business-man type fellow asked me a number of questions to make sure he was in the right place, and I was glad to have a chance to help him out. He seemed like a nice guy. For a while he was reading a book called A Brief, Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam. While we waited, I saw a woman approach the lady at the desk with her hands raised, as if to say, “What gives?” I couldn't understand the response, but the other woman totally facepalmed as if to say, “We're all doomed now.” Not exactly a good omen. Eventually, maybe 15 minutes or so before our scheduled departure, the flight started boarding. It was a nice flight; arrived about 15 minutes late. On the way, I got to see the Acropolis from above at night. So awesome. When I arrived in Turkey, I got my visa, got my passport checked, got 600 TL, and eventually found the hafif metro, which I took to Zeytinburnu. There, also with great confusion, I took a tram to Sultanahmet, which is a very historic district of Ístanbul, named after a seventeenth-century sultan named Ahmed. The tokens (or, jeton, in Turkish) weren't expensive; just 1,50 TL. At Sultanahmet, I was met by Micah, who led me back to the hostel, where I swiftly crashed. We stayed at the Agora Guesthouse, which I quite recommend for stays in Ístanbul. It was a bit hot in the room at first, but I eventually drifted off to sleep.

The next morning – Saturday, 24 October 2009 – after a quick shower, I joined Micah to head off to the Hagia Sophia. The entrance fee was 20 TL / person, which isn't so bad, all things considered. The Hagia Sophia. Let me just say that the Hagia Sophia is awe-inspiring. I mean, really awe-inspiring. I don't say that lightly. What's visible – which isn't as much as one would like, with the Islamic additions from Ottoman rule and the scaffolding from restoration work – is enough to take one's breath away. As we set foot in the sanctuary, Micah's sentence trailed off without conclusion as his jaw dropped. (In other words, an extra perk!) The original Hagia Sophia was built in the early fourth century during the reign of Constantine I; fires destroyed the first two, and the one standing there today has existed since the reign of Justinian I in the sixth century AD (specifically, AD 537). In one entrance hall, in fact, one can see a beautiful mosaic featuring Christ in the center, with Constantine on the right offering to Christ a model of the city of Constantinople, while on the left is Justinian offering a model of the Hagia Sophia. It's said that when Justinian first entered the completed church, he exclaimed, “Solomon, I have outdone you!” For him, the beauty of this church surpassed that of the First Temple in Jerusalem. And I can see the plausibility in that. The mosaics took my breath away. I was far more interested in them than in the Islamic elements; after Constantinople fell to Muslim armies in AD 1453, thus ending the Byzantine Empire, the Hagia Sophia was converted into a mosque. After the establishment of a secular republic in Turkey as a result of the efforts of Mustafa 'Kemal', a.k.a. Atatürk (“Father Turk”), the Hagia Sophia was turned into a museum, and some of the mosaics – covered over by Muslims long before – were finally revealed to the world yet again.

Some of my favorite mosaics were the four seraphim beneath the dome. I mean, just absolutely beautiful and majestic, even with the faces irreparably damaged. It took me a little while to realize what they were, but whenever I think of seraphim, the images from the Hagia Sophia will always come to mind. (For those readers who aren't familiar, seraphim are the 'fiery' angels of Isaiah 6, wherein the prophet describes that they have six wings – with two they cover their faces, with two they cover their feet, and with two they fly. For any readers who have Todd Agnew's first album, Reflection of Something, listen to Track 5, entitled “Isaiah 6”.) I also loved the Diesis, or Last Judgment, mosaic. Didn't seem very Last Judgment-y to me. The bottom was gone, but it features Jesus in the center with the Virgin Mary to the viewer's left and John the Baptist to the viewer's right. I chose a close-up of that portrayal of Christ as the new background for my computer.

Also, there's a grand mosaic in the upper gallery in which Christ is flanked by the Byzantine emperor Joannes Comnenos and his wife, the Empress Irene. Why does that one appeal to me so much? Well, as you'll all no doubt know, I'm a big genealogy buff, and a while back I was working on my own family tree when I found some suggestions – still unconfirmed, as they no doubt will be until I search for some records in Kent, England – that Ralph Mansfield (b. 1611) was the son of one John Mansfield and his wife Isabel Leigh (m. 1606). If this were true, then the ancestors of John Mansfield would be mine as well. And among those ancestors are several Comnenid emperors, that one included. So I may well have been staring directly at a mosaic featuring my own forefathers. (Joannes and Irene, by the way, had a reputation for outstanding piety and generosity. From what I've read of them, they were quite outstanding people.)

When we had finished in the Hagia Sophia, Micah and I stopped at a kiosk-type of thing a brief walk away to get some soda. He got a big Cola Turka and I got an orange Çamlıca. For a one-litre bottle, I paid 2 TL; Micah's was perhaps 2,50 TL for the same size. I tried both, and they were better than their big brand-name counterparts. Cola Turka beats Coca-Cola, and Çamlıca beats Fanta. I never thought that's something I'd write. We drank them by a fountain, watching some cats frolic. It was a taste of heaven on earth, one might say.

Later that afternoon, after a stop at a jewelry shop where we saw some antique pieces – the owner was very nice and friendly, as Turks tend to be – Micah and I visited the Sultanahmet Mosque, commonly known as the Blue Mosque because of its interior decoration. This mosque was built in the early seventeenth century AD, I've heard in an effort to rival the Hagia Sophia with a novel Islamic structure. And the sultan's architect Sinan gave it a pretty blasted good shot, I must admit. It's especially marvelous from the outside, even more imposing than the Hagia Sophia, especially with those minarets. (I should mention that the Hagia Sophia, which was the world's largest cathedral for over a thousand years, was not only the prototype to which Byzantine churches often aspired, but also inspired the familiar architecture of most mosques.) The inside was a lot plainer. Still vast and beautiful, but nothing like the Hagia Sophia. It's decorated on the interior with blue Íznik tiles, which I'll mention more later. However, the dome of the Sultanahmet Mosque is supported by four elephant-leg-like pillars, whereas those in the Hagia Sophia are built with subtlety into the structure itself, making the dome seem to float in the air above.

After exiting, we met a Turkish man named Mehmet, who struck up a conversation and mentioned that he had a rug store nearby. Cunningly, he led us there, and it turned to be in the upstairs of the same building that housed the jewelry shop from just that morning. Upstairs, we met Mehmet's uncle Yusuf, who talked to us for a while about many of his beautiful rugs. They really were spectacular. Elsewhere, Micah had bought a small rug the previous day for 275 TL. And Yusuf offered us what I find to be a very nice part of Turkish culture: elma çayı, apple tea. It's customary to drink when haggling over purchases and so forth. Now, I ordinarily can't stand tea. One of my least enjoyable experiences when in China in 2008 was visiting a tea house. But apple tea is different. It took a while for it to cool off enough to drink, but when it did... wow. Mind-blowingly fantastic. Micah says it's a lot like apple cider, which he now thinks of as “poor man's apple tea”.

After a stop back at the hostel, we decided to set out that very day for Kadıköy. To get there, we walked north from Sultanahmet to the port-like area of Eminönü, where we caught a ferry across the Bosphorus Strait. When we got off the boat, Micah leapt to the ground with both feet, and for the first time, he set foot on his third continent ever: Asia. Kadıköy, while now a district of Ístanbul, used to be a settlement called Chalcedon, both during Byzantine times and before. In fact, in pre-Christian times, before Byzantion (later Constantinople and now Ístanbul) was founded, the Greeks were told (or so the story goes) to found a city across the water from the blind. When they happened upon the Bosphorus and saw that Chalcedon had been settled across from such a perfect natural harbor as provided by the Golden Horn, the Greek colonists thought that the settlers of Chalcedon must've been blind – and so they founded Byzantion directly across from it. So Chalcedon is even more ancient. More importantly for my interests, the Fourth Ecumenical Council happened there.

After a short walk past a peculiar mosque, Micah and I stopped at a small restaurant for some Sandviç Döners for supper while I taught him a brief lesson in church history up through the first few ecumenical councils. To sum up a little bit: in the early fourth century, after the church had been embattled in fierce controversy over the status of repentant apostates (the Donatists and Novatianists were big troubles here), a new threat arise in the teaching of an African presbyter named Arius, who served a district in Alexandria, one of the patriarchal sees, which at the time was under the care of Bishop Alexander. Arius reasoned that, because all begetting implies a distinction in time, then since the Son, Jesus Christ, was begotten by the Father, it had to follow that the Son was younger than the Father, and that consequently Christ was a created, lesser divine being, so that 'there was a time when the Son was not', as the slogan went. Arius went further and reasoned that, since the Father's innermost being cannot be comprehended by any creature, Jesus didn't fully know his Father, and there was always a chance – theoretically speaking – that Christ could do what Satan did and fall from grace. All this follows from Arius' initial position, and was remarkably troubling. A local synod met and excommunicated Arius, but he was a talented propagandist and soon Arianism was quite on the rise. While Constantine – now the emperor, who had just overturned the Roman policies of persecuting the Christians – didn't really care much for the theological niceties of the controversy, he did want the church to be unified somehow, and since this and a few other issues were being troublesome, a great council was convened at Nicaea in AD 325. This was the first ecumenical council. The bishops who met there dealt with several issues, such as the Meletian schism and the date of Easter, but they also agreed after much deliberation to reject Arianism and adopt a creed excluding Arianism by declaring the Son to be homoousios ('same essence') with the Father – a controversial term because of its heretical use by earlier modalist teachers in the third century AD.

Arianism refused to rest and mutated into other forms, like the Semi-Arianism that admitted Christ only to be homoiousios ('similar essence') with the Father, as well as a new but related heresy: Macedonianism, which applied Arian reasoning to the case of the Holy Spirit, whose role hadn't been much clarified at the First Council of Nicaea. The Macedonian heretics were called Pneumatomachoi by their opponents, meaning 'those who fight against the Spirit'. The next ecumenical council, which met in Constantinople in AD 381, made one of its main functions the expansion of the creed's article on the Holy Spirit, affirming him to be of the same essence as the Father and the Son. Thus, the council decided in favor of the consubstantiality of the whole Trinity, which had been implicit in Christian proclamation from the beginning. The Nicene Creed as recited today is, with differences in the West, as revised by this council.

After Arianism died down, the next controversy revolved around terms for Mary. Nestorius, who became the patriarch of Constantinople, had reservations over the traditional title of Theotokos, or 'God-bearer'. For him, it seemed that this should be replaced by Christotokos, or 'Christ-bearer', since the term 'Christ' sums up both Christ's divinity and humanity. His opponents, however, took Nestorius to be playing fast and loose with the true union of God and man in Christ, and to be potentially casting aspersions on Christ's divinity. Nestorianism has historically referred to the division of Christ into, practically, two persons. At any rate, while Nestorius had some legitimacy to his fears that the word Theotokos could be misconstrued to imply that the divine nature of Christ were derived from Mary, Nestorius handled it the wrong way, and a council held at the Church of Mary in Ephesus in AD 431 declared Nestorius to be in the wrong, which alienated many believers who sided with him.

However, the problems weren't over. Nestorius' chief adversary, St. Cyril of Alexandria, had gone so far in opposing Nestorius' seeming division of Christ as to say that in Christ, divinity and humanity were united en mia physis, in one nature. This gave support to those who became known as Monophysites, who held that in Christ there was one nature. (I personally find this position to be either blatantly false when fleshed out certain ways or else implying the orthodox position as the logical conclusion when fleshed out differently, but more on that some other time.) A council meeting at Ephesus in AD 449 affirmed this doctrine, but was dubbed by critics as a 'council of robbers'. The Fourth Ecumenical Council was held at Chalcedon in AD 451, where theological disagreements coincided, alas, with tendencies for the patriarchates of Alexandria and Antioch to vie for power. Despite that maneuvering, I think that the Definition of Chalcedon is theologically and philosophically coherent, and also a wonderful Christological declaration that has been a banner of orthodoxy ever since.

To return to my narrative, we left the restaurant – after Micah bought a dozen chocolate cookies, of course – and returned to the port after a harrowing game of live-action Frogger. Yikes-ies. And after taking a wrong boat somewhere, we got reoriented and headed back to Eminönü, although a few Kurdish blokes had some good-natured fun messing with us a bit by confusing us. It was a very full day, and we were fairly tired when we got back to Sultanahmet. I would've gone to bed earlier if that fire hadn't distracted me. See, we got back to our area and saw smoke. The Ocean's 7, which had a restaurant and hostel in one, was billowing smoke. I should perhaps mention that the Agora Guesthouse is adjacent to this one in the back. We got to see a Turkish fire department in action, though! It was actually a fairly minor kitchen fire and didn't affect our hostel in the least, but there was some slightly bemused concern nevertheless. Micah and I, along with Jessica (a Malaysian girl who was staying in the same 12-bed dorm room in the Agora that we were), spent a while watching, taking pictures, getting video footage, etc.

The next morning – Sunday, 25 October 2009 – I got Micah up with the intention of walking to Fener, another district of the city. At his insistence, we caught a cab instead. I got us up around 6:30 AM, but I forgot that Daylight Saving Time was ending, with the result that we were an hour earlier than I'd expected. The cabby brought us near Fener and dropped us off, while successfully ripping us off. He managed to get 70 TL for the cab ride, while should've cost no more than 25 TL maximum, even at the off-hour rates. I would've continued to try to argue for proper change back – the cabby had said 37 TL – but Micah wasn't backing me up, asking if I was sure that I'd given a 50 TL note instead of just a 5 TL note (and yes, I was and remain 125% sure). So we got ripped off, and as penance Micah would be paying for the next couple meals. The morning could've gone much better; it actually went somewhat downhill from there. It didn't take us long to find some buildings pertaining to the ecumenical patriarchate, but the church we sought? We searched for hours. And Fener, much like Pagkrati here in Athens, is ridiculously hilly. It's very terrible real estate. We got lost repeatedly, sometimes for great lengths of time. We had to stop so Micah could buy some bad bread and worse tea for his breakfast. Also, Fener smells unpleasant and gives the impression of practically being a slum. After around 8:10 AM, we gave up the hunt, although we did pass an apparently closed down Bulgarian Orthodox Church near the coastline. That church is, I'm told, famous for being constructed of cast iron.

Anyway, after giving up, we followed a gaggle of tourists right up to the church. Figures. So we finally reached the Church of St. George, which is the humble patriarchal basilica. There were virtually no real parishioners, from what I could see. The service was almost entirely peopled by these (predominantly Greek) tourists – I could tell from the little badges marking them out as part of tour groups – but while the exterior of the church wasn't so impressive, the inside was fairly beautiful. Not as much so as I'd expected, but the iconostasis was solid silver, save the icons themselves. We stayed for most of Divine Liturgy, but to be perfectly honest, it bored me out of my mind. I imagine that if I knew the Liturgy by heart, I could follow along... but short of that, I could hardly fathom being Greek Orthodox, because nothing in the Liturgy strikes me as anything close to congregational worship. The congregation doesn't do squat. It occurred to me during my boredom that I could now truly empathize with the faithful laity in, say, the Roman Catholic Church in the centuries before the Reformation, to choose just one example. To not be able to worship communally in one's own mother-tongue...

Anyway, Micah ducked out several times and eventually just never came back. When I finally slipped out around 11:10 AM, I couldn't find Micah after quite a bit of searching and decided that, since he had probably ventured back to the hostel, I might as well do the same. And I tried. But see, I succeeded in getting lost. Even with a map. I'm not totally sure where I got lost, exactly. There were market-like areas, and plenty of unfamiliar streets. I remember walking through a market when I heard, for the first time that I really noticed it, the Muslim call to noontime prayer. It struck me that I was really in a Muslim-dominated country, albeit a thoroughly secularized one when it comes to the role of religion in governmental affairs. I reached the hostel a little after 1:00 PM, and after a trip to the bathroom, I ran into Micah, who hadn't left the church 'til around noon, and had been hiding in some corner somewhere petting a kitty he'd found. After we rested until around 3:00, we went for a nice dinner at the nearby Mesopotamia Cafe and Restaurant. I had sausage and chips as an appetizer, salmon and chips for a main course, and apple tea to drink; Micah had cheese rolls as an appetizer, fried shrimp for a main course, and some apple tea of his own to drink. It was all very good, especially the complimentary bread. After paying our bill around 4:30, we hurried to the Basilica Cistern, which had been built in AD 532 by Justinian to serve the Great Palace of Constantinople. The cistern was amazing, absolutely amazing. My pictures weren't so great, but Micah got some great ones. Very eerie down there, in a Byzantine kind of way, if that makes any sense. The gift shop was cool, too. After getting some soda at a kiosk, we headed back to the hostel for a quiet evening during which I read more of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War before hitting the hay early.

The next day – Monday, 26 October 2009 – I got up at 6:00 AM for a shower in which, lacking a towel, I used the previous day's shirt in its stead. Packing up my things, I used the communal laptops a bit before breakfast. After leaving the Agora Guesthouse, we traveled by foot on the lengthy journey down to Yenikapı, Ístanbul's southern port-type area, at least on the European half. (For those who didn't already clue in, Ístanbul is the only city on earth that sits on two continents.) From there, we took a ferry with a great view out the front of the boat, traveling south over the Sea of Marmara to the port-town of Yalova. From there we found a cramped mini-bus to take us to Íznik, our destination for the day. While on the minibus, I noticed that sitting just diagonally from me across the aisle was a young Asian woman, perhaps around my age, who had a Post-It note on some paper, and I could make out the word “Kaynarca” in English characters on it next to some further writing in a recognizably East Asian alphabet. Since I knew that she had the same destination as we did, we tried following her when she set out from the mini-bus, but as it turned out, she didn't know the way any better than we did; but she ran into a Turkish man who was more than willing to take the time to lead us the whole way there. I find this to be not at all uncommon in Turkey.

When we reached the Kaynarca Hotel and Pansiyon, we immediately met the owner, Alí Bulmuş, who insisted that the three of us sit down and have some tea with him before turning at all to business. It was pretty decent, strong Turkish tea, but not the apple variety. So then he took us on a brief tour of the available sorts of rooms, and Micah and I paid for a good double room, whereas I forget what sort Elly – the Korean girl we'd followed there – decided to go with. We were supposed to meet at 4:00-4:15 PM to all go up to the mountain to watch the beautiful sunset over Íznik Gölü (Lake Íznik), but when we came down at 4, Alí was meeting with some friends (including a few police officers), so we passed by and returned within 15 minutes to give him time. But as Alí's son told us, Alí had waited for us and left just a minute before we'd gotten back. So I was kinda bummed for a bit, and Micah and I decided to explore the town a bit. We saw the outside of the Ayasofya ('Ayasofya' is equivalent in meaning to 'Hagia Sophia', denoting any church devoted to Holy Wisdom, i.e., to Christ as the eternal Wisdom of God), which – although now a museum without much demand – was the very church in which the Seventh Ecumenical Council took place in AD 787. Although it might not seem like such a big deal now, the Second Council of Nicaea – for Íznik is, in fact, Nicaea, the place I'd been dying to visit for ages – dealt with the proper role of icons and the Scriptures in Christian worship, particularly with what sorts of material representations and sacred objects are permissible to the Christian. The Iconoclast controversy had raged for quite some time by that point, and the council largely ruled in favor of the Iconodule position. (Personally, my stance would likely be somewhere in the middle of the two extremes, possibly close to the Frankish perspective on the controversy, though I'd like to read the Libri Carolini sometime to see how well my views line up with those of Charlemagne's court theologians.) We didn't go in the church, but at the bus stop next to the church we did find a skinny kitten who meowed at us a lot and was very friendly, so I petted it for a while as Micah went and bought some cheap slices of turkey meat and a bottle of water. We then carried the kitten down to the garden area next to the Ayasofya and took care of her for a bit.

After that, we located the ruins of an old Roman theatre. It took a while for us to figure out the proper way through the fence, though there were plenty of paths with signs recommending in Turkish not to enter that way. But there was no one really watching the site, other than some kids playing fort at the top of the theatron. The theatre was actually quite nice, for ruins – and these were evident ruins. Not all of it was even excavated, and it was clear that no real efforts had been made to restore it. When we left that, darkness was starting to fall, and it was dim by the time we reached the shore of the lake. Walking along it in the dark, we finally stumbled upon a broken down wall next to a sign marking the 'Senatus Sarayı', the ruins of the extremely old imperial court established in Nicaea in Constantine's time. Most of the ruins are now under the lake, but I at least could set my hand against that wall, sit practically upon that wall, or else against a modern structure above it or contiguous with it or something like that. And that court is most likely where the First Council of Nicaea transpired in AD 325. One of the events in church history that most fascinates me. Because, as all know, one of my main areas of interest is the history of Trinitarian thought, but with more a focus on Christology (doctrine of Christ) than pneumatology (doctrine of the Spirit). And so the place where Arianism was condemned has long had a hold upon me. And there I was. Sitting there next to Micah, looking out over the lake, seeing the way lights from the other side would reflect upon the waters, their rays just barely reaching our shore. On our way back into town, we stopped at a place for some köfte (somewhat like meatloaf/meatballs wrapped in a thin pide). Right next door, we stopped at a store and got some soda for a fantastic price: 2,5 litres for just 2 TL! That comes out to a litre for just 80 kuruş (the Turkish equivalent of a cent, insofar as 100 kuruş add up to a lira), or perhaps 55 cents in American money. Hard to beat that deal! I got a bottle of Fanta and Micah tried a lemon-lime flavor that turned out to have a disturbingly medicinal aftertaste. A return to the room ended the night.

The next day – Tuesday, 27 October 2009 – we set out yet again for the imperial court ruins, so as to get a good sight of them in the daytime. As Micah went over to a picnic table, I walked along the shore beneath the wall, marveling that some of the stones beneath my feet gave every indication of having been part of a construction. I pondered whether perhaps Athanasius – a key opponent of Arius who was present with Alexander at the council and succeeded him as Alexandrian bishop – might've once set his hand against some of those very stones. It amazes me how some objects can connect the present with history. Ascending to the upper tier, I was invited to a table by an older Turkish man who introduced himself as Sami. Sami was a retired ship mechanic who was of... questionable sobriety at the time. Anyway, he talked for quite a while, sharing sunflower seeds with both me and Micah. Eventually we parted ways with him. Not quite sure what half the stuff he was saying was, though.

We tried to find the right entrance back into the city, but failed. Eventually we got back into the city, re-oriented ourselves, and then left through the proper exit to search for the ruins of the Orhan mosque and baths. We failed at that, too. It must've been lost in a field somehow or something. I dunno. Giving up, we searched for the Church of the Koimesis in town. It took a while, and we circled around the block a few times before we identified the ruins. I heard that it was ruined, but I didn't expect that! I could see some remnants of walls and assorted pieces, completely overgrown with vegetation, in a pit of sorts. From there we searched for a 'sacred spring' marked on the map that Ali had given us, but couldn't find it. Another tally for the 'fail' column. We did, however, find the Green Mosque and the Şeyh Kutbuddin Mosque on the other side of town. Both were quite beautiful from the outside, but didn't appear to be really that open to visitors.

Next to these was a museum, and after some discussion we decided to go in. And I am so glad we did. It was a while before we even entered the museum building itself. The yard around it was filled with stelae and sarcophagoi of all sorts. Many had crosses or reliefs of other sorts, and there were plenty and plenty of inscriptions. So many inscriptions! I was like a kid in a candy store. Out back there were a number of graves, and I could tell that half the tombstones were in Arabic while some of the others were in an alphabet and language I couldn't quite identify, perhaps Syriac or Armenian. The inside was pretty cool, too. There was a burial pot from a Neolithic site in the area, and the pot still had a human skeleton inside, clearly visible to all. I also saw some coins from the early Byzantine period, and some featured the image of Christ, which was pretty cool. And there were, naturally, great examples of Ottoman-era ceramics.

After a quick tour of the town's tile shops – perhaps “quick” isn't quite the right word – we finally headed back to the Ayasofya, and after paying the admission fee to a guy sitting at a table outside, appearing to be quite bored with his job – after all, who visits that museum? – we entered. The church had been damaged and rebuilt since the olden days, but this was undoubtedly the church in which the Seventh Ecumenical Council transpired in AD 787, as I've already described. It was a fantastic experience to be inside. Naturally, it had at one point been used as a mosque, so there were some traces of that, but otherwise it was just a medium-size empty building, smaller than my home church for sure. But I eventually noticed faint traces of time-effaced frescoes and took some photos. The simple experience of being in that place, though... it was breathtaking in its historical significance.

After we left there, I went and bought some tiles and related items, but all I can mention is that I purchased a nice framed tile with some Arabic calligraphy on it. Getting back to the hostel, we waited until 3:00 for Alí. He had an errand, and so we actually all gathered closer to a half hour later. So then Alí and a woman from the town took us, Elly, and two French women staying at the pension on a trip in the hostel's van. Micah and I sat in the back trunk-type area behind the back seats, sitting cross-legged while facing the back doors. We got some photos at the Ístanbul Gate, which is widely acknowledged to be a fairly impressive portion of the city wall. The city wall, by the way, dates to the early thirteenth century AD, because when the Crusaders sacked Constantinople, the emperor Theodoros Lascaris (Theodore I) fled to Nicaea, which served as the temporary capital of the Byzantine Empire during the phase called the Empire of Nicaea. Theodore had the walls constructed because he didn't exactly trust the Crusaders, having already lost Constantinople to them. From there, we went to a tremendous monument called the Five Stones, which is basically a looming pillar built of five massive stone blocks. After that, we went up to the mountain in hopes of watching the sunset, as we'd hoped to yesterday. The weather conditions weren't right, though, so we never got to see it, but the mountain had a great view of Íznik. I spent most of the time talking to Elly, who doesn't speak English fluently just yet, so it was a challenge. But I got to know her better, which was enjoyable. And four Turks—three guys and one girl—eventually showed up and engaged us all in some conversation. Two of them were from Ízmit (ancient Nicomedia), which had been rocked in a 1999 earthquake that they remembered. One of the Turkish guys had recently gotten out of the army and spent some time talking about the Turkish involvement in the Korean War. They were pretty nice people.

After returning to Íznik, I relaxed in the room by myself for a while before Micah and I went to get some lahmacun at the restaurant just catercorner to the hostel. Lahmacun is basically an Arabic-style meat pizza. It involves a thin circle of pide bread topped with ground meat – I think lamb, possibly – as well as some onion and parsley. It wasn't exactly stunning, but it was pretty good, and inexpensive, too. I can definitely go for a 1,50 TL item! I ended up going to bed early at 8:00 PM.

The next day, Wednesday, 28 October 2009, I found myself waking up around 1:00 AM. In retrospect, this might have something to do with me accidentally setting my watch's alarm for 1:01 AM and not remembering how to turn it off, which I still haven't done, actually. I stayed in bed until around 6:42 AM, and after a shower I headed out to seek some smaller tiles. But the shops were closed until noon, so I was out of luck. My breakfast ended up consisting of chips and a box of juice. Not exactly health central, but nothing else was really available. Meeting up with Micah and Elly – since Elly had the same destination as us, I'd invited her last night to travel with us for a while – we headed off to the town's otogar, or bus station. From there we took a 1.25-hour ride in a minibus to Bursa. Getting to the Bursa otogar, we found it much larger and realized that we didn't really have a clue what to do. Eventually, though, we bought a ticket that would get the three of us all the way to the end. At 11:30 AM, we all headed out in an extremely long bus ride, which fortunately involved a bathroom stop, in a larger bus. At the otogar in Izmir (ancient Smyrna – yes, one of the seven churches in Revelation 2-3), we had to wait for a second minibus. We chatted for a while with Murad, a young Turkish man who works there coordinating people in getting them to Selçuk. He and his friends were quite nice. I also finally realized something. When Turks see me, they often suspect that I'm Muslim, and I finally found that it's partly because of my beard; Murad (or one of his friends) said that I look like I'm preparing to go on hajj, haha. At around 5:15 PM, we caught a minibus to Selçuk at last and disembarked. A man at the Selçuk otogar working for the Metro bus line offered to help us secure a ticket awhile for our departure from Selçuk, since it had to be booked early because of a holiday weekend (Thursday of the week in question was a Turkish national holiday). He assured us that their night buses have nice facilities, including bathrooms on the bus, and free wireless Internet access. So we spent the 50 TL each for the ticket, which is roughly in the ballpark of what we expected; the guidebook had postulated 45 TL for an 11-hour overnight ride. This will all be important later.

We parted ways with Elly there at the otogar, since she and we were going to different hostels. She did, however, give us each bookmarks that she'd brought from Korea as gifts for friends she'd make. Micah and I set out then on a walk through town in search of the Kiwi Pension. After getting ourselves lost, two boys helped us find it. We later learned that it was just a short, simple walk from the otogar. Yeeeah... Anyway, a man at the desk of the pension who spoke brusque English showed us to our room, which had one large bed consisting of two mattresses with a single pair of large sheets covering them. That was... well, we mostly kept to ourselves. I allegedly hogged the blankets, but Micah kept rolling onto my half of the bed.

The next morning – Thursday, 29 October 2009 – was Republic Day. It commemorates the foundation of the Republic of Turkey by Atatürk, and so it was only after we realized what time of year it was that Micah and I understood why Selçuk was absolutely covered with pictures of Atatürk and Turkish flags. But the Turks practically hero-worship Atatürk anyway; it is, in fact, illegal there to insult him or the Turkish state. We awoke to a decent breakfast involving some breads, a hard-boiled egg, and Turkish tea. This was when I got to meet Alison, the owner of the pension. After that, Micah and I walked to the Temple of Artemis. It wasn't nearly as far as we'd expected based on the map. The Temple of Artemis was pretty amazing, and we were the only visitors. The site was nice and clean, too, other than the underbrush. Dedicated to Artemis of the Ephesians, who was actually an Anatolian goddess, it was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World; according to Antipater of Sidon, it was the most impressive of them all. Only one of the 127 original columns is still standing, and it's perpetually topped by a stork's nest. And when I stood under it and saw how high it was, and pondered the layout of the temple itself, I can understand why it and not, say, the Parthenon held the honor. For the Temple of Artemis was the largest temple in all of antiquity. Period. It dwarfed the Parthenon. The closest competitor was the Temple of Apollo in Didyma, which needed only four more pillars or so to usurp the prize. But the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus held the fame. And I could imagine Paul standing next to it as the Ephesian crowds stirred to riot against him. A very moving place.

From there, we walked across the street and through a Turkish graveyard to get to a small bridge over a ditch of sorts. Following a dirt path through some manner of field, Micah and I admired the semi-barren beauty of the scenery until we reached a slightly more main road, which we followed until finding the place to turn off. And so we climbed a hill and at last reached the Grotto of the Seven Sleepers. There's a famous legend of fairly early origin that goes something like this: during the third-century reign of the Emperor Decius, there was a great persecution of Christians, and seven believers fled to a cave for safety and fell asleep. And in that state they remained until the next century, when they awoke. Not realizing what had happened, they went to town, and one tried to purchase some bread with a coin picturing Decius. Now, that sort of coin hadn't been in circulation in ages, so naturally it caused confusion, and the seven were brought before a local magistrate and perhaps even the emperor – the empire had by this time become thoroughly Christianized. After the rejoicing over the miracle, the seven returned to the cave, where they at last died and were buried. This story was quite popular in antiquity, and a variant of it actually appears in the Qur'an, interestingly enough, though Muslim tradition transplanted the location, since at the time they wanted a more local scene, as Ephesus was in Byzantine hands. So we finally got to the grotto, and as I sort of anticipated, it was all locked up. Fence with barbed wire all around, and a heavy gate at the entrance. I took some pictures through it, but Micah was thin enough to slide under the gate. I passed him my camera through a gap in the wall, and he got some good pictures for me, but alas a guardian of the grotto came and ordered Micah out of the site. For some inexplicable reason, this is one site the Turks don't really open. So after some further walking around the area – we couldn't sneak back in, since the guy kept hanging around to keep an eye on us – we tried to walk to Meryemana. It was... a long and arduous walk. We hadn't gotten terribly, terribly far before a taxi driver offered to take us up for 50 TL, which was the going price for that. So at Micah's urging we decided to accept the offer, which was probably quite wise.

Technically, people are no longer allowed to walk up to Meryemana, since the kilometers of windy roads up the mountain have no real room for pedestrians. So it was good for us to take the taxi up, and the cabby waited to us to visit the site and then took us back down. Meryemana, by the way, is the traditional Roman Catholic site of the house of the Virgin Mary, since John may have taken Mary with him to Ephesus. So it is there that Mary is said to have died and been assumed into heaven. The house – which was located by local priests who were following the visions of the nun Anne Catherine Emmerich, whose visions also profoundly shaped the extra-biblical material in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ – had been turned into a shrine, and the last three popes had all left gifts there and proclaimed it a holy place and a suitable setting for Catholic worship. Pictures inside the shrine weren't allowed, but it was humble yet beautiful, and it had the aura of... sanctity, almost. To tell the truth, I was less moved than Micah was, because while I have a fairly high view of Mary, I think that both Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have carried Marian devotion to ridiculously unbiblical extremes, particularly the Roman church. And the place had the aura of an area devoted to Mary as though to a goddess of some sort. Anyway, I took a few drinks from the spring there, and I should probably look up the significance of that at some point.

After descending the mountain, the taxi driver dropped us off at the southern entrance to Ephesus. After a quick soda, Micah and I went in. We had to practically push our way through crowds of idiotic tour groups to do so, but it was worth it. Ephesus is amazing. We first saw the odeon there (a sort of lecture hall, similar to a Roman theatre in construction but often smaller), which was itself fairly impressive. There was also a beautiful temple to Hadrian. But the Celsus Library... now that was awesome. Built in the second century AD, it was two stories high and housed thousands of scrolls. The façade is still fairly intact and features four statues: Sophia (Wisdom), Arete (Virtue), Ennoia (Forethought), and Episteme (Knowledge).

Skipping over a lot of relatively minor things... the theatre in Ephesus was astonishing. Breath-taking, really. We hadn't expected to be able to access it as completely as we did, because of the extensive continuing work in renovating and preserving it. But we climbed as high as we could in the theatron. And from the stage, it's difficult to even see the top of the theatron. From the highest we could ascend, the people on the stage looked absolutely puny. It was incredible. Perhaps the best ancient theatre I'd seen yet. Definitely in better shape than the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, and more impressive to boot. After that, we eventually found our way to the remains of the Church of Mary. And I was impressed. See, it's the church in which the Third Ecumenical Council was held. And it was pretty impressive, even in utter ruins. I finally got to see an ancient (5^th - 7^th century AD) baptistry, which had a different shape than I'd imagined, though I admit I'd never given it much thought. I can barely begin to say how much time I spent, just soaking in every inch of that church. Right across from it, we found the ruins of the archbishop's palace, destroyed by Arab invaders. Not sure whether that palace dates to the time of the Third Ecumenical Council, though. Finally, outside the bathrooms at the site, I found a number of adorable kittens, including a couple that looked remarkably like mine at home. That's rather to be expected; after all, my cats are all mostly Turkish Van in breeding, so I was pleased to see that Turkey had many similar cats.

From Ephesus, we caught a taxi back to Selçuk for 10 TL – after getting some ice cream from a vendor outside the site, of course. Red orange flavor is... interesting. Anyway, in Selçuk we bought some more big soda (2,5 litres of Fanta for 2,50 TL sounds like a good deal to me) and retired to the pension for some rest. Napping until around 5:30 PM, we went to seek food and ended up at a small place called Mehmet Çöpşiş. A çöpşiş is a kind of restaurant, and the owner was Mehmet. We sat at a table just in front of the counter outside, and we both got kebap. It was fantastically delicious. I ate a bite of a fairly hot pepper and, while I could've handled it easily, my eyes were watering and my nose was starting to run, so Micah and I decided to get a half-litre bottle of water with the meal. The kebaps, by the way, were served in sandwich form, kinda. Big half-loaf of bread maybe half the size of a personal stromboli (mmm, stromboli...), filled with chicken, Mehmet's specialty. Delicious. Best of all, the entire meal for the two of us came to only 4,50 TL. That's cheaper than you can eat anywhere in the States! Seriously, I think even the dollar menu at McDonald's would cost a bit more than that, once a drink gets factored in. After dinner, Micah and I went back to the room, where I read for a while before bed.

Next in sequence was Friday, 30 October 2009, and after a shower and some reading, I went downstairs with Micah for breakfast. It was the same as the day before, but we had the presence of mind to request apple tea in place of the stronger, standard Turkish tea. Apple tea is so much better. After checking out – I paid our bill in euros – Alison was kind enough to let us stash our bags in a corner of the dining area and return for them later. So our first destination that day was the Basilica of St. John, which cost a bit to get into, but no matter. It was worth it. The ruins of the basilica were amazing. Very complete, and the church must've been quite awe-inspiring. And finally we came to the heart of it, in the altar space: the marker above the traditional tomb of John. Yes, the apostle. The bones, I heard, were moved at some point, but that's the traditional site of John's burial in Ephesus, and a church was built in the sixth century AD – thanks again, Emperor Justinian – around it. I got to see a pretty cool baptistry there, too. The whole thing was just amazing. The only negative, really, was that on the way out, I wasn't paying sufficient attention and my left foot slipped off the wooden descent ramp. Fortunately there was some stone below it for my foot to land on, but it was a jolt for sure, and I was limping for a while after that because my ankle was in moderate pain. Nothing too extreme, but nothing I could just completely ignore, for the most part.

After that, we stopped by the Ísa Bey Camii, a mosque in the area that we'd seen from above outside the basilica. The mosque was much more modest than the Sultanahmet Mosque. Still quite nice, but definitely smaller and more modest. To be perfectly honest, it wasn't that much vaster than the sanctuary of my home church. A bit wider, no doubt, and the dome was certainly higher than our ceiling, but other than that, there wasn't much difference in the space. And since this mosque was built in Ottoman times with the resources of an empire behind such constructions, most later mosques are, I would imagine, much more modest. Of course, the mosque complex is much larger than just the prayer hall that I'm describing, but that's really the part that's worth comparing. I checked out some interesting stuff on the bookshelf – most was in Turkish or Arabic, naturally, but I saw a complete set of the Sahih-i Bukhari, one of the major collections of hadith. During our time in there and on the walk out, Micah and I had a fun discussion of religion, sectarianism, and the separation of church and state; we mostly came to similar positions. (So I'm not just a crazy, whacked-out conservative!) We stopped by the Crisler Library, which was set up by an American biblical scholar and archaeologist (so the guidebook called him, at least). As it turned out, to visit the library proper would've cost an entry fee, but the bookshop was free, so we checked that out for a while. To be perfectly honest, the bookshop was a complete and total letdown from what my guidebook had claimed for it. Only a few books there (from a total of maybe four bookshelves) were even interesting, and they were priced in American dollars, and they were kinda expensive. So Micah and I retired to the courtyard, where we petted a kitty for a while; the cat spent time in both our laps.

After stopping at the Kiwi Pension for a swig from my soda bottle and a visit to the bathroom, we set out for lunch at the place we'd been the previous night, getting the same meal – minus, of course, the experiment with mysterious peppers! After relaxing for a while in a park area, we headed to the Ephesus Museum at around 1:00 PM. It was pretty nice inside. I saw the famed Socrates Fresco from Ephesus, which actually features a depiction of the philosopher himself against a red background. There were also some statues of the many-breasted Artemis of the Ephesians, and a head and arm from a massive, creepy statue of the Roman emperor Domitian, a notorious persecutor of the church. When we left there, we set out on a hunt for an Internet cafe. Didn't go quite as smoothly as hoped. After quite a bit of searching for the Nethouse Cafe where specified in my guidebook's map, I circled the block in question several times with no sign of it. I finally concluded that it was, in fact, a fictional place not unlike Narnia, Middle Earth, and Cleveland, OH. We eventually did find another, the Penguen [sic] Internet Cafe, but opted to go back to the hostel for a bathroom break because only one computer was available. When we came back, all of them were taken, so we went for dinner to the area around the supposed Nethouse Cafe. At a restaurant there, we tried 'Turkish pizza', mine with meat and cheese and Micah's with cheddar and egg. It was spectacular. Totally unlike American or Italian pizza, though. The cheddar and egg one was much better; in fact, it'd make a perfect breakfast food, I think. When we got to the Internet cafe again and spent an hour online, I discovered that a friend of mine, Curt Marcus, had passed away of a massive heart attack a couple days earlier. It was quite shocking, since I hadn't even remotely seen it coming. Curt was a great guy. I only knew him via the Internet at this juncture, but he was a man after my own heart: witty, kind-hearted, heavily involved in festivals celebrating Celtic culture, kilt-wearing, and possessed by a bibliophilia to match my own. All I can say of his passing into the arms of Christ is that if heaven has a library, then God better assign a few more angels to it, because Curt will keep them busier than they ever dreamed. Anyway, I ran into the two boys from the other day again outside on our way back to the pension; when we got there, we grabbed our things and headed to the otogar to wait a couple hours for the bus.

So, the bus was interesting. And Micah and I were both very, very ticked off. First of all, the bus was quite late. Second, the guy at the Metro booth – a different one than before – insisted that he take our ticket reservation sheets and trade them in for full-fledged tickets for even better seats. Well, as it turned out, our “better” seats were actually the ones right across the aisle from the mid-bus door. That's widely acknowledged to be among the worst seating placements on any such bus. Our old seats would've been just fine. Also, the promises of the arrangements on the bus were all lies. No Internet access; Micah checked via his Nintendo DS. No bathroom, which really stressed Micah out and drove him rather crazy. And the attendant on the bus was a jerk. The ride was rather miserable, and the bus was clearly not equipped to be a night bus, because it wasn't nearly comfortable enough. Sometime during the trip, the band on my watch broke, so now it's a pocket watch. We finally, at long last, arrived back in Ístanbul at our destination otogar at around 8:30 AM on Saturday, 31 October 2009, half an hour after we'd been told that we would. After stumbling off into the cold rain – this would be a good time to mention that I foolishly left my sweatshirt in Athens – we searched for the shuttle to Sultanahmet that had been promised. Care to take a guess? Yes, more lies! After asking about 12 different people who worked for the bus company – stomping through the rain all the while, and using a frankly disgusting bathroom while we waited – we were directed to a shuttle minibus that would take us to Aksaray. We crammed onto it and got off there, following a young Asian couple who were likewise heading to Sultanahmet. We had to race through the frighteningly cold rain to find a place to get jetons after we got off in the vicinity of Aksaray, and then we found the tram. We took it, but it terminated at the Grand Bazaar, so we were supposed to wait for another one. Accidentally, in all the hustle to disembark, we went through the gate and so had to run – again through the rain – to get more jetons to get back in. By the time we did, the tram to Sultanahmet had left, but fortunately another one was close behind. I should mention that the sickness I'd picked up Wednesday in Íznik – it started as a sore throat and developed into a terrible head cold – was really acting up at this point. All of this was not being good to it, and neither was the walk from the Sultanahmet stop back to our hostel. I pulled out my umbrella for this leg of the journey, but naturally it collapsed in on itself, so there I was, staggering through the rain with a balled-up umbrella over my head. I could hear a number of people laughing. I finally managed to fix it, and we got to the hostel. My bed wasn't cleared out yet, so it was quite a wait until a little after noon until I finally had a bed prepared in which I could rest. And I needed it. Badly, very badly. I was in pretty bad shape.

So at 2:00 PM, the rain is still pounding down outside, with ridiculously strong winds and temperatures feeling as though they're far below freezing. And me, with just a T-shirt and long pants, and an illness. Micah and I agree to alter our plans, but he really wanted to go to the Topkapı Palace Museum, so I consented to give it a try. Needless to say, the trip was not good to me. At many points, Micah pressed on ahead and failed to look back. If he had, he would've seen that I was struggling through the rain and my pain. My umbrella kept flipping inside-out a few times per minute, and by the time he thought to stop and watch me, I could barely walk. My entire body was numb. I really don't know if I could feel any part of myself. And the gift of gab had left me high and dry... or rather, frozen and drenched. I couldn't even get out a full sentence in any language; it was just stammering and gibberish. I could feel myself shutting down, so we sought shelter under an arch, and Micah – realizing at this point that I looked like I was about to die and that bringing me out in this was a terrible idea – wanted to turn back. I didn't want to, though, since we were quite close and since the way back would probably be just as bad on me, and I wasn't sure I'd make it. So we pressed on in a stumbling sprint up a hill and around a corner into the first outer courtyard of the famed palace of the Ottoman sultans. Micah went on a frenzied hunt for the proper ticket window while I held my umbrella at my side to deflect the rain driven sideways by the winds.

We did eventually get into the palace, and although the courtyards were all open-air – and the rain was coming down so hard by this point that the pathways were virtually rivers, I should add – we got to check out some fantastic stuff in some rooms, especially in the treasury, though the clothes of some of the sultans were pretty cool. The treasury rooms, unfortunately, disallowed any kind of picture-taking, undoubtedly for security reasons. But I saw treasures that I just couldn't believe. Pendants containing solid gemstones half the size of my fist. Massive thrones of gold. The sword of Süleyman the Magnificent. The famous Topkapı dagger, which featured prominently in the movie Topkapı from the 1960s, which concerns a plot to steal it. The dagger has three large emeralds in the hilt and a watch on the pommel. There were countless former locks from the Kaaba. Plenty of ornate Qur'an covers. And, in the religious artifacts sections, I saw the swords of Muhammad, as well as his bow. And the swords of several of the Companions of the Prophet, as well as the first few caliphs. And, less credibly, the sword of King David, the rod of Moses, and Abraham's saucepan, as well as the head and arm of John the Baptist. Oh, relics, what fun isn't there to be had with you? The labels treated them all as unquestionably authentic, too. And that area had a man reciting the Qur'an over quiet loudspeakers. There were plenty of beautiful things there that I can barely recall because I was just so overwhelmed by the incessant grandeur of it all.

After making it out of there alive – though still in the rain – we stopped at a mini-mart quickly so Micah could get soda and candy, and then we made it to dinner. Can't remember the name of the place exactly, but it was near the cafe where we'd eaten the last time we were in Ístanbul. We chatted with a couple at the next table who were from the western United States (originally from Montana and now living in Arizona, if I recall correctly) and who were here as part of a cruise. As for Micah and myself, I ordered chicken bolognaise and he ordered a chicken crepe, and we also got plenty of bread and some apple tea. The meal was a bit expensive by the standards I'd become used to, and so I was suspicious at first. But when the food came, all questions were resolved. Because the quality of the food was worth every bit of the cost and probably more. Everything was delicious beyond belief. Finally returning to the hostel, I naturally did some more reading before getting to sleep.

This brings us to the last day in Turkey: Sunday, 1 November 2009. Still somewhat cold and rainy, it was not nearly so horrid as the day prior to it. After waking up and catching a quick breakfast of bread, lunchmeat, and cheese, Micah and I realized that our plans to visit the Grand Bazaar were foiled because it was closed on Sundays. Alas! But all worked out for the best, perhaps, because I flipped through my guidebook and remembered that we had really wanted to visit the Great Palace Mosaic Museum, which we would've otherwise forgotten. So it took a while to find it, but we did. And it was pretty incredible. It preserves some mosaics that were originally from the Great Palace of Constantinople, the imperial residence. The Sultanahmet Mosque had practically been built right over the sight, but what little was recovered was amazing. It includes the largest tessellated floor mosaic surviving from antiquity. I was surprised at how much of the mosaic included scenes of hunters going after animals or else of predation. There was even a griffin on the mosaic somewhere, and I saw some scenes of, e.g., hunters cornering a tiger, and of predators feasting on the bloody belly of a slain gazelle. I also liked what little was visible of the Good Shepherd mosaic, and the mosaic featuring an elephant and a lion fighting. I got what pictures I could. After we got out of there, we shopped for a few hours in the Arasta Bazaar behind the Sultanahmet Mosque, which was in fact the same street where the museum was. I can't reveal many details because I bought gifts for people, and so I have lots of surprises. However, I will say that when I get back to the States, I intend to challenge my best friend Daniel to a very politically incorrect game of chess. Dan, if you read this, e-mail me some guesses as to what I could possibly mean.

We caught a quick dinner in which I had pide et döner (beef döner on pide), apple tea, and a Cappy (basically fruit juice in a soda-type can). We took the tram from Sultanahmet to Zeytinburnu, and the metro from there all the way to the airport, which we reached at around 2:40 PM. After a stop at the bathroom, we immediately had to go through security, where there was a bizarre controversy over the batteries I had in my fanny pack. The woman doing security checks had to check with another security officer, whose reply I judge from gestures to have been, “Eh, who cares? They're just batteries, for crying out loud.” After getting our tickets – I'd be in seat 26A, Micah'd be in seat 14C – we went through passport check and then wasted time by snooping around for a while in a bookshop. If the prices had actually been marked anywhere, I would've probably actually bought something. Also, I looked at the religion/philosophy type section, and I found books by Friedrich Nietzsche and Antony Flew, but not a single Bible in the entire area. Plenty of Qur'ans, though. Anyway, I split off to visit the restroom, after which I met up with Micah again and we got ice cream. Rounding the corner, we found an insane, immobile line for a final security check between us and the gate. Seriously, the line didn't even budge for about a half hour or so. The Turkish airport had no clue how to handle things properly. When we finally got through – after Micah had already blown about eight gaskets – I got wanded, and then we entered Gate 217 and sat on the floor for a bit. We stood, though, when the signal came that boarding was the start. But things were not to be so easy. The flight was delayed until 5:30 PM (it was originally to be 5:10 PM), then 5:40. Micah learned the story when he went to the desk to complain; the flight had made several stops already and had been delayed at the first one, so a domino effect had begun, with the delays being passed on to each airport. At the time, they were still loading luggage. Finally, boarding actually began at around 5:33 PM – perhaps twenty or thirty minutes after the boarding signal had started, and maybe fifteen minutes after it switched to “Last Call”, long before a single person had the opportunity to board. I listened to some music on my MP3 player on the flight when it was permitted, and the plane landed in Athens at around 7:10 PM – forty minutes later than it was originally supposed to. The passport check was long and stupid because the line I got in was ridiculously backed up, and some Albanian idiots kept managing to somehow cut in front of me. After getting through all that, Micah and I took the metro to Syntagma, although he had a confrontation with an astoundingly obese woman who stole his seat when he stood briefly to check the map of the subway line – despite the fact that his backpack was still at his seat. Once we reached Syntagma, we walked back to the apartment, where I unpacked and uploaded some pictures to my computer.

That, I suppose, is at least an outline sketch of my time in Turkey. Now, alas, it's back to the daily grind, though tonight I'll be having a very interesting meeting with the Mormons again; be sure to catch up with the last three on my other blog.

Gratia vobis.

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 11:01:38 GMT

Greetings to all. I don't have terribly much to say here, since at present I'm outside in the rain, sitting on some very uncomfortable steps, all for a chance to actually use the Internet. Since I last posted, I haven't really gained too many wonderful narratives worth posting. The exception to that is that I've started having meetings with a pair of Mormon missionaries. You can read about those at my other blog:

Personally, I think that the second was the most hilarious - read it to see what I mean - whereas the third involved the best interactive discussion. So far. I intend to bring some of the 'harder-hitting' questions to bear at the next meeting, since reading James Talmage's Jesus the Christ will give me plenty of excuses to finally ask them. So I predict that that meeting - which will take quite a while to report, since sometimes it takes longer to write the post than to actually have the original discussion in the first place - will be the most fascinating of all.

What else is there to mention? Not terribly much. This past Wednesday, while at a museum, the chain on my digital camera - two interlinked silvery bracelets - finally broke after over a year, and my camera got somewhat damaged from the fall. It still works, thankfully, but I haven't been able to repair the case, and I don't expect to be able to do so. The screws won't come out, even with the screwdriver I have for fixing my glasses. So that kinda sucks, I suppose. Also, yesterday I was on the island of Aegina. Very rainy, stormy day. We fled the Temple of Aphaia when it became apparent that lightning might be striking soon. We did, in fact, catch a couple flashes of lightning, but I don't think the bolts hit anywhere near there. I got filthier that day from traipsing through mud (especially at Kolona!) than I have in quite a while.

To report some progress in reading, I've finished James W. Graham's The Palaces of Crete and Oliver Dickinson's The Aegean Bronze Age for the paper that I should be writing today regarding Minoan palaces (I'm a third of the way to the minimum length requirement now), and I've also finished New Evidences of Christ in Ancient America (see the "Missionary Lesson 3" post linked above for some critical thoughts on that), my book of Borges' collected fictions (Borges is now one of my favorite writers of all time), and my collection of many of C. S. Lewis' writings, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Should be finishing The Presocratic Philosophers and Herodotus' Histories any day now.

That's all I can think of to say, save that a week from today, I'll be strolling through the streets of Istanbul!

[Oh, and please pray for my friend Angela, who recently had to move out of her apartment because her roommate is, well, insane.]

Gratia vobis.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:19:10 GMT

“Not only is the mind prevented from rising to the understanding of higher things when it lacks faith and obedience to the commandments of God, but by the neglect of good conscience even the understanding which has already been given is sometimes removed and faith itself overturned.”

--Anselm of Canterbury
(Epistola de incarnatione verbe 1)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

I've finally returned from Crete – and what a busy trip that was! As I recall it, I ended my former narrative by speaking of an upcoming group dinner at a taverna. The meal, when we arrived, consisted of mezedes, appetizers. A number of them were quite delicious. I spent the meal in good conversation with those around me and enjoyed a small glass of wine; then came the raki. Raki is, like ouzo, a traditional alcoholic beverage of Greece. The primary difference is that ouzo receives chemical additives in the process of being made, whereas raki does not and is consequently stronger. Raki is more popular in Crete, I think. At any rate, I had two shots of the stuff, and I attribute my later eccentricities more to the unusually positive social atmosphere as to any alcohol I may or may not have imbibed. (The same can perhaps not be said for a friend of mine who finished four glasses of wine and eleven shots of raki...) After some brief religious and historical discussion with my friend Eric (a Jewish agnostic-atheist) and plenty of group pictures, we returned to the hotel, where I ended up spending the rest of the night in my room, reading.

The next morning I awoke and learned that the hotel's breakfasts are just fantastic. After a bus ride, we found ourselves at Gortyn, a rather fantastic site noteworthy for one of the earliest and best preserved Greek law codes, inscribed on the massive bricks of a stone wall. I saw them with my own eyes. Even someone trained in ancient Greek would have difficulty, of course, with that particular dialect and its distinctive vocabulary. I believe it was at Gortyn also that I stood in the remains of the old Basilica of St. Titus. I imagine it would've been quite beautiful. Gortyn was known for being a center of Cretan Christianity, I think. Shortly thereafter, we were rushed off to Phaestos, site of another famed Minoan palace, through which Michael naturally led us. In one of the courtyard, my theatre class rehearsed our scenes from Oedipus the King. There's nothing quite like performing in the courtyard of a Minoan palace, I must say. I think the performance is coming together nicely, particularly with our new blocking.

The next trip led us to a Minoan villa at the site now called Agia Triada ('Holy Trinity'); I was far more fascinated by the seemingly quite old chapel there. After a lunch at Vorri – I didn't want to shell out the €11 for the group lunch, so I wandered around town a bit during that time – we took the bus back to Herakleion. With, of course, one setback. On the way, as our bus turned a corner, we were sideswiped by a car that quickly sped off. I later got to see the damage that had been done to the back left corner of the bus. ...I should perhaps mention that I was sitting in the exact corner of the bus that was struck. As always, I attract calamity, but at least the impact wasn't more direct. We were thus stuck there for a while as the bus driver reported the accident, Greek police officers came to inspect everything, etc., etc. Eventually we made it back to Herakleion, where I think I sequestered myself in my room in a trance for a number of hours. My memory's a tad fuzzy, but it was one of my more 'down' days for some reason, and so I was a tad more paranoid and anti-social than normal. I think, however, that I did venture to a nearby stand for a pork gyro, in which the meat was stringier than normal and the fries were done in a different kind of oil – if you've ever had Boardwalk Fries, think along those lines.

The next day we checked out of the Hotel Olympic, loaded our things onto the bus, and drove to Tylissos, yet another ancient site. I think I recall it as another Minoan villa, but to be perfectly honest, they all blend together eventually. From there we drove to Rethymno for a stop at the archaeological museum (where, alas, large numbers of yet-unpublished artifacts require that photography be prohibited) and then the Venetian fortress. If I remember correctly, the foundation stone was laid on 13 September 1573. The fortress was much more interesting, particularly the chapel seemingly devoted to one St. Aikatherine (whosoever she might be--perhaps St. Catherine of Alexandria?), who was depicted in roughly half the icons there. After a stop by an old mosque (which was large and empty, and thus uninteresting for the most part), Aleka and I checked out a cave before we had to return to the entrance of the fortress to wait for our group. The next bus trip was a transfer to Chania, where we'd be staying. After checking into the Hotel Porto Veneziano, I took a small cadre (Aleka, Tabitha, Micah) with me on a trip to the city's large Orthodox church. When we got there, some manner of ceremony was being performed, and so rather than be intrusive, we left. However, as they began to poke around in shops, I wandered back to the church and found, right next door, a shop with plenty of icons. The older woman who owned the place spoke English quite well – I recall something about her father spending a great deal of time in South Carolina – and I bought four small icons and one larger one. The larger one features the Mystical Supper, and the depiction is beautiful. All twelve disciples are easily visible, and only Judas (naturally) lacks a halo. The smaller icons feature: (a) St. Athanasius of Alexandria; (b) the Emperor Constantine and his mother Helena; (c) St. Irenaeus of Lyons; and (d) James the brother of Jesus.

On my way back to the hotel, I came across Katja (our Athens Centre representative) and Michael sitting at an outside table at a taverna, and they called me over to show them what I'd gotten and sit with them for a while. Even after Katja left, I think I was there until around 9:00 PM, chatting with Michael and drinking raki (only had four shots, with no effect whatsoever). We talked about class, about Byzantine art, about an upcoming paper, about genealogy, about Europe (Michael is a Swede who grew up in Finland, IIRC), about the excursions – all sorts of things. I think I can now appreciate our ridiculously exhausting site explorations better. It was a marvelously fun time, and after other fellow students began showing up, I eventually left with Aleka to return to the hotel, where we strove in vain to access the Internet in her room, and I finally gave up and played some Mahjong.

The next day was to be our last on Crete. The morning consisted of breakfast and visiting an archaeological museum. The museum was made much more interesting by a rambunctious young cat who lives there, whom our group promptly named Snickers. I imagine that I spent at least half my time there either playing with the cat, petting the cat, or watching the cat. Loads of fun. Anyway, after walking back to the hotel and checking out (but leaving our bags in the lobby), I led a group of my friends to the icon shop I'd visited the day before. Well, I tried, at least. Evidently my sense of our hotel's location in Chania is a bit off, so I ended up taking us first to another church before Gabby managed to get us to the one I'd visited earlier. On the way to the first church, I purchased a litre of organic orange juice, which was... disappointing. The orange juice itself tasted fine, save for the aftertaste, which tasted roughly the same way that falling ill feels. Not pleasant. When we reached the icon shop, I finally threw the last third of the juice into the dumpster. As Gabby looked at the icons, eventually getting a larger one that I haven't yet seen, I investigated the church, which was very beautiful. But imagine my dismay when I saw that the city was to, just a day or so after I left, play host to Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I! I mean, that's just unfair.

From there, I set off on my own to seek out a small museum with Byzantine artifacts. I eventually managed to find the place, near the edge of the sea. I saw a sheet of a paper on the door as I approached, and it occurred to me, “This paper will make me sad today, won't it?” Sure enough, the museum was closed for the elections – that Sunday was election day. I walked along the coastline until I returned to the hotel, where I tried to use the Internet in the lobby as I had earlier that morning. But no. They changed all the passwords after we checked out. How nice. So instead, after my friends left for a snorkeling expedition, I lapsed into a half-hour trance in the lobby and finally set out in search of a restaurant with Internet access. I finally found it, but the Internet was 15 minutes for €0,50. I ordered a cheeseburger, an orange soda, and 15 minutes of Internet access, but I couldn't connect to the wireless network there, so they moved me inside to an ethernet cable. The food was pretty lousy and probably overpriced, and there was nothing of interest on the Internet anyway. So I went back to the hotel, where I eventually ran into some friends (Aleka, Rose, and Christina), and we spent the rest of our time there looking at pictures on Rose's computer.

A bus took us back to Herakleion, where we caught a ferry back to Piraeus, with the same cabin arrangements as before. The ferry ride was very interesting. I decided to join some of my friends (Justin, Frisco, Laura, and Eric) for dinner, although since I was basically broke, I just kept them company at the table, although Laura did share some delicious grapes with me. However, Justin had brought a 0.75-litre bottle of some brand of Cretan regional white dry wine, with an alcohol-by-volume content of about 13.5%. The two of us finished off the bottle, and I think I had more than he did. It was the first wine I've ever had that actually tasted good. At any rate, it was perhaps four or five glasses in when the alcohol finally kicked in. It's a remarkably dizzying feeling, difficult to describe. At any rate, I asked my friends to stop me if I started discussing philosophy that evening – which is good, because evidently I become very philosophical when drunk. Also, it appears that I adopt a bad British accent, use ridiculously large words with ease, and do a lot of pointing and high-fiving. Some of our other friends had shown up by this point, and they were thoroughly entertained. I recall some of them attempting to enforce a limit on how many letters I could use in each word and how many words I could use per sentence; I later had to beg for more verbs so I could be understood.

Justin and I eventually went back to the girls' cabin with them, where we had some orange Powerade and some raki ('Chaser? Who needs a chaser?'). One of the girls had music playing on her computer, so with them I ended up singing along. I remember vaguely singing Coolio's “Gangsta's Paradise”, and giving Justin a fist bump that was probably more like a fist 'let-me-break-your-knuckles-for-you', judging from the way he was shaking his hand afterwards. In due time, we went to the disco. I never did any dancing there, but I did feel quite tired, and at one point asked Frisco whether or not I was mortal. I'm not sure if I asked that because I thought it'd be entertaining to see his response, or whether I'd genuinely become unsure of the answer. After some time at the disco, we went down below to the inner portions of the deck, and after everybody else left, my friend Zach found me and invited me to come join him and our friends Gabby and Tara out on the deck. I'm not sure how long I was there, but evidently I was entertaining, judging from the fact that all three of them were doubled over in laughter at certain points – even Zach, whom I've seldom seen so much as chuckle. I may at one point have mentioned to Zach about the possibility of reshaping his spine to resemble my family tree. Can't quite recall the context, though. At any rate, we finally made our way back to the cabins around 1:30 AM; Zach went back out to do who-knows-what, and probably came back at 3:00 AM. The next morning I was still perhaps a bit drunk (judging particularly from my inability to judge distances), but didn't let that stop me from finishing The Origin of Species. Other than that, the sole adverse effect of the previous night was a mild headache. The overall experience is certainly not something I could imagine doing on anywhere close to a regular basis. I fear I will never understand those who do so.

That day, after I got back to my apartment in Athens and made my bed, I went to the Athens Centre to use some reliable Internet access, and afterwards returned to my place for a four-hour nap. After awakening, Micah and I went for gyros (2 pork for me, 1 chicken for him), and I did a fair bit of reading as well. I think I read C. S. Lewis' The Great Divorce from start to finish. Fantastic story. That day was particularly quiet, with fairly little getting accomplished, to my chagrin. Yesterday – Tuesday, I think it was – was rather unworthy of note, save that it is now confirmed that Micah will be joining me in Turkey over fall break. The remainder of the day, I pass over without note.

Gratia vobis.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:02:39 GMT

“And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

--Paul (1 Corinthians 13:13)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

I've been so busy lately I haven't had a chance to give any recent updates. As I recall it, I left off shortly before my weekend vacation to Mykonos and Delos. It was, I think, late Thursday afternoon when my roommate Micah and I walked from our apartment in Pangrati to Syntagma Square and from thence to Monastiraki. There we caught a relatively brief lunch at an overpriced restaurant, and I was introduced to the curious variety of sausage favored in Greece. Not the greatest, but the ham and cheese croquettes (Micah let me try a section of one of his) were marvelous. Afterwards we caught a metro to Piraeus, and I had to deal with some mild hassling from some punks aboard the train, but the trip was otherwise uneventful. Upon reaching Piraeus, Micah and I discovered ourselves utterly unable to locate the Hellenic Seaways office until we bothered one of the security officers at the port several times. Eventually we made it to the office, claimed our tickets, and – rather than do the sensible thing and take the recommended bus to our departure gate – opted instead to walk across the port to it. Yeah, it took quite a while, because Gate E2 is actually a considerable distance from the office outside Gate E7. At any rate, we whiled away some time reading at the little cafe near our gate until we were able to board the magnificent ferry.

And was that ferry ever magnificent! Much better than any airplane, though similar in seating arrangements in our area, save much more comfortable and spacious. And that's just economy class! Micah was across the aisle from me. The trip there was fairly uneventful. I attempted to purchase some vanilla ice cream at the counter, but they decided that cookies and cream was a close enough flavor, so they gave me that instead. As you might well know, chocolate and I do not exactly have a great working relationship, historically speaking, so I primarily managed to eat around that, and gave the considerable remainder to Micah. We watched TV every now and then, but the show was... well, at points it entered the 'Japanese game show' level of peculiarity, to put it mildly. Near the beginning, there was a scene of one fellow feeling another's thigh in a way that was meant to cue some laughter, I think. I really couldn't tell whether or not it was meant to be a soap opera, a sitcom, or something between the two. There was a scene in which two men had a slow motion fight primarily using a blow-up sex doll as a weapon, and another scene in which one man had a dream in which he was the star of The Sound of Music, singing the famed “The Hills Are Alive” song. Costume and all. At any rate, everything (save that song) was entirely in Greek, so there was simply no understanding it. I spent a portion of the ride attempting to take a nap, but it didn't work out quite so well.

Upon arriving at the port of Mykonos, the owner of the Kymata Pension at which we'd be staying, Andreas Kousathanas, picked us up at the port and drove us to the town (which is technically called “Mykonos Town”, but is often just known as “Hora”, meaning “The Town”), specifically to where we'd be staying. It was just above the area known as Little Venice, which bordered the sea. The pension was virtually right across from Hora's famed windmills. Anyway, to get to our room, one entered a recessed blue door, went all the way down the hall, and took the door on the left. It was a quaint little place, and Micah and I promptly went to sleep. It had been a thoroughly exhausting day.

The next morning, I got out of bed an hour after Micah's alarm clock went off. He'd turned it off in his sleep, so I was the first one up. After a pleasant shower and so forth, I was still the only one up, and so rather than deal with waking Micah and waiting on him to prepare himself for the day, I just left him a note and ventured into the town. Hora has a very curious architectural style. Everything is white, just absolutely white. Every wall is plastered and whitewashed. I'm not entirely sure whether they're made of anything but plaster and whitewash. The 'streets' are quite narrow, and so one must duck to the side whenever a vehicle (typically some manner of motorbike or else a street sweeper) comes through. The doors, however, remain vivid shades of blue, green, pink, what have you. If we're friends on Facebook, you may have already seen sample pictures. Anyway, I spent a couple hours exploring the town, looking at the shops, familiarizing myself with the layout. Or rather, realizing that familiarizing myself with the layout would be a dreadful task indeed. Hora makes it as easy to get lost as in King Minos' fabled labyrinth in Knossos. Before returning to the room, I purchased some souvlaki at Jimmy's Gyros and ate it while standing at the edge of the path in Little Venice, just next to the Restaurant Alefkandra. I was separated from the Aegean Sea by only a thin stretch of rocky sand. Allow me to tell you that if you've never stood on the shore of a Greek island, feeling the sea breeze in your hair and face, listening to the soft crashing of the waves while eating perfectly seasoned souvlaki... you haven't really lived the fullness of life. I count that as a 'must-do'. It was an amazing experience. Souvlaki, by the way, has now won a very coveted position among my favorite foods of all time – and it's fairly cheap! A lot cheaper than basically everything else in that list. The souvlaki I had that morning consisted solely of cooked, seasoned cubes of pork wrapped in a disc of pita bread; it'd get even better once I discovered that one could get french fries put directly into the souvlaki.

Anyway, after visiting my room and discovering that Micah was no longer there, it occurred to me that finding one another would actually involve work, and so for the next hour or so the search was on. I looked all over Hora, it seemed, but never ran into him. I finally went back to the room several times just in case, but he wasn't there; finally, when I went back to the room to use the water closet (that's 'bathroom', for you American folks), he was present by the time I was done. We then set out to explore together. By the way, I should perhaps mention that a movie was being filmed on Mykonos that day. As I would later learn, it was an Australian-Greek joint venture called The Kings of Mykonos, which after some research appears as though it'll be a sequel to the Australian movie The Wog Boy. It's supposed to be a romantic comedy, according to one of the photographers with whom I got to chat (but more on that later). It's scheduled for release in March-May 2010, possibly in the USA as well, so keep an eye out for it. The scenes being filmed that day seemed to consist chiefly of locals dancing festively. It was simply fascinating, however, just to see the process of filming going on, and to realize that perhaps someday I could see the movie and find a scene to which I could shout, “I've seen that before in person!”

Micah and I in our exploration attempted to take some pictures of the windmills, but my camera swiftly opted to die off, and so I found myself in desperate need of new batteries. At a nearby kiosk, I got four AAs... for E9,50! That's a rather ridiculous price! But, like it or not, it was made viable by the market, as shown by the fact that I bought them. I evidently esteemed them, at that time, as being more valuable than my money, and so I voluntarily made the exchange, albeit grudgingly. The free market in action is an amazing thing whenever I pause to ponder it. Anyway, after wandering off, Micah showed me a pair of pelicans we'd seen earlier. Massive birds, those pelicans, and oddly pinkish. Evidently Mykonos is famous for having them around. One can easily reach out and touch them; I'd later have to squeeze past one on the street. After exploring the more local port area in Hora, and walking past the associated shops (during which I learned of Micah's insufferable ADD when it comes to being in shopping areas), we made our way to the local archaeological museum. Now, I've never been very fascinated by museums, oddly enough. It's nothing like seeing sites, and my attention span only offers so much. And most of the artifacts are, alas, rather mundane items, relatively speaking, or else the museum has too great an abundance. But the museum there was fantastic. We saw the remains of a rather impressive statue of Herakles, holding his club and with the skin of the Nemean lion draped over his arm. We found some remarkably well-preserved small dishes dating from the third millennium BC – that's over 4000 years old! And I was in awe of the massive seventh-century BC funeral amphora that depicted scenes from the Trojan War. The neck featured a very stunning and complete Greek depiction of the famed Trojan Horse – and all within two centuries of the estimated date of the composition of the Iliad and the Odyssey!

After completing that task, we sat at the side of the sea in front of the museum for a bit before slowly making our way back through Hora. Upon returning to the port-ish area, we did a bit of shopping – Micah got some nice silken scarves and other cloth-y things, whereas I did a bit of gift shopping (can't say what, obviously) and also got myself a set of playing cards. No, not the ubiquitous erotic playing cards, which are basically everywhere; I instead got a set that features Greek philosophers and playwrights on the face cards. Pretty interesting. The aces just have quotes in Greek and English, although the English contains some spelling errors (i.e., “Hiding the truth is like burring gold”).

We finally made it back to our room and took a nice, peaceful siesta for about 2.5 hours. It was spectacular.

After that, we decided to explore the town some more, with special focus on walking up the hills to get a better view. Well, more specifically, we started out exploring something or other (this might've been when I got my second souvlaki of the day?), and then noticed the beginning of the sunset. It was right over an island in the distance behind which was Delos, the island that in Greek mythology serves as the birthplace of Apollo and Artemis. So seeing the amazing illumination by the sun of the island where the sun god was born... well, it was pretty impressive. While exploring by the windmills, we got to chat up a photographer for the movie, which I believe I mentioned previously. Nice guy. After we goofed around on an outcropping taking pictures, we just continued the slow but steady ascent, getting increasingly awesome pictures of the sunset. Once we reached the basic limit of the roads and the sun was going down, we descended and, once night fell, spent a while looking for this one shop I'd seen earlier. We were slowed down immensely by Micah looking through every freaking shop for who-knows-what, and so once we got to a certain point in the endless search, he agreed to go find the shop while I went back to the apartment and caught some sleep. Naturally, I passed the shop on the way back to the apartment. Sadly, I had no money. Micah returned an hour or so later with the correct items. The only ones I can mention are a miniature hand-painted diptych with icons of Christ and the Theotokos (the Virgin Mary; “Theotokos” means “God-bearer”, referring to Mary in her capacity as mother of the incarnate God), and a colored bust of Pythagoras.

The next day (Saturday, 26 September 2009), the two of us headed earlier over to the more local mini-port, picking up a souvlaki breakfast along the way. Mmmm... souvlaki.... Er, anyway, we had to wait a little bit, but we finally caught a ferry over to Delos. On the trip I chatted with a couple from North Carolina who were honeymooning in Greece. Upon arriving at Delos, Micah and I explored the site a bit. It's astounding how exposed some of the ruins are there. You can literally walk right through them, even at times over them. The only things roped off tend to be either mosaics (for good reason) or else pits (for another yet equally valid reason). After a few twists and turns, we made our way to the Terrace of the Foreign Gods, where temples to Egyptian and Syrian deities had once stood. And there, I saw it. An altar in front of the Temple of Isis. But not just any altar; a Near Eastern-style four-horned altar. I could reach out and brush my fingertips gently on the horn of the altar. It was amazing, absolutely amazing. I never imagined I'd see that style of altar face-to-face. I could only imagine the offerings once made there. Mostly fragrant incense, I think; if I recall correctly, it's known as the Perfume Altar.

After that, Micah attempted to lead me up the mountainside on a less-than-pathway route. I tagged along for a while but eventually decided that it was too idiotic to be worth it, even to reach the cave-shrine of Herakles. One thing everyone should know about Delos: wear long pants. Why? Because the only things that grow there are thorny, prickly, dried-up plants that look like something out of a sci-fi horror flick. And the only wildlife, save for a few cats, appeared to have been lizards and large numbers of insects. Buzzing everywhere. Being thoroughly annoying. At any rate, I found my way to a saner route up the hill, and Micah rejoined me eventually after making it to the cave and back. It was an arduous ascent at times, mostly because the steps were uneven and consisted of rocks packed roughly together. It reminds me of all the nature hikes my stepfather used to drag me on, and how much I hated virtually every last minute of them. It reminded me of all the times I fell or nearly fell; didn't fall this time. But it made me glad that I'd gone through that, and it made me wish that my stepfather were alive and there to climb Mt. Kynthos with me. He would've loved it.

The view from Mt. Kynthos is astounding. It feels precarious to be up there – at least it did to me – but the view is worth it. I'd heard that on a clear day, one can get a breathtaking view of the Cyclades, a group of Greek islands so named because they cluster around Delos, which was considered an exceptionally holy site by the ancient Greeks. The lack of a permanent population on Delos was largely connected to the fact that the Greeks forbid it, deeming it impious that mortal men should be born on the same island where Apollo and Artemis sprang from Leto's womb. But yes, the rumor's true; the Cyclades are abundantly visible from the summit of Mt. Kynthos, as is the bulk of Delos itself. From the top, Micah and I could actually see a brushfire raging on a neighboring island. Not just the smoke; we could at times glimpse the actual flames themselves.

After we climbed down from Mt. Kynthos, we made our way through countless other ruins. The House of Dolphins was pretty interesting, and the theatre would've been quite spectacular if it'd been in better shape. Of course, unlike the Theatre of Dionysos in Athens, the theatre on Delos gave a good sense for how the skene might've stood. The House of Dionysos was likewise fascinating. After finishing our tour, we returned to the port, with quite some time to kill before the next boat to take us back would arrive. And I was beyond thirsty. I was feeling pretty dehydrated, to be honest. The little gift shop at the port was of no use; they shooed us away and said they didn't have any water, and didn't bother to tell us where any could be found, either. And so I lay down on a wall for a bit. It started to rain, which alleviated my troubles somewhat, but not enough. Micah finally persuaded me to walk with him to the museum on Delos. Once we got inside, we both went to the bathroom, which ended in me slurping tap water furiously from my hands. As I stepped away from the sink, I saw the sign that said (I paraphrase): 'This water is not for drinking.' On that day it was, sign. On that day, it was.

I still wasn't feeling very well, so rather than trek all around the museum, I looked at a few things and then sat outside on the steps in the shade for a while. By the time Micah came back out, I was contemplating a return to the bathroom for some more forbidden sink water. However, Micah saw – due, he said, to a cat he deemed Apollo in disguise – that the building next to the museum was a coffee bar. Splendid! We practically raced over. I got a bag of chips I barely touched, but I did down a tall glass of orange juice, a peach smoothie, and a bottle of water. I was ridiculously thirsty. And Micah, desperately in need of sugar, finished off a box of chocolate-covered chocolate cookies. Yikes.

With that done, we explored some of the other sections of Delos, including the lions devoted to Apollo by the citizens of the island of Naxos, and finally walked in ignorance through some slippery mud to the port, where we awaited our ferry. The one that came was significantly larger than the one that brought us to Delos, and Micah and I both rested on the way back to Mykonos.

Upon returning to Mykonos, we returned to the pension to find a somewhat displeased Andreas, who had evidently wanted us cleared out of the room by 10:30 AM. In our defense, if we heard him mention 10:30 at all, we no doubt assumed that it was PM; and at any rate, we had told Andreas previously that we'd be going to Delos that day. Anyway, he gave us five minutes to get out stuff, and we apologized profusely for any inconvenience we'd caused. I asked as I passed him in the hall if there were any way we could reimburse him somehow for the inconvenience, and while he said no, I think that got him in a calmer state of mind. He offered to drive us to the port, but we declined, knowing that he no doubt had quite a few of his own errands to run.

So, after a stop for some massive crepes, Micah and I trekked through town and finally decided that, rather than catching a bus to the new port, we'd just walk there. I mean, what's a few miles? Anyway, it was a pretty long journey, and we were almost there when Andreas pulled up beside us and basically insisted that we get in the van and let him take us the rest of the way. He dropped us off at the proper place – we really were almost to the port – and refused to accept the tip we practically threw at him. Andreas really is a nice guy, and runs his pension quite well. If you're ever on Mykonos, I highly recommend making reservations at the Kymata Pension. Anyway, I went in search of the bathroom first, which quest was both lengthy and time-consuming, and directed Micah there upon my return. I got some reading done while waiting for the boat – we were, I think, a couple hours early – and also allowed myself to daydream for a while, most likely about ruling over the Holy Roman Empire. My mind is... an interesting place.

The ferry, once we boarded, was pretty fantastic. Micah and I did our Modern Greek homework virtually before the ferry departed, and I finished a couple books: Euripides I (The Complete Greek Tragedies), which includes his Alcestis, Medea, The Heraclidae, and Hippolytus; and The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, ed. Bernard McGinn. Really enjoyable reads, both of them. The ride was otherwise uneventful and rather relaxing. Upon our arrival at Piraeus at approximately 8:45 PM, we got in line for a taxi and finally got one. That ride was... interesting. Mostly because the driver had no idea how to get where we wanted to go. We'd originally directed him to our apartment, but after realizing he wasn't familiar with the area, we decided to settle on Varnava Square, which we'd been told would be known by basically all taxi drivers. Not this one. He had to yell out his window so many times for directions. But, eventually he got us there, and the fare wasn't totally unreasonable. He was just relieved to finally find it, and we were just relieved to finally get out of the taxi! Micah felt rather nauseous from the taxi ordeal, but I didn't, so I picked up some gelatto, if I recall correctly, from my favorite local bakery, and we were on our way. The night basically consisted in sharing stories with friends, showing off what I'd got, etc., etc.

The next day, Sunday, was likewise fantastic. Unlike the previous Sunday, when I'd barely gotten there on time, I think I set out several hours earlier. It was definitely excessive. I got there sometime between 9:30 and 10:00, and was pretty hungry and thirsty, but there weren't really any places in the area to take care of that. I instead decided to look for a local Kingdom Hall, since I'd heard there was one at Mavromikhali 72. Turns out, no. Didn't work out so well. So after returning, I thought about attending the German service, but the doors to the sanctuary were basically closed, and it sounded pretty full, so I didn't enter. However, that gave me the opportunity to meet George and his mom, who showed up a bit after I did. George is a half-Greek man from Maryland who's visiting for a month and decided to check out the church. He and I talked for quite a while, until even after the German service let out. I kept an eye out for my friend Angela, who tries to attend both the German and the English services there, but I never saw her. At any rate, to solve my food and drink issues, George and I, along with his Greek mother (whose name I never quite caught), decided to join the Germans for refreshments across the street. Wonderful orange juice of some kind, and tasty little cake-like jam-filled... thingies. Whatever they were, I enjoyed them. So I talked with George until it was time to head over to the other service, and they sat with me.

For quite a while I was worried that perhaps I'd miss Angela that day after all, and I found myself scanning the sanctuary every other minute or so to see if perhaps she was there somewhere, no matter how hard I tried to chill out. The service wasn't quite as powerful as the one the previous Sunday, but it was still absolutely amazing, and we sang one of my all-time favorite hymns: “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing”. Seriously, that is a fantastic song. There were also plenty of worship songs I'd never before encountered. Anyway, the sermon was about meekness as strength under control, and so there was a lot of focus on controlling how we react to things. It was the first time I'd heard Rev. Steve Dutton preach, since there'd been a guest speaker the previous week (one Scott McCracken, you might recall), and while I think I personally preferred Scott's preaching style, Pastor Steve was really wonderful too. That is a truly vibrant church. Anyway, Angela came in shortly before the sermon ended, and we caught up almost immediately after the congregation was dismissed. She'd accidentally slept in because she'd been out late the previous night at her birthday party (her birthday was the Sunday that I'm presently describing).

So after some more refreshments, introducing Angela and George, chatting with the pastor, etc., Angela and I departed for lunch, since I'd promised to take her out somewhere. We finally made it to a somewhat Italian place on Ploutarchou, downhill from what I consider to be the base of Mt. Lycabettos. The food was fantastic. I had cheese croquettes and a spaghetti that contained hunks of seafood, including some recognizable tentacles that were actually pretty tasty. Angela had some manner of fried eggplant dish as an appetizer and a zucchini dish for the main course. She traded me a bit of her eggplant for a piece of a croquette, and I must say that the restaurant did a great job on that eggplant, because I rather enjoyed it. It took a while to get the bill, but we had some fantastic conversation in the meantime; I was worried about the cost, but it only ended up coming to €41,08, if memory serves me correctly, and I'd set aside a 50-euro bill for the occasion. I also had a chance to wish her a happy birthday while giving her the gift I'd bought her: a handcrafted silver turtle charm that I'd got at Poseidon Workshop the previous Wednesday. She really seemed to love it; not having a necklace chain on hand, she put it on her bracelet instead.

We spent a while trying to run an errand she needed to do so as to avoid longer lines tomorrow, but as 5:00 PM grew nearer we gave up and instead turned to another mission: get to the top of Mt. Lycabettos. Rather than walk up it, Angela wanted to take the cable car, which was an interesting experience. Over my objections, she refused to let me pay for the tickets, so our trip up Mt. Lycabettos was on her dime, as they say. It was ridiculously windy at the top, so after some picture taking through the crowd, we slipped into the cafe, where she had some coffee and I drank the free water that came to our table with it. Not sure how long we stayed there, but eventually we walked down Mt. Lycabettos and found our way to Pangrati. I should perhaps mention that we discovered at lunch that we technically live in the same Athenian neighborhood, albeit at virtually opposite ends. So we went to her apartment for a few minutes – her roommate wasn't home, but she showed me some pictures on her computer. Unfortunately, she also discovered that some earlier computer issues had destroyed virtually all of her digital pictures from her time in France; fortunately, she had used a regular camera while there, and so most of her pictures are entirely intact back home. After that, we went to my apartment, which was quite a walk. I introduced her to my roommates, and then when word got out to my friends that Angela was there, everyone wanted to meet her. She and I eventually went upstairs so she could access the Internet, where she learned the results from some manner of election back in Germany. Eventually she had to go, but she seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed our day, and I decided to let her borrow The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism until I have to return to the States. Everyone seemed to really love Angela.

Monday, as I recall it, was relatively uneventful, as were the next few days, really. Monday I booked my flight for fall break. I'll be going on Turkish Airlines both ways. I leave Athens on 23 October 2009 at 7:25 PM to arrive at 8:45 PM in Istanbul, and I'll leave Istanbul on 1 November 2009 at 5:10 PM, probably to get back to Athens around 6:30 PM. My current plan is to stay in Istanbul until the morning of the 26^th on a four-hour bus ride to Bursa, followed by a 1.5-hour bus ride to Iznik (formerly called Nicaea, the setting for two of the seven ecumenical councils), where I'll stay until the morning of the 28^th, which will involve a 1.5-hour bus ride back to Bursa, a five-hour bus ride to Izmir (formerly called Smyrna, home to one of the seven churches mentioned in Revelation 2-3; it's also where Polycarp, a disciple of the Apostle John, was bishop), and then a one-hour bus ride to Selçuk, where I'll stay until the evening of the 30^th. On the 29^th, I intend to take a day-trip to the nearby ruins of Ephesus, whereas on the evening of the 30^th, I'll take the night bus back to Istanbul. Sure hope I can get some sleep! So then I'll depart the country on the first of November. That's my current plan, anyway. Haven't booked anything but the flight just yet. The only other thing to mention is that I finally had a chance to do laundry Tuesday night, and my clothes were just barely dry before I left Wednesday evening, just after a souvlaki supper.

So Wednesday evening, the group met at the corner of Odos Markou Mousourou and Odos Imittou to catch a bus to Piraeus, where we boarded a massive ship – let me stress, massive. Might've been called the Minoan Palace. Anyway, after some waiting in the lobby, we got our assigned cabins; I was with Zach, Justin, and Frisco. When they all went out, I stayed in the cabin and got a chapter and a half read in The Origin of Species, which was so dull that it put me to sleep. Justin and Frisco got back around 2:00 AM, and after I woke up in the morning, I got to hear a number of stories about the group's drunken escapades the previous night. Ah, college students...

So we disembarked around 7:40 AM in the Cretan capital city Herakleion, took a bus to the hotel, and dropped our stuff off. After a delicious breakfast, we left our belongings in the lobby and took a short bus ride to Knossos, the old Minoan capital. King Minos and the famed legend of the Minotaur? Yeah, that was Knossos. We explored the remains of the old Minoan palace for a while, which was pretty interesting, but it was way too hot for Michael to hold our attention for quite as long as he attempted to. After that, we took a short bus ride to the archaeological museum of Herakleion, which – while closed – has set up the best of its collection for public viewing. The stuff in there was absolutely fascinating, particularly a statue that's been identified as Apollonius of Tyana! (For those who don't know, he was a first-century AD Neo-Pythagorean philosopher whose early third-century AD biography by Philostratus portrays him as a wonder-worker comparable to Jesus, and which was possibly intended to be a pagan counterpoint for the Gospels.) At any rate, upon returning to the Hotel Olympic, we got our room assignments (I'm with Zach in 213), and I promptly relaxed until around 3:00 PM.

At that time, I went with Micah and Aleka to the local museum of religious art. Or rather, we tried to. Don't get me wrong, we didn't get lost. We found the building just fine, after Micah treated us to a light lunch of sorts at Plateia Venizelou (Venizelou Square). Unfortunately, the museum is apparently closed for renovation. So instead, we went to the church next door and spent a while in there, admiring the iconography. I taught Micah and Aleka about some of the saints, about the Pantokrator icon in the ceiling dome, about this and that. I finally discovered an icon of St. Athanasius, who – as is probably clear to most – is one of my biggest heroes from church history. After that we stepped outside the sanctuary and I tried to get the gist of some of the memorial plaques in Greek. After we exited the church, Aleka noticed some writing above the top stained glass window, which I recognized drawn from the Greek text of 1 Corinthians 13:13. I then identified several monuments to, e.g., some past Cretan archbishops and a previous ecumenical patriarch. I should also mention that I explained some of the history of the patriarchates to them. Heh... as Micah's said several times, I make it very fun to go to church. On the walk back to the hotel, I explained the history of my denomination for a while, as well as some thoughts on Calvinism and, for Aleka, comments on the place of the 144,000 in the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses. (And, of course, I can scarcely mention them without giving a plug to my blog devoted to them.)

That brings me, essentially, to the present. I'm currently in my hotel room, and in about an hour I'll be going to a group dinner at a local taverna, paid for by AHA. Crete is, I must say, quite nice. The program's going to keep us busy, especially in the mornings and early afternoons, but other than that, it should be fantastic.

Gratia vobis.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:42:39 GMT

“I flee to you, Father of Mercies; I ask for the protection of your grace. Even more, with very ardent desire and a heartfelt embrace, O Son of the Eternal King, I press myself within your naked, stretched-out, blood-bedewed arms, unwilling to be separated from you in life or in death.”

--Henry Suso

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Tuesday, as I recall it, was fairly uneventful. Took care of lodging for my upcoming excursion to Mykonos and Delos. In my theatre class, I learned that I've been selected to take on the role of Oedipus in a scene from Oedipus the King, as rendered a bit freely by Ellen McLaughlin. I should perhaps mention that this scene will be performed in an ancient Greek theatre—I think the famed one at Epidaurus—and it hasn't quite sunk in yet that I'll be doing essentially the very same thing that, millennia ago, Greek actors did for their audiences, in the very same spot. It isn't one of Oedipus' most compelling scenes; Jocasta is a much more focal character there, in my opinion. Much of the rest of the day is, well, a blur in my memory, although I do recall helping Micah and Aleka with some homework in my room, and showing them some pictures and videos from college back home.

And that's because Wednesday was so... memorable. In the morning, my Monuments of Greece professor took our class to several important sites. I had hoped that we'd be finished by, say, 11:30 AM, since I had a rather important errand to run between classes—my later one was at 3:30 PM, and it was a lengthy errand. Our first stop was the Temple of Olympian Zeus, which—if I recall correctly—was completed at last by the Roman emperor Hadrian in the second century AD, though it was begun during the reign of the Thirty Tyrants. The temple's remains were quite beautiful, at least what remained of them. It was quite a walk to Kerameikos, and we had some stray dogs faithfully accompanying us there. Upon arriving, we toured the extensive ancient Athenian graveyard. The original monuments have largely been replaced with replicas, and many of the originals are in the accompanying museum. By the time we got to the section of the site that was most relevant to the Eleusinian mysteries—Kerameikos played a large role in the processions—most of our group was rather tired and bored. We can only take so much. And although Michael is surely aware that we scarcely reap any benefit from the continued tour once that point is reached, it does not matter. To my endless irritation, instead of then letting us go free, we were dragged into the museum as well. By this point, I was not feeling so well—aside from the exhaustion and the pressing concern of my errand, I hadn't eaten since a bowl of cereal the previous night, nor had anything to drink—and I felt borderline homicidal by the time we were finally released—just before 1:00 PM. Needless to say, I set out immediately, without any haste, for my destination: Poseidon's Workshop, at the base of Mt. Lycabettus. It was a distant hike, largely uphill, and took over an hour. Exhausted, I did what I'd come to do and left for my apartment, which required another 40 minutes to reach by foot. During the trip to Poseidon's Workshop, I quenched my thirst on a large bottle of water; when I reached Varnava Square on the way back to my apartment, I stopped at the bakery for something to finally eat. I'm not certain whether the coins in my pocket were simply extremely hot or else conducting electricity as a result of the adjacent spare batteries, but I either burned or mildly electrocuted myself repeatedly attempting to get some change with which to pay for some food. I could still feel it an hour later. At any rate, the item I got—whatever it was, precisely—wasn't as great as I'd imagined. Too many mushrooms, and even after they were removed, I think their juices had saturated the rest of the item.

I didn't have long after I finished eating to get to my next class (Modern Greek Language), during much of which I felt like quite the zombie. Shortly after class began, a pigeon flew into the classroom and decided to remain there through just about the entire two hours. We found ourselves unable to evict it, and every now and then it chose to fly madly around. Not a good turn of events when some of the girls are quite scared of birds. At any rate, we managed to persuade it to exit through an open door about a minute or two before class ended. Aside from talking with people for a while on IM, I spent the rest of the night doing some assigned readings so that I won't have to bring those books with me to Mykonos.

Today, both the theatre classes took a trip together to the Theatre of Dionysos. We'd all been there previously for Monuments of Greece, of course, and so the setting was nothing new. The one class (not mine) taught the other about the various aspects of Greek theatres; the other, in turn, went into the shade and rehearsed the scene from Oedipus the King as well as a choral section. Both went quite well. After some further examination of remnants from the theatre and of remaining monuments erected by victors in the play competitions, we split up. On the way back to the apartments, I managed to get some souvlaki--and it was astoundingly delicious. Seriously, souvlaki is awesome. I wish I had more souvlaki right now. Anyway, closer to the apartments, I bought a liter of orange juice--well, it involves regular oranges, red grapefruit, and blood oranges. Looks somewhat unpleasant, but surprisingly good. At any rate, I'm waiting for a turn to get a shower--I'm drenched in sweat, so I could use one right about now--and then, after packing, it's off to Mykonos!

Gratia vobis.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 04:51:57 GMT

"Let [God] stand for you as a Defender, as the good Shepherd, that cruel wolves may not attack you."

--Ambrose of Milan
(Letters 63.6)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

I should start updating this more often, but... that's easier said than done. To the best of my recollection, Saturday morning about 9:50 AM, Micah and I started recruiting our companions for the hike. It took longer than expected because quite a few of them were still asleep when we came around, but by around 10:30-10:40 we formed a party of seven--myself, Micah, Frisco, Aleka, Rose, Tabitha, and Tara. Setting out, we stopped for refreshments at a bakery (mmm, loukoumades....) before continuing. I was in charge of navigation. Without a map. And, to my astonishment, we actually got to Mt. Lycabettos without a problem. I memorized the way from Google Earth. God bless the makers of that program, lemme tell ya. It works wonderfully. Anyway, I was pretty tired for some reason that day, and so the climb was exceptionally arduous. Especially the initial steps leading up Mt. Lycabettos. The view was beautiful. Finally reaching the top, we took plenty of pictures, and I also recorded a brief video clip to e-mail to my mother, since it was her birthday on Saturday. At the top of the hill is a small church--a chapel, really--devoted to St. George. It was founded in 1834 by Fr. Emmanuel Louloudakis, and although fairly small and humble for a Greek Orthodox church, it was still quite beautiful. I think I've finally fallen in love with Greek Orthodox iconography, even to the point of some manner of 'veneration'. It's always been something I've been a tad suspicious of, and still am to some extent, because many Eastern Orthodox defenses of the practice have generally seemed to simply assert the distinction between worship and veneration by verbal fiat, rather than through any clear-cut, significant distinction. But through experience, I think I can finally see the Orthodox perspective: it's more like kissing a picture of a loved one, not in any idolatrous mode or anything of the sort, but simply of the love proper to a lover, a sibling, an earthly parent. And there seems nothing impious in that, although it can certainly be carried to excess, and should never be imposed contrary to a Christian's conscience.

At any rate, by the time I exited the chapel (after having given appropriate respect to St. Nicholas of Myra and to the famed hermit Anthony, whose biography St. Athanasius of Alexandria wrote), the rains had begun. We'd seen the gray clouds coming on the horizon, but I'd hoped that it'd hold off. (Well, specifically, I'd hoped that perhaps it would sweep through very quickly and be done with it.) But we ended up making most of the descent in the rain. I was partly sheltered on the way down by Aleka's umbrella. Once we reached the bottom of the stairs, we sought refuge for the last portions of the rain in a delightful store called Poseidon's Workshop. Definitely a place at which to procure souveneirs later. I crave the little replica dish with a portrayal of Prometheus, and I found a few potential gifts for others as well. To conserve money, I didn't bother getting anything then.

If my memory serves me rightly, we split up at Varnava Square. Micah and I got some absolutely fantastic gelatto at our favorite bakery before returning to our apartment, sometime before 2:00 PM. The rest of the day is, in my memory, a fuzzy affair at best, other than that I gave Aleka a bunch of 0.7 mm lead for her mechanical pencil, since she couldn't find any. I would surmise that, sometime that evening, I probably spent a fair deal of time with my friends, but my memory's just shot.

The next day, I got up a bit later than I'd hoped and, thanks to wasting time trying to use the Internet, only left my apartment around 10:45 AM. From there I set out on the walk to church. If I hadn't felt so hurried near the end, it might've been less exhausting. (Also, I think I accidently stepped in front of a procession by a military band. I'm glad I'm not dead or something.) But after getting lost fairly near the place, I managed to backtrack and arrive at the service just in the knick of time. So approximately a 50-minute walk from my apartment to the church, and I felt rather dehydrated. The service was one of St. Andrews International Church, but their 11:30 AM service meets at the German Evangelical Church at Sina 68. The place was beautiful, small but beautiful. The outer doors were flanked by angelic heralds, and the entire front of the sanctuary was stained glass, with a style reminiscent of Greek Orthodox iconography, portraying mostly scenes from the life of Christ. Unlike my previous visit to a Greek Orthodox church, this place proved to be friendly. The woman who sat next to me, Rachel, was very kind. And then the service started. And it was amazing. I mean, truly amazing. I fell in love with the church from the very first song. The sanctuary is small and has great acoustics, so the song sounded so much more... intense. And St. Andrews International Church is very international indeed. They have several specific ethnic fellowships, including Nigerian, Kenyan, Indonesian, and Filipino. The Indonesians were filling the role of ushers that morning. Somehow, the atmosphere of that church was enough to really drive home what it is to be in worship. Near the end of the service, I realized that I could almost palpably feel the communion of the saints, in all times and in all places; I felt as though I were standing, then and there, in the heavenly courts. It was amazing, even though I could scarcely sing from lack of water. The prayer was led by, if I recall, a Nigerian man with a thick African accent, and it was one of the most fervent and inspiring prayers I've ever heard. There was a time for all first-time visitors to introduce themselves, and I was surprised at how many of us there were--from America, from Germany, from England, from everywhere. And then came the sermon, which you can listen to yourselves here, since this church is awesome enough to podcast, which is something I've been trying to talk my own church into doing. One of the best sermons I've ever heard. Their guest speaker, Scott McCracken, is evidently working through a series about not ripping verses out of context. Scott reminded me of Dustin Segers, a preacher I remember from an apologetics conference a few years back. And his sermon was delightfully sound (it dealt with "Judge not, lest ye be judged"), pointed out common misconceptions, corrected them with Scriptural context, and even included a hilarious demonstration of the 'speck and plank' scene from Matthew 7. Scott held a plank of wood up to his eye and then pretended to try to pick specks out of some volunteers' eyes. He couldn't reach them because of the plank. Later in the sermon, he referenced a statement by Christian philosopher Dallas Willard. In short, I have fallen madly in love with St. Andrews International Church.

On the way out, I made a great new friend, another visitor who'd actually just arrived in Athens the day before. Angela's a 25-year-old theology student from the University of Tübingen who'll be here for nine months studying at a local university's Faculty of Social Theology. In other words: instant new best friend. We had some refreshments together at the "coffee fellowship" and chatted with Jackie, a Kenyan woman who attends St. Andrews International Church. When all was said and done there, Angela and I had decided to take a little trip together--to the Areopagus! I've been dying to get there for, well, years. You may recall that it was one of my desired destinations the other week when I got lost and found myself atop Philopappos Hill instead. And Angela had tried to find it when she was in Athens three years earlier, but likewise got lost and never made it. To condense a long story, Angela and I took a wrong turn somewhere and nearly ended up climbing Mt. Lycabettos, but after reorienting ourselves, we were back on the right track. In the meantime, I got to hear about the University of Tübingen and about some of her professors, including the esteemed Dr. Christoph Schwöbel. After a delightful stop at a Starbucks - that apple and spice muffin was astoundingly good - we eventually reached the Areopagus after all.

The Areopagus, for those of you who might not know or might not recall, is the place where Paul preached when he was in Athens. On the side of the rock, you'll see a bronze-looking plaque with his speech inscribed in Greek there. Here's what he said:

Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him--though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For "in him we live and move and have our being"; as even some of your own poets have said, "For we too are his offspring." Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. (Acts 17:22-31, NRSV)

The Areopagus wasn't nearly as difficult to scale as I'd envisioned; even the rocks weren't as bad as they looked. Fairly slippery and full of crags. We had a great time on top of the Areopagus, from which we could see the Acropolis easily, right in front of us, plus Mt. Lycabettos to the left of that and Philopappos Hill to our right. In the distance, we could even see the Mediterranean Sea. To our left were a number of beautiful ruins, the remains of the Agora. After getting some nice pictures, Angela brought my attention to some newcomers to the Areopagus: a group of Mormons. Yes, as if my day weren't excellent enough already, Mormons arrived. So after a while, we made our way down off the rock in their direction, and they engaged us in some conversation. We talked about Athens, about the Greek language, about all sorts of things. They seemed a tad perplexed when Angela mentioned to them that I own nine copies of the Book of Mormon back home; one of them, a quick-witted middle-aged gentleman carrying his Quad (a single thick volume containing the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price), asked if that meant I'd read it nine times. Anyway, they asked if perhaps I was myself a member of their Church, but I said no, although at one point in the conversation I did mentioned that my fascination with their group was only furthered in learning that I'm a distant cousin of prophet-president Ezra Taft Benson. At any rate, to once again condense an enjoyable conversation, we left them with our e-mail addresses, and they agreed to send us e-mails soon with some of the information they'd given us. And one of them told me that if I ever want to get together for some discussion, to just basically say when and where. I most definitely shall.

As we strolled down the slight incline from there, Angela and I discussed our common fascination with the study of interreligious dialogue. I loved hearing about her close friendship with an Algerian Muslim family. As we talked, we wound our way past some stunningly beautiful ruins, but decided not to pay the price to get closer. Instead we turned and made our way to Plaka along some streets filled to the brim with tourist-y shops. Didn't buy anything, although Angela in particular fought the temptation afforded by the 'shopping vice'. Eventually we found our way to the National Gardens, where it seems a book fair was being held. Somehow, the fact that I had relatively little money prevented me from buying anything--although when I saw the beautiful Greek volumes of Plato, of Aristotle, of Lucian of Samosata, of Thucydides, of Herodotus... I was enthralled. Angela also got dragged into a very strange conversation in German with a rather peculiar fellow who began by asserting vehemently that all major European languages are over 70% Greek and ended with an abrupt statement that the problem with today's world is the Jews. That fellow is quite fortunate he walked away quickly after that remark. At any rate, after passing through the book fair and in front of the Zappeion, we found the gardens themselves to be quite scenic, and we stopped for a long period of time at a turtle pond.

We finally parted ways at the metro station at Syntagma Square. She took the metro back to her neighborhood, and I walked back to Pangrati. Spent the rest of the evening upstairs with a bunch of friends. To put it simply, Sunday was easily one of the best days I've had in quite a long time. I went to a church with an amazing sanctuary, profound music, a stirring sermon, and best of all the presence of God. There were refreshments. I made an excellent new friend with whom I can have intelligent conversations about the things that interest us both. We got to see the Areopagus at long last. We got great pictures. We ran into Mormons. We had a beautiful stroll in the National Gardens. The day was full of fun, excitement, friendship, beautiful scenery, and just a general fantastic time. I have no idea how far I walked, but I barely felt tired, particularly in comparison to virtually every other hike I've undertaken in this city.

Monday was fairly uneventful for the most part. Monuments of Greece class in the morning, and thankfully we basically get all of our notes in either the handout for the class or else our planbook. After a break, Modern Greek class, which could be a bit frustrating at points, but we're adjusting to it. That evening, Micah and I decided to do some traveling over the upcoming 3.5-day weekend. We had originally planned to go to Patmos, but eventually settled for Mykonos and Delos. Delos is an island prominent in Greek mythology for being the birthplace of the sun god Apollo and his twin sister, the moon goddess Artemis. It took a lot of work, and a lot of planning, but by the end of the night, we'd bought a ticket on a ferry that leaves the port of Piraeus at 6:30 PM on Thursday, and we'll be returning around 8:45 PM on Saturday. We'd originally planned to have our trip occupy Friday through Sunday, mostly because so many sites kept telling us that we were too close to Thursday to book anything for then - Vassia eventually helped us find some better sites - but after learning some new information and mulling it over, I decided that I definitely want to be here in Athens on Sunday morning.

This week should be good, but I sure can't wait for the weekend!

Gratia vobis.

Friday, September 18, 2009

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:06:02 GMT

"Righteousness is true riches; and the Word is more valuable than all treasure, not accruing from cattle and fields, but given by God—riches which cannot be taken away. The soul alone is its treasure. It is the best possession to its possessor, rendering man truly blessed."

--Clement of Alexandria
(Instructor 3.6)

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Hello again, everybody. If memory serves me correctly, the morning of the 15th, a Wednesday, I set out with a number of others to the supermarket for a bounty of supplies. While there, I purchased a bowl, a box of Kellogg's Frosties (Frosted Flakes, as Americans might know them), some orange juice, four packets of pasta, and several large bottles of orange soda. (I've already finished a two-liter bottle of Ivi, and all that remains is a 1.5-liter bottle of Fanta Zero. As for the pasta, I've attempted to translate the instructions, but I have a few too many gaps yet to feel comfortable attempting to make it. It does not, however, appear to be by any means microwavable.) Should've bought a light bulb while there; the one in our living room has been burnt out for a while.

My first class of the day, Genesis of Modern Theatre, was fantastic. David and Liz are great teachers, and we began reading aloud a rendition of Oedipus the King. For some reason, some of my classmates thought that I was particularly compelling as Teirasias. My other class, Cross-Cultural Communication, should prove to be exceptionally useful. As I recall, much of the first day involved an overview of Greek history. There were quite a few inaccuracies in the presentation, but I think the point was more to offer a Greek view of Greek history, and as such I can appreciate it for what it is. I resisted the urge to try to goad the teacher into going further into depth when she mentioned the 11th-century schism between the Western and Eastern church on the grounds of the filioque.

The next day was far more... active. David and Liz joined our Monuments of Greece class, led by Michael, for a trip to the Acropolis and its surroundings. It was an exceptionally warm day, I found, and quite exhausting. We stopped for a bit next to the Arch of Hadrian for a break and to briefly hear Michael comment on its significance. Hadrian had a very great love for Athens, it seems. Pressing onward, we eventually found ourselves at the Theatre of Dionysos. It's simply majestic. It was an honor to sit in the seats and listen to our professors discuss the place. To think of the plays performed there in days gone by! It was host to the Athenian 'City Dionysia' festival, and many of the most famous Greek plays were performed in that very place. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, even Aristophanes--all there. It sends shivers up my spine to recall sitting in those seats and knowing that, centuries upon centuries before in 441 BC, a person sitting in that very same seat would've been watching an original performance of Sophocles' Antigone take first prize. The theatre was later restored by Nero.

After a bit of time to relax and take pictures, we continued our ascent to a small sanctuary dedicated to Asklepios, a Greek healing god. My view of the remains through the trees wasn't so great, but I'm told we'll visit an even better such sanctuary later on. A continued walk allowed us to behold from above the famed Odeon of Herodes Atticus, another sort of theatre that's still actually in use. During the Athens Festival - which, if I'm not mistaken, has regrettably ended for the year already - one might see all sorts of events there, perhaps even the occasional rock concert. Pressing further led to the ridiculously busy gateway to the top of the Acropolis itself. On our way up, however, we could see Philopappos Hill; Michael initially said that the monument dated from the third century AD, but I corrected him; Pausanias mentioned it in the second century AD, and I was correct in recalling that Gaios Iulios Antiochos Epiphanes Philopappos died in AD 116. After making our way through the crowds... there we were. Standing and listening to Michael lecture some hundred or so meters, perhaps, from the back of the Parthenon. At this point, of course, I was unfortunately tired, overheated, and a tad dehydrated, and so my interests lay elsewhere. Still, the Parthenon was a rather majestic building, despite the prominence of contemporary scaffolding in the continued project of restoration.

While there, we also had an opportunity to see the Erechtheum. Allow me, with respect to this place and its myth, to quote a variety of ancient sources. First in the series of time must come Herodotus of Halicarnassus, the famed fifth-century BC Greek historian, who in the eighth book of his noted Histories says the following:

On the following day he [Xerxes] summoned to his presence the Athenian exiles who were serving with the Persian forces, and ordered them to go up into the Acropolis and offer sacrifice there according to the Athenian usage; possibly some dream or other had suggested this course to him, or perhaps his conscience was uneasy for the burning of the temple. The Athenian exiles did as they were bidden. I mention these details for a particular reason: on the Acropolis there is a spot which is sacred to Erechtheus who is called the 'earth-born', and within it is an olive tree and a spring of salt water. According to the Athenians, they were put there by Poseidon and Athene, when they contended for possession of the land, as tokens of their claims to it. Now this olive was destroyed by fire with the rest of the sanctuary; nevertheless on the very next day, when the Athenians, who were ordered by the king to offer the sacrifice, went up to that sacred place, they saw that a new shoot eighteen inches long had sprung up from the stump. They told the king of this. (Histories 8.54-55)

Our next witness to the account is that given by Apollodoros of Athens, a noted scholar of the second century BC, who recounted the myth in his encyclopedic Library:

Cecrops, a son of the soil, with a body compounded of man and serpent, was the first king of Attica, and the country which was formerly called Acte he named Cecropia after himself. In his time, they say, the gods resolved to take possession of cities in which each of them should receive his own peculiar worship. So Poseidon was the first that came to Attica, and with a blow of his trident on the middle of the acropolis, he produced a sea which they now call Erechtheis. After him came Athena, and, having called on Cecrops to witness her act of taking possession, she planted an olive tree, which is still shown in the Pandrosium. But when the two strove for possession of the country, Zeus parted them and appointed arbiters, not, as some have affirmed, Ceccrops and Cranaus, nor yet Erysichthon, but the twelve gods. And in accordance with their verdict the country was adjudged to Athena, because Cecrops bore witness that she had been the first to plant the olive. Athena, therefore, called the city Athens after herself, and Poseidon in hot anger flooded the Thriasian plain and laid Attica under the sea. (Library 3.14.1)

Around the turn of the era, the fable writer Gaius Julius Hyginus, who wrote in Latin rather than in Greek, also mentioned the tale. I should note for the reader that Jove is Zeus, Mercury is Hermes, Neptune is Poseidon, Minerva is Athena:

When there was a contest between Neptune and Minerva as to who should be the first to found a town in the Attic land, they took Jove as judge. Minerva won because she first planted the olive in that land, said to be there to this day. But Neptune, in anger, wanted to have the sea flood that land. Mercury, at Jove’s command, forbade his doing that. And so Minerva in her own name founded Athens, a town said to be the first established in the world. (Fabulae 164)

A later source, the second-century AD travel writer Pausanias, mentions the myth first in discussing the Parthenon:

I have already stated that the Athenians are far more devoted to religion than other men. They were the first to surname Athena Ergane; they were the first to set up limbless Hermae, and the temple of their goddess is shared by the Spirit of Good men. Those who prefer artistic workmanship to mere antiquity may look at the following: a man wearing a helmet, by Cleoetas, whose nails the artist has made of silver, and an image of Earth beseeching Zeus to rain upon her; perhaps the Athenians them selves needed showers, or may be all the Greeks had been plagued with a drought. There also are set up Timotheus the son of Conon and Conon himself; Procne too, who has already made up her mind about the boy, and Itys as well – a group dedicated by Alcamenes. Athena is represented displaying the olive plant, and Poseidon the wave, and there are statues of Zeus, one made by Leochares, and one called Polieus, the customary mode of sacrificing to whom I will give without adding the traditional reason thereof. Upon the altar of Zeus Polieus they place barley mixed with wheat and leave it unguarded. The ox, which they keep already prepared for sacrifice, goes to the altar and partakes of the grain. One of the priests they call the ox-slayer, who kills the ox and then, casting aside the axe here according to the ritual runs away. The others bring the axe to trial, as though they know not the man who did the deed. Their ritual, then, is such as I have described. As you enter the temple that they name the Parthenon, all the sculptures you see on what is called the pediment refer to the birth of Athena, those on the rear pediment represent the contest for the land between Athena and Poseidon. The statue itself is made of ivory and gold. On the middle of her helmet is placed a likeness of the Sphinx – the tale of the Sphinx I will give when I come to my description of Boeotia – and on either side of the helmet are griffins in relief. (Description of Greece 1.24.3-5)

His discussion of the Erechtheum, fortunately, follows fairly soon thereafter:

There is also a building called the Erechtheum. Before the entrance is an altar of Zeus the Most High, on which they never sacrifice a living creature but offer cakes, not being wont to use any wine either. Inside the entrance are altars, one to Poseidon, on which in obedience to an oracle they sacrifice also to Erechtheus, the second to the hero Butes, and the third to Hephaestus. On the walls are paintings representing members of the clan Butadae; there is also inside – the building is double – sea-water in a cistern. This is no great marvel, for other inland regions have similar wells, in particular Aphrodisias in Caria. But this cistern is remarkable for the noise of waves it sends forth when a south wind blows. On the rock is the outline of a trident. Legend says that these appeared as evidence in support of Poseidon's claim to the land. Both the city and the whole of the land are alike sacred to Athena; for even those who in their parishes have an established worship of other gods nevertheless hold Athena in honor. But the most holy symbol, that was so considered by all many years before the unification of the parishes, is the image of Athena which is on what is now called the Acropolis, but in early days the Polis. A legend concerning it says that it fell from heaven; whether this is true or not I shall not discuss. (Description of Greece 1.25.5-6)

This should suffice to give the basic picture of the account. At any rate, it wasn't long before we were freed to wander, and many of us promptly began the lengthy, circuitous descent. It wasn't that terrible a climb, but the way down placed us quite a distance from where we'd initially gone up. After a bit of a lunch break - I had a large dish of banana gelatto and, of course, some orange soda - it was time to get to the Acropolis Museum. Since the place had virtually just opened, photography is not yet permitted. At first, Michael's tour was very fascinating. However, we were all exhausted, and very tired of standing. And Michael can be difficult to hear unless you're right next to him. And so I didn't really get nearly as much out of it as I might've hoped. Fortunately, with my International Student ID Card, I can go to the museum free whenever I so choose, but most of us just couldn't pay attention while there. Too desperate to just escape. I believe that, when he had set us free, I walked back to the apartments with Micah, Laura, and Frisco.

The only other thing I remember from that day is that, when evening came, I spent several hours working on Modern Greek homework with everyone - chiefly tutoring in the Greek alphabet and in pronunciation. I'm still struggling a bit with the fact that modern Greek has altered the sounds of so many letters since the Koine Greek to which I'm a tad more accustomed. (Well, at least it differs widely from the pronunciation given in every book on Koine Greek I've ever seen, and I'm also informed by the local teachers that the pronunciation has changed over time.) And I believe it might've been that night when, around 9:00-9:30, Justin, Eric, and I decided to go out to eat at a place called Carousel, a sort of refuge for us guys from the more predominant sex amongst our group. Unfortunately, Carousel closes at 8:00 PM, as it turns out, and so we were forced to resort to the nearest alternative: McDonald's.

The past few days have been... well, certainly not uneventful. Last night I became, for a time, reacquainted with an old nemesis of mine: locks. I somehow have the accursed capacity, not only to fail to unlock doors, but in doing so to ensure that no one can escape the building or room, either. Christina finally managed to open the front door from the inside, and I promptly fouled up my apartment door as well. As Justin and I, from opposing sides, attempted to open the door, I watched in dismay as my friend Gabby tripped coming up the stairs and struck her head quite soundly. Dropping my bags, I rushed to her to make sure that everything was alright. As we returned her to her room, I turned over to Aleka the task regarding my door; needless to say, it was quickly resolved, and after explaining to Justin what had transpired, we paid a visit to Gabby. A few of our number walked to the Athens Centre to report the incident, since we couldn't reach them via phone. At any rate, since Gabby could feel a watery sensation in her ear, they eventually took her to the hospital. After some X-rays she was returned, to be placed under 48-hour watch. Their suspicion is that she has no concussion, and she feels much better, but it was certainly a frightening turn of events. As Micah remarked, he'd figured that the first hospital visit would involve somebody being struck by the ridiculous cars in the narrow streets in which we all tend to walk. I spent most of the evening at Gabby's apartment with a number of others once she returned.

Today was, with one exception, uneventful. Genesis of Modern Theatre was excellent, particularly as David and Liz performed a reading of a very dramatic confrontation in Jean Anouilh's Antigone. They're both very talented actors. After class, however, a rather intense thunderstorm swept through the area, and so for a while I was stuck with a few others under a stationary umbrella in the courtyard. Should've perhaps made a go for it; I was the only one with a portable umbrella. But the Athenian sidewalks are treacherous in the rain. Still, I got to know Tabitha better while we were trapped. The rain endured long enough to nearly fill a glass of water three-fourths of the way. Once it let up, we made a go for it, but naturally it resumed before we returned to the apartment, which made for an unpleasant climb up the hill on Dikearchou St. The rain effectively put an end to my intentions of visiting the farmer's market for fresh grapes. Instead I spent the afternoon reading and catching up on homework, not to mention some siesta time.

I did, thereafter, endeavor to visit the aforementioned farmer's market, but it turned out to have closed down by that time. However, some of the girls (Gabby, Tara, and Lisa) were hanging out at Varnava Square and insisted that I join them. After a bit of beer, I learned that I was to serve as a conversation partner for Hans, a Danish fellow pursuing a Master's degree in philosophy and currently studying Plato at the Athens Centre. Unfortunately, he's rather difficult to understand, and is purportedly repetitive. I actually rather enjoyed our conversation, at least those parts I could understand, although the atmosphere was rather saturated with more cigarette smoke than was to my liking. I excused myself at 8:00 PM, picked up some curious things at the bakery, and went to the apartments, where I decided to spend some time with some friends after sending Micah, as per Gabby's instructions, to act as my replacement at Varnava Square.

That brings me to the present, since I'm typing this using the superior Internet capabilities of their third-story apartment. Tomorrow I plan, with some friends, to hike to the top of Mt. Lycabettos, the highest point in Athens. Should be fun!

Gratia vobis.

Monday, September 14, 2009

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:42:00 GMT

"From the Heliconian Muses let us begin to sing, who hold the great and holy mount of Helicon, and dance on soft feet about the deep-blue spring and the altar of the almighty son of Cronos, and, when they have washed their tender bodies in Permessus or in the Horse's Spring or Olmeius, make their fair, lovely dances upon highest Helicon and move with vigorous feet...."

--Hesiod, from the beginning of his Theogony

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Γεια σας, my friends. Since I last left off on Friday, I've had quite the weekend! I mean, sure, before Friday was done, Micah had succeeded in once enacting a parallel between our apartment and electricity on one hand and Ireland and serpents on the other, with himself starring as St. Patrick. Dinner that evening at what I believe was the Vyrinis Garden Taverna was excellent. Had a wonderful lengthy conversation with my friend Rose as I dined on the remains of a poor, helpless bunny. Rabbit, I might add, isn't so bad, although somewhat flaky, and it could've done without the gratuitous lemon sauce. I believe it was this night, if I'm not mistaken, that I spent some time with my friend Aleka for devotions, since most of the others were going out to a bar. We managed to cover one phrase in Romans 1:1, and mostly spent it just chatting. Later on, I found my key unable to open my room, and since two of my three roommates were already sound asleep in there, I was stuck outside at an ungodly hour for perhaps 45 minutes. Thankfully Gabby and Tara permitted me to stay in their room for a bit. I got to sleep no earlier than 4:00 AM, and reversed the process a mere two hours later.

The following morning, it rained. Hard. Ridiculous rain. Zack and I set out on an adventure to procure an umbrella for him; Micah had borrowed my umbrella, and so my sole defense was a raincoat, the same raincoat I wore when I broke my arm seven or eight years ago in a horse-drawn cart accident in an Irish mountain pass. Lovely. At any rate, I slipped on the steep downward grade of the slick marble sidewalk, and for quite some time thereafter I found myself with a smidge of a limp. A rain-soaked Athens is, I think, one of the rare places in which 'tis safer to stroll in the middle of the street than to stick to the sidewalk. The sidewalks, by the way, appear to have been designed by a drunkard with some manner of disorder. More so than the buildings, I mean. Occasionally there will be random flights of stairs; sometimes buildings or rocks jut out into the sidewalk, even completely obscuring it. At any rate, we eventually made it to the supermarket, where he found an umbrella for €0.60 (which I'm sure was supposed to be more, but with the unpleasantness of the cashier, we certainly weren't inclined to correct her) and I procured some air freshener for what passes for our bathroom. After a stop at the splendid bakery at Varnava Square for a delicious breakfast item--it resembled a personal-size stromboli and contained ham, egg, cheese, and bacon (the four major food groups, in my book)--we made it back to the apartment.

Still soaked, later that day we set out, led by Katja, on a walking tour of Central Athens. I confess I didn't get much out of it. Perhaps the lingering pain, full bladder, and drenched clothing had something to do with it, or the new discovery that my raincoat likes to trap endless quantities of water inside to keep pressed against my skin. More than you all needed to know, no doubt. Still, we traveled past the Stadio Kallimarmaro, the stadium originally built several centuries before Christ and renovated in the 19th century for the 1896 Olympic Games. We traveled through the National Gardens, passed the Zappeion, later found ourselves in front of the Hellenic Parliament building, dodged momentarily into the metro station at Syntagma Square, went through the massive shopping paradise on Ermou, and concluded the tour at Monastiraki. While the majority of the group then meandered off for some gyros, a few of us opted to strike out on a somewhat different route back to the apartments (which was made possible for me, of course, by the wonders of Orangeade Fanta). 'Twas a long day, and I rejoiced in an opportunity to relax until that night's reception at Rosemary's beautiful house. The party was excellent, and I had a good time chatting with John Zervos about my plans in Turkey and about his motorbike tour of India, and with Rosemary about her time spent in Afghanistan. Good times with good friends, and because I had taken so many pictures for the girls with their cameras and had mentioned in passing earlier how seldom I appear in pictures, we took a rather excellent picture of all of us. (As one person quipped, I looked like the "least enthusiastic pimp" in the world, haha.)

Come the morning, while most of my friends struck out for the beach, I decided I'd try to go to church. Leaving early--made easier by my continued inability to get much sleep--I walked through Varnava Square, down Melissou, and found Profitis Ilias, a Greek Orthodox church named for the Prophet Elijah. With a fair deal of trepidation, I slowly entered and found myself in a very, very foreign world--linguistically, socially, and liturgically. With the possible exception of my walking tour of Central Athens, I haven't been so bored since the flight from Philadelphia. Not one person so much as acknowledged my existence. No greetings, nothing. Although I stood at first, I managed to find a seat after a while. Since everything was entirely in another language, I was never very certain what was going on, not even after reviewing the major elements of Divine Liturgy. I'm fairly sure, in retrospect, that that's what was transpiring. There was very profusive use of the sign of the cross, although rendered elaborate beyond anything I could hope to follow, and much rising and sitting. Now, when I was at a Catholic mass a number of years ago, at least things were largely uniform; the congregation would do the same thing at the same time. Greek Orthodox, not so much. I never knew whose actions to follow, which is the only possible non-verbal guide for a foreign visitor seeking help. The incense was not nearly as biting as that I encountered at Mass, fortunately, and it was certainly a tactile experience... but the congregation never said a single word. Their only action involved crossing themselves and rising and sitting. And, of course, giving the offering. To a large extent it was like a play. The chanting took place endlessly on stage, with an occasional cameo appearance by the priest and deacons from behind the iconostasis, which wasn't quite so ornate as I'd anticipated. (Though many of the icons were beautiful, esp. the one of St. Athanasius on the pillar near me and the Christos Pantokrator icon on the ceiling.) I mean, there was the eucharist, of course, which consisted of people entering stage left, receiving a sip from a chalice held in the priest's hands, and then grabbing one or two or three large hunks of bread from a bowl and stuffing them into their mouths as they walked back up the aisle. That was basically how it ended. I wanted to depart at so many points, but I managed to stick it out. Any worship I did that morning, it seemed to me to be an individual act between myself and God, not something related to whatever the heck was transpiring around me. All in all, I was actually quite disappointed.

After leaving, I snagged four loukoumades on a stick at the bakery and returned to my apartment, where I stayed for several hours. Finally, at 1:30 PM, I set out on an adventure. My intended goal was to visit Socrates' prison cell and the Areopagus, where Paul preached in Acts 17. And so I walked past the Athens Centre and, through continual northward motion, reached a very busy multi-lane street. Knowing my destination to be east-north-east, roughly speaking, I opted to follow the contour of the road until I spotted Dionysiou Areopagitou (another road) on the other side. Somewhere in here, I learned a fact that taught me a valuable lesson. When you take a map with you, it's generally wise to make sure that it covers more than half the area you intend to cover. My map was, by this rule, full of folly. And so I found myself getting further and further lost while following the road great distances. I stopped only when I found that there was simply no more sidewalk. Turning, I saw that the Acropolis seemed distantly to my northeast; from my apartment, it's quite a trek to the northwest, while the Areopagus is essentially just northwest of the Acropolis. Realizing that I had probably gone too far, I backtracked for a bit and, as is customary, dashed across the highway-like street at the first relatively safe opportunity. No crosswalks anywhere in the region for that road. I must have wandered for at least half an hour to an hour after that. Up steep hills, through marketplaces, through streets with names I was bound to forget--all of it was not exactly what I'd had in mind. Several hours into this journey, I surrendered all hope of reaching my destination, and vowed simply to catch a taxi the next chance I got. This would prove to be quite some time away. As I continued to walk, I found myself next to a large hill; and, seeing steps leading up it, I figured I had nothing to lose by scaling it and checking the view from there to reorient myself. I had no clue where I was, not the foggiest notion. And the hill was much, much, much larger than I'd initially suspected it to be. Just partway up, I could look out over Athens; it was only when I reached the top that I suspected--as I would prove right in thinking--that I'd reached the top of Lophos Philopappou, adorned with the second-century AD Philopappos Monument, described by Pausanias thusly:

After freeing the Athenians from tyrants Demetrius the son of Antigonus did not restore the Peiraeus to them immediately after the flight of Lachares, but subsequently overcame them and brought a garrison even into the upper city, fortifying the place called the Museum. This is a hill right opposite the Acropolis within the old city boundaries, where legend says Musaeus used to sing, and, dying of old age, was buried. Afterwards a monument also was erected here to a Syrian. At the time to which I refer Demetrius fortified and held it. (Description of Greece 1.25.8)

The hill had formerly been named the Museion Hill. From there I could easily see the entirety of Athens in the distance below, and the Acropolis and Mt. Lycabettus not so terribly far away. I got a wonderful picture of them. It occurred to me to ask someone to take my picture there, but many were leaving. I overheard an attractive woman speaking in German near the area I had selected, and so as she turned to leave, I asked her in German if she'd be willing to take it. Appears my German isn't so rusty after all! I was just very happy to have an opportunity, as a native English-speaker dwelling in Greece, to converse with a stranger in German. How cosmopolitan. At any rate, the picture came out beautifully. Here, in the meantime, is the picture I took of the Acropolis and Mt. Lycabettus:

Having gotten what I hadn't come for, I descended the hill and walked through a parking lot to the street. (As I'd later learn, perhaps just a hundred meters to my left would've been the sought-after prison cell, and the Areopagus not far north from there.) Purchasing yet another of my precious Fantas for an exorbitant price (€2!!!), I walked for an untold distance, trying with increasing desperation to procure a taxi. I finally did, and the driver mostly understood my directions as to the general area I sought; he ended up leaving me a block or two past Profitis Ilias. Though he was quite taciturn throughout the drive, he was very friendly once we got to chatting when he dropped me off. Also, I was both astonished and amused when the song "Truly Madly Deeply" by Savage Garden came on the radio; I listened to Savage Garden's first album somewhat frequently growing up. Greeks seem to be infatuated with American music that was popular in the 90s. Anyway, walking back to the apartment, I actually ran into Justin and Eric, returned from the beach, at Varnava Square, and so I sat with them for a while and had a vanilla smoothie. It was actually quite a fun and relaxing time. We concluded by talking to some (fairly attractive) Greek girls at the next table (no, we didn't hit on them; we're not idiots, at least not all the time), which went rather well considering how notoriously difficult that sort of thing is in Greece. Greek men are much more... forward... and thus Greek women are inclined to simply ignore men. We had a nice, brief conversation, which Justin started with a bit of Greek that I'd taught him, and since the girls spoke English we were able to continue. They didn't have any bars or clubs to recommend, but they were quite nice.

That evening ended with a get-together at David and Elizabeth's house. The food was excellent (ziti with parmesan and feta cheese; more Greek-style meatballs; plenty of grapes...), and I had a great time talking to both of them as well as some of my fellow guests (esp. Eric, Micah, and Tabitha). I got to check out their copy of The Cambridge Companion to Greek and Roman Theater.

The following day was the first day of classes. I arrived at the Athens Centre early to test out the wireless connection. Unfortunately, I saved the connection with the last two digits of the password switched, and thus was quite infuriated for some time until I figured out (with some help from Micah) what had gone wrong, and figured out how to switch it back. The first of today's two classes was Monuments of Greece, taught by Michael Wedde. After some review of the syllabus and such things--we'll have two six-page research papers, plus three five-page essays in conjunction with the final exam!--we embarked on a two-hour lecture introducing us to the ancient Greeks. Fascinating material, but I don't think my body was quite ready for it. Between classes, Hana, Aleka, and I walked to a bakery closer to the Athens Centre, where I got a loukoumas and a Mandarin Fanta for just €1.60--much cheaper than the same meal had been at the other bakery! After a quick detour to a nearby bookstore so Aleka could grab some folders for papers--no, I didn't see any especially interesting books there, from what I could tell--we returned. Elizabeth remarked how addicted she is to those delightful sugar-doughnuts; I was merely striving not to coat my entire body with sugar by the time I was done with it! Modern Greek class was up next, taught by a woman named Yanna, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. I think I'm finally getting the hang of modern Greek vowels. Where ancient Greek vowels sounded differently, modern Greek apparently has only five vowel sounds, and so, e.g., omicron and omega have the same sound. Anyway, the class was very productive, and we were assigned only minimal homework. I can see why the Athens Centre is so renowned far and wide for their Greek program, though.

The remainder of my day has been uneventful, involving some reading and some futile attempts to get my Internet to work from my bedroom. I haven't eaten anything since that last loukoumas, and so I'm extremely hungry. In the morning, perhaps my first task will be to strike out for the bakery or some sort of restaurant and get breakfast before I return for a shower. I should perhaps get some cereal and other supplies at the supermarket, too.

Thanks go out to anyone who read through that, and like before, I'll be glad to answer any questions you might have.

[EDIT: I'd also like to take this time to express sorrow over the passing of William P. Alston, who died at home on Sunday. I heard the news here; see also here, here, here, and here. Alston was an extremely influential Christian analytic philosopher; Alvin Plantinga and other well-known great Christian philosophers were among his students. Dr. Alston will be sorely missed here below, and I for one will rejoice in benefiting from his keen insight on the day of the resurrection.]

Gratia vobis.

Friday, September 11, 2009

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 14:59:18 GMT

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Greetings from beautiful Athens, everyone! I survived the journey more or less in one piece. Didn't sleep much on the ten-hour flight from Philadelphia to Athens, although the chap sitting next to me did pass out in the bathroom, which caused great concern when he was found. Of course, as was later discovered, he'd merely taken that opportunity to observe that a dreadful hangover and flying are not as compatible in his life as he might have hoped. Certainly made that portion of the flight lively, though.

Upon arrival, my traveling companion Tara and I succeeded in getting through the passport check, which was apparently the only thing separating us from, not just the baggage claim, but likewise the outside world. No further security, no customs line, just pure and simple freedom. We took a metro line from the airport to Plateia Syntagma (Syntagma Square) closer to the heart of Athens; we nearly forgot to validate our tickets, which would have been a bad decision since the fine for neglecting that step can be sixty times the ticket price. It took a while once there, but we made our way up and out of the subterranean realms and into the light of the square. It took quite some time before we found a taxi driver willing to accept us as passengers, though to be fair, we weren't terribly aggressive in beating others to them, and at first we kept saying the street name (Dikearchou) rather than the neighborhood (Pangrati). At any rate, the taxi driver was wonderfully nice and talkative; he explained much about Greece, and the drive took us right past the Arch of Hadrian—and may I just remark, it was astounding to behold.

Coming to my apartment on the second floor, I discovered it to be quite a bit smaller than I had anticipated. The bathroom in particular is... not what I'm used to. I mean, I expected the fact that in Greece, one does not put toilet paper into the toilet but rather into a bin nearby. But the bathroom is perhaps twice the size of my closet, perhaps even thrice at most. Exposed pipes and devices are everywhere. One takes a shower in it while sitting down. Because the shower curtain only covers one side of the small tub, to not do so would be to get water everywhere. And because the tub is perhaps a meter by a couple feet in area, there's scarcely room for much. Also, I should note that in order to procure hot water for a shower, one must flip a switch in the hall about 45 minutes before showering, and flip it back right before the shower. The doors have a habit of slamming shut and open for scarcely an evident reason, particularly the door for the kitchenette, which I so far know solely as the place wherein I fill a mug with tap water for a drink—it's safe to drink in the city, and in most villages. There's also a long terrace outside the apartment, so we can step onto the balcony to relax or to gaze out at the streets below. It isn't uncommon to hear megaphones blaring what I take to be slogans of activism, or to see someone putting fliers all over car windows. And I love all of it.

Shortly after I arrived here, I met my roommate Micah (he's a cool guy, and I think we'll get along fantastically), and after managing to short out the power for the entire apartment—it got fixed, thankfully—we left on an exploration shortly after meeting Justin, one of the guys who'd be staying in the apartment's other bedroom; I wouldn't meet the fourth, Zachary, until later. Tara, Micah, and I set out to wander around the cemetery rather close to our apartment building.

But before I get to that, this would be an appropriate point at which to note that Athens (or, at least, Pangrati) doesn't do level ground. Level ground just ain't its thing. Athens loves hills, though. Plenty of hills. Much of it is far steeper than the main hill from my hometown; some of it nearly rivals the steepest sections of the Great Wall of China. Needless to say, walking around here is extraordinarily exhausting. I doubt I've walked so much since my last visit to Washington DC, when my friend Meaghan and I hoofed it to Arlington National Cemetery from there. The cemetery we found in Athens, though, was much grander and more beautiful. Purportedly, or so I've heard that others have been told, the cemetery holds the remains of many people of higher social status and rank. We couldn't really find any older than, say, the mid-nineteenth century. But after entering past the large, Byzantine-style church that guards the place, I must say that what I saw was grand. Monuments, so many monuments! I took few pictures, but I know I'll return to do more later. I can scarcely describe the grandeur. I amused myself by reading the names on a number of the memorials; it was a good way to sharpen my skills with both the Greek alphabet itself and pronunciation, not to mention name recognition. Most of the tombs were family oriented, often termed oikogeneia. There was one that contained, behind bars, a visible icon of the Virgin Mary, so I had a chance to explain to Tara and Micah the significance of the MP to her left and the ΘY to her right. (The line on top signified a reverential contraction of sacred words; each is the first and last letter of a word. MP represents matēr, or “mother”, while ΘY represents theou, or “of god”. Thus, when expanded it translates to “Mother of God”, a common title for Mary.) We ended on the roof of the Athens Centre, where I'll be studying; we all returned to the same roof before a nice Greek dinner. The view from the roof is beautiful. The Parthenon atop the Acropolis is easily visible from there. I imagine we spent at least half an hour there, no doubt more, simply conversing.

Dinner that night at Epavli Taverna was excellent. I mostly drank water, although I did have a glass of red wine. I'm not much of a wine fan, but it went rather well with the curious meatballs I had. Stuffed with cheese, they were coated in a tomato sauce of some sort, but definitely not in an Italian style; it had more of a brownish color to it, though I confess that there wasn't much light.

The next day began, for me, at midnight; couldn't sleep longer than that, though I did remain in bed until 6:00 AM. (Greece, by the way, is on GMT +2:00, and so is seven hours ahead of the east coast time to which I'm accustomed.) After a few hours of reading and entering my schedule into Windows Calendar, the four of us departed for the program orientation—but not without a detour to a bakery at Plateia Varnava. And I wholly expect that the four of us will return almost every day for breakfast, because it is amazing. They have everything, and for reasonable prices. I found a massive sugar-coated donut-like object and some Orangeade Fanta for 2.75, whereas for not much more, Justin procured what almost appeared to be a ham, egg, and cheese breakfast stromboli. At least, that's all I can think to compare it to. Excellent meal.

The orientation was spectacular. John Zervos, the director of the Athens Centre, gave a charming introduction to Athens and Greece itself; I learned a great deal, and I was touched by his personal reminiscences of his friend, King Constantine II of Greece, who was forced to flee the country in 1967, effectively ending the monarchy that had begun after the Greeks successfully won their independence from the Ottoman Empire. The next presentations were by several of my professors (David Edgecomb, Elizabeth Ware, Michael Wedde), and after a few more things and some refreshments, we set out on a long walking tour of Pangrati and Mets.

Thus far, I'm thoroughly enjoying my stay here. Classes haven't started yet, but I'm actually thoroughly looking forward to them. Not the work so much as the learning, the experience. And, yes, the trips to so many famous sites.

Any questions? Ask and I'll see if I can get back to you. Perhaps eventually pictures will be involved.

As for reading, I'm currently working through:

Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges – Borges is just an amazing writer. And I love Andrew Hurley's translation. I'll have to share more about Borges' work at some point.
The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics – Thus far, I've finished Mere Christianity (I should've read that sooner!) and have started on The Screwtape Letters.
Deliverance by J. F. Rutherford – Haven't gotten much further than this, but some of the upcoming chapters are a doozy, length-wise.
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin – It's fairly dry, but I've finished the first chapter, which is quite long compared to some of the others.
The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, ed. Bernard McGinn – I'm enjoying this a lot, actually. The selections are short but good to read, and despite some questionable aspects of some of the mystics' writings—Meister Eckhart particularly stands out—they can be quite thought-provoking. So far I've completed the first section, devoted to mystical biblical interpretation; the next one will deal in asceticism and purgation.

Also, the room came equipped with a number of great books, including two copies of The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, a compilation of basically everything that survives by or about them. I'm itching to read it. Also, there's evidently a relatively recent, very good translation of Thucydides' work on the Peloponnesian War, and we have a few copies of that. But I figure I'll wait until I finish some of what's above; after all, we haven't even factored in textbooks yet!

Gratia vobis.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:16:36 GMT

"Truth is the one God. Just as there is no truth other than the one truth, so there is no true God other than the one true God. It is not possible to say that there are two true gods, because by its nature truth is one and cannot be divided."

--Fulgentius of Ruspe

Gratia vobis et pax a Deo Patre et Domino nostro Iesu Christo.

Hello, everyone!

I'd like to thank everybody (i.e., HMG) for assistance in fixing the one computer issue I was having yet. (I'd also like to thank Abi for tipping me off to traffic tracking systems for use with Blogger; Google Analytics does the trick quite nicely, at least in general statistics.) So as it turns out, a couple days after my last post, my webcam stopped working again. My guess is that the connector came loose inside the computer once again. I suppose it's actually entirely possible that the connector was, in fact, attached properly during the repair process, but came undone in transit. The fault actually lies with the shoddy workmanship in Dell Studio laptops. So hopefully today, the technician will return to replace the motherboard and webcam for good measure, and we'll be able to concoct a way to secure that connector better.

Also, I've had to change screen names on AIM recently. Seems that somehow, perhaps due to security breaches in my computer--I've taken care of that now with superior protection against viruses and spyware--phishers got hold of my screen name and began using it to spam my contact list with porn. Needless to say, I was not terribly happy. And since AOL doesn't allow users to actually delete screen names, all I could really do was get a new screen name (jbfideidefensor), make announcements about what had happened, and urge friends to block my old account. Yecch.

A quick, customary comment on my reading progress since my last post. I've finished:

Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, trans. Kathleen McVey - The later portions weren't as good as the first, but Ephrem was truly gifted at hymnody.
Revelation--Its Grand Climax at Hand! by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society - It was... interesting. I hope to do an extensive review on my other blog sometime.
The Evolution of the Soul by Richard Swinburne - There were a few places in which he veered off into slightly odd places, or tossed in additional conclusions with subpar argumentation, but on the whole, Swinburne's book was a tour de force. I have never been so thoroughly confident of substance dualism.
Thirty Years a Watch Tower Slave: The Confessions of a Converted Jehovah's Witness by William J. Schnell - This is another book I hope to review in greater depth later. Very fascinating story, though. Since it was published in the 1950s, it tells more about the state of Jehovah's Witnesses up to that time than anything about how they are today, but certain things sure rang true.
"Pay Attention to Yourselves and to All the Flock" by the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society - Yes, the secret discipline manual given to elders. I managed to procure a PDF of it somewhere, and I have to say that most of it wasn't shocking. I'm not seeing much of the hype surrounding it. I know that if I were part of the Governing Body, I wouldn't see any reason to be so uptight about the secrecy regarding it.
Unpacking Forgiveness: Biblical Answers to Complex Questions and Deep Wounds by Chris Brauns - This book was fantastic, truly fantastic. Best book I've read on forgiveness, and probably the best one I ever will. I'd give it a 10/10, but I have to knock a half-point off for citing John Piper so much. Thankfully, most of it was when Piper wasn't in "Calvinism is GOD!!!!!!!!!1!!!11!!!!!" mode, so most of that was unobjectionable, and Brauns did offer a mild corrective to Piper in one of the appendices. I'd wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone, though.
The Greek Orthodox Church: Faith, History, and Practice by Demetrios Constantelos - This book would've been better if Constantelos had been less insistent that the 'Latin' church is so obviously inferior in so many ways. Given that the book was touted as a suitable introduction to Greek Orthodoxy for non-Orthodox clergy and laity, those statements could've been either revised or omitted. On the whole, it's just plain inferior to Timothy Ware's The Orthodox Church.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church by Aymro Wondmagegnehu - Interesting stuff. There are some features of Ethiopian Orthodoxy that I would probably never be able to accept, but I learned a lot about the church in Ethiopia. They have a very... expanded canon, let's say.

And am currently working on:

The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics - It's basically a collection of all of C. S. Lewis' main works, all in one volume. It's quite nice. I never actually read Lewis' material before. I mean, I had once attempted to get through The Screwtape Letters, but became quite bored and abandoned the project. Now, though, I think I'm more accustomed to his style, and so it's good to get back to it. I've currently made it through three of the four sections of Mere Christianity, and I have to say that it's enjoyable.
Deliverance: A Vivid Description of the Divine Purpose, Particularly Outlining God's Progressive Steps against Wickedness and Showing the Final Overthrow of the Devil and All of His Wicked Institutions; the Deliverance of the People; and the Establishment of the Righteous Government on Earth by Joseph F. Rutherford - Rutherford, as many of my handful of readers might know, was the second president of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society, and the last leader to publish Jehovah's Witness literature under his own name. He was exceptionally prolific, even more so than his predecessor, Charles T. Russell. I believe I've finished the first five or six chapters of this.

I had been reading Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview by J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig, but it'd weigh down my luggage too much to bring it with me, so I'm going to leave it here in the States. That thing is pretty hefty, and my luggage is already near the weight limit. There are also a number of books I'll be bringing that I haven't started yet, including:

The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin - I tried to start this once, but got bored, just as with C. S. Lewis. Since I'm more tolerant of tedium now, I figure this trip will be a good way to get myself to actually read it. Maybe I can tackle my copy of The Descent of Man once I return in December.
Collected Fictions by Jorge Luis Borges - I love Borges. I've been fascinated by his work ever since I read "The Library of Babel", which is in this collection. For some reason, I tear up whenever I reach the words:

"We also know of another superstition of that time: that of the Man of the Book. On some shelf in some hexagon (men reasoned) there must exist a book which is the formula and perfect compendium of all the rest: some librarian has gone through it and he is analogous to a god. In the language of this zone vestiges of this remote functionary's cult still persist. Many wandered in search of Him. For a century they have exhausted in vain the most varied areas. How could one locate the venerated and secret hexagon which housed Him? Someone proposed a regressive method: To locate book A, consult first book B which indicates A's position; to locate book B, consult first a book C, and so on to infinity ... In adventures such as these, I have squandered and wasted my years. It does not seem unlikely to me that there is a total book on some shelf of the universe; I pray to the unknown gods that a man -- just one, even though it were thousands of years ago! -- may have examined and read it. If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for one instant, in one being, let Your enormous Library be justified. . . . I say that it is not illogical to think that the world is infinite. Those who judge it to be limited postulate that in remote places the corridors and stairways and hexagons can conceivably come to an end -- which is absurd. Those who imagine it to be without limit forget that the possible number of books does have such a limit. I venture to suggest this solution to the ancient problem: The Library is unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder (which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order). My solitude is gladdened by this elegant hope."

The Essential Writings of Christian Mysticism, ed. Bernard McGinn - I've been meaning to start this book for ages, but now I'll finally have the chance. Perhaps I'll find some things of use and inspiration.

Of course, I've also got some travel guides and language aids, and this doesn't count the books I'll be receiving for class. I can scarcely believe how close this all is! I leave the country tomorrow, not to return for months. My classes begin on Monday, but I'll arrive in Athens on Thursday morning. Ugh... can't say I enjoy ten-hour flights, and I expect I'll be quite weary on Thursday. Still, Athens, beautiful Athens! I can't wait to explore. I'll be studying modern Greek, naturally, and I've already noticed that certain letters and diphthongs have vastly different pronunciations than I'm accustomed to in Koine. Hopefully I'll adjust, though. And, of course, there's a course in Greek monuments (i.e., "Let's go on field trips all over Greece!"), which should satisfy my sightseeing desires. But I'm perhaps most excited for 'Genesis of Modern Theatre'.

I can't stop thinking about fall break. I'm not sure whether or not I mentioned it on here already, but I'll be taking a nine-day vacation in Turkey. Largely Istanbul, but also some time in Iznik (Nicaea) and Selcuk, which is next to the well-preserved ruins of Ephesus. I've finally plotted out my fall break itinerary in excruciating detail. I'm pumped!

Two more things before I finish. First, last night was the second Mars Hill event back at campus, and I was pleased to attend an open discussion on Christianity and evolution. To my surprise, there were sixteen people in attendance, which is quite nearly a record for Mars Hill. I'm quite confident it marks a record for our open discussion-type events. It gives me great confidence that the group will prosper this semester, even in my absence. The discussion was very stimulating, and mostly focused on the general relationship of science and religion. A very good time.

Second, I'm currently taking part in a collective rebuttal to Loftus' Why I Became an Atheist. While I've been slacking off somewhat, my friend Nick and I are co-authoring a reply to the chapter on God's existence. I expeect I'll post a link to the whole thing once it's available. Loftus' book, in my opinion, is one of the better atheist books if measured by, say, the product of quality and the range of topics covered. However, I find that on many particular topics, other atheists have already outdone Loftus. He frequently uses poor tactics in argumentation, occasionally outright misrepresents various positions (as in, blatantly defines them inaccurately), often oversimplifies issues, and is far too confident of his ability. After a review of his case against the existence of God, I don't think he even refuted a single one of the arguments for God's existence in any of their forms. That includes the original Anselmian version of the ontological argument and the Thomist cosmological arguments. He typically relies on other sources to do his arguing for him, and just chooses to cite conclusions without getting into the argumentative support. All in all, I vacillate between giving it a very charitable 3.5/10 and a more accurate 2.0/10. That's my piece on that, anyway. I still need to do more work on that rebuttal, though.

At any rate, peace out, everyone. Next time I post, it'll be from Athens.

Gratia vobis.