At about 11AM in the active town of Mystras below the ruins, we couldn't find anything to eat. None of the restaurants were open yet. We settled for some day-old bread, yogurt (sorry! I know we should be fasting), and cold drinks. We found some stamps to mail our postcards and went into a little shop that had hand-painted icons and many little trinkets and jewellry. The iconographer was the shopkeeper and spoke pretty good English. We had a wonderful conversation, comparing notes and discussing prices for icons and things like that. I enjoyed it a lot. She showed me a painting she did on a piece of pottery she found that was 300 years old!
One thing also that I forgot to mention about Ravenna, was that the highlight for me was probably seeing some of the drawings that were studies for the mosaics. In the little museum they had there, I found a lovely Greek marble statue, a pretty good collection of icons, a lot of stone carvings and sculptures that I skipped, and an entire hall devoted to the design of the churches and mosaics. Seeing the drawings and studies the artists had used to create these incredible churches was very inspiring for me, and made me want to go home and paint.
We left Mystras before noon and headed up into the hills. The iconographer had assured me that the road to Malevi was good. On my previous trip, I had taken the bus up into the monastery in the mountains and literally thought I was going to die on that trip. I was saying my final prayers, no joke! I couldn't exactly remember why that drive was so scary, but it was enough to make me seriously hesitate to include the trip in our itinerary to begin with and to attempt to drive it myself at this point. However, we prayed, and went!
Stopping at a small taverna (little restaurant), we had a nice lunch. Yes, Grandma got more souvlaki, and we had a giant plate of pasta which we couldn't even finish. There, we verified that the road around the corner was the correct one for the Monastery of Malevi, and off we went.
I was pleasantly surprised to find that the road itself was quite good -- paved solidly with some potholes, but no big deal. Initially, we rode through the interior between small hills, seeing the same lovely scenery, but very red dirt. After awhile, we began climbing into more serious mountains and the road narrowed somewhat and became quite curvy. Now I remembered what had terrified me previously. The road is barely wide enough for two cars. The side next to the mountain is fine, the side next to the precipice has no guard rail, no shoulder. Going up we probably passed a total of 6 cars coming the other direction. If this happened at the wrong moment, with the wrong speed, it could easily be disastrous. On the bus I rode all those years ago, he was going fast, taking those curves like a trooper, and I realized that if a car HAPPENED to try and cross our path at one of those points it would be my demise. But it didn't happen. This time around, it was no big deal to drive slowly at the major curves, and we felt pretty safe. I wasn't scared to drive. Going through two small towns, though, was crazy! The streets become even narrower, if one can believe it, and seeing how crazily cars and houses are seemingly clinging by a few beams to the side of the mountain, with sheer drop-offs basically out the back door, we were pretty speechless. (Well, not really, for anyone who knows Grandma Coco, Emilia, Basil and I).
Finally, we did reach the Monastery of Malevi, arriving a day earlier than planned. It houses a very miraculous icon of the Dormition of the Mother of God. The range of these particular hills, which spans a distance of many miles, has a long history of monastic habitation, and today there are still a good handful of very active monasteries, not the least of which is Malevi, which receives hundreds of pilgrims every year, despite the difficult drive.
The nearest town to Malevi is Agios Petros (Holy Peter) and tradition says that the people who live here are descendents of those who left the penninsula of Agion Oros (Mt. Athos) so that it could become a monastic habitation. They willingly left their homes, lands, and farms, at the behest of the Theotokos (Mother of God) to relocate here so that the penninsula could be dedicated to solely monastic life over 1,000 years ago. For this reason, a nun told me, the Theotokos had a special love for these people and blessed them with this miraculous icon.
The icon began streaming myrrh, a sweet-smelling oil that actually beads up on the face of the icon itself and begins to run down it, I think about 40 years ago. When it began, there were many people healed from putting the oil on their wounds and praying here with the icon -- blindness, cancer, barrenness, heart troubles, etc. There have been literally thousands of miracles recorded over the last 30-40 years by the monastery. Also, there have been many instances when a beautiful, tall woman dressed in a dark blue robe has appeared to people around here and in other places sometimes very far away, announcing that she will heal someone, and identifying herself as "the Virgin of Malevi".
It is much larger than when I previously came. A huge church dedicated to the icon stands as a sentinel over the tiny stone chapel which houses the icon in the middle of a kind of courtyard lined with rooms on three sides. If you can imagine, it is like a large square with the huge new church at the top of many marbel stairs, two arms running down either side lined with monastic cells and rooms, and another wall of rooms along the bottom, all open to the large square in the middle where the chapel is, along with probably 200 potted red geraniums and other plants, a large arbor with grapevines running overhead, and a fountain coming out of one wall where clear cool water perpetually runs and people take it to drink.
We arrived in the afternoon, during the resting period of the monastery. Thankfully, the chapel was open and we went in to venerate the icon. The sister there did not speak English, but I understood that the nuns were sleeping and we would have to wait. I had written and received permission to stay there 2 nights, but we had arrived a day early and I wasn't sure we would be able to stay. But waiting was alright....
....for awhile. But awhile became one hour and then two, with really nothing for the kids to do. I tried to check in again about staying. This time, there was an English-speaking nun who said we could stay one night, but would have to wait. 2 more hours. Until 6:30. Until AFTER Vespers. Grandma was tired and so was I. Emma was still upset that she had missed the cats that morning at Mystras. And to really make matters worse, we had driven in the very last leg up to the monastery over freshly tarred roads and our shiny new kokkino auftokinito was now kokkino kei mavri (yellow and black), so I was parked in the shade trying to rub spiderwebs of tar off the sides and back of the car with our extra toilet paper. Woo hoo. We had been talking about just heading to the coast for a couple of days' recreation and it was starting to sound better than more of this. Emma especially just wanted to get someplace where she could swim again. Our bathe in Zakynthos had been VERY lovely, and she had discovered that with goggles she can see all sorts of fish in the warm waters.
So I made an executive decision that we would leave. I wanted to go once more to pray at the icon first. When I went in, though, the gift shop was open. A different nun was in there and she was very kind and talkative, and my mood began to change. Her English was about as good as my Greek, so it was great because it forced me to speak it more, and we both enjoyed the challenge of communicating. I went back down to get Grandma and the kids to come see the gift shop, and when we came back up, this nun asked if we wanted to have a room, and brought us to one. Her name Kseni, and she was very nice. A plain room with 5 beds and a washroom around the corner that I could not figure out (flushing the toilet, that is; you never know until you get there around here.)
We went up to Vespers and Paraklesis and Basil and I sat right by the icon. He did pretty well. After this, we were hoping for dinner, but learned that on Fridays they only eat bread and olives because of the fasting. We still had some power bars we brought from home 2 weeks ago (will they ever go away!?) and grandma and the kids headed down to the room for "dinner". A young woman there who spoke English I think understood that we didn't really have much food, and she must have told them because a few minutes later Kseni told me to bring everyone upstairs where they fed us a tomato-orzo soup, fresh sourdough bread, and the most delicious kalamata olives I've ever had (that is the region we are in).
We had a good night's sleep, except for Grandma and the cough she has developed. Happily, we had Liturgy this morning up in the huge new church. I got up and went to part of Orthros earlier, then went down and roused the kids for Liturgy and we all got to take communion. One nun also gave me some pieces of cotton with the myrrh from the icon. Afterwards, I stayed to take photos of the incredible fresoes all over the church. It is kind of rare to find really excellent contemporarily-painted icons. Many of the modern icons are just that -- a little modern, not quite tradtional, or else not of exceptional artistic value. These were really exquisitely done, and by monks. I was snapping shots of feet, hands, details, faces, until an old nun came up scolding me in Greek and telling me to stop taking pictures.
Ancient icons that are in danger of being damaged from flashes, or very holy icons/relics that the nuns or priests do not want photographed, I have no problem leaving it. But in this case, with freshly-painted icons that are so valuable to have pictures of for an iconographer, I am more apt to follow my icon teacher's point of view. He told me when I last came to Greece that they would disallow me from taking pictures, usually, but his philosophy was to take as many as you can get away with. Again, not to cause any potential damage, but if it is for my own study and my conscience is clean, then these holy images don't really belong to any one person or monastery -- they are for all of us. So, snap I did. And I went back a little later when the church was nearly emptly, looked around for the nun and didn't see her. Snapped happily another 25 more until the lady sweeping called the Policewoman of Holy Things from the altar who chewed me out twice as bad. I'm sorry. I went and asked the Panaghia to forgive me and to ruin all my pictures if I shouldn't have them, as I venerated her icon on my way out.
The trip down the mountain was relatively easy. We stopped once to look at a little tiny roadside shrine, which you find all over greece. Sometimes they are more elaborate, but they are usually just a little glass box on a stand with a cross on top, looking like a tiny glass house or church. Grandma commented that people thought they were garbage cans and she had seen several with old water bottles and such in them. I couldn't believe this, so we stopped to look at one. Inside the tiny shrine was an old water bottle filled with olive oil, a bag of incense, a couple of icons, a lighter, an oil lamp, and some tiny candles. Beautiful. Orea.
We made it down to the sea!! Driving through town, we spotted a few hotels and when we hit the water it was just what we wanted, but no hotels in sight, only condos and apartments. On a pretty bare stretch, we came to a restaurant right on the beach and decided to stop for a meal; then I noticed a sign directly across the street: Hotel Aphrodite. I went in and the woman spoke very good Greek, had an open room with four beds (and a kitchenette and shower/bathroom), air conditioning, and free internet !!!!! Wow! We are in heaven. We can walk across the street to the beach or to eat something, there are umbrellas and beach chairs for grandma, and the ocean is very shallow for a long, long time. We had a great splash this afternoon and now I've gotten to spend time catching you all up on our doings here. Grandma has actually gotten a shower and nap and the kids are pretty comfortable in this great little pensione. I think there are maybe only 6 rooms here; it is like a large house with little apartments. The owner, Maria, has two children, a boy Emma's age and an older girl. We are really having a nice relaxing time now.
4km away is a monastery of women and I will go in a few minutes and see if I can catch some of the Esperinos (Vespers) for Sts. Peter and Paul. We plan to go there for Liturgy tomorrow morning, unless they don't have it, in which case there are two churches in town that we can find.
Well, that is it for now. If you leave a comment or send an email to me I can get it for the next couple of days. Signing off in a cooler, breezy Astros, looking through the door at the Mediterranean sea with Grandma organizing upstairs and the kids playing outside. Macrina
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2 comments:
There are few useful tips regarding handling of jewellery:
1. Respect the preciousness of your jewellery. Never wear jewellery when doing household works, like cleaning, cooking or gardening. Wear jewellery for proper occasions or celebrations, which are special for you.
2. Avoid any kind of chemical contact with your diamond jewellery. Your nail polish removers, perfumes, hairspray, and other cosmetics can be harmful for jewellery due to presence of chemicals. These chemical can reduce your jewellery shining caused by polishing.
3. When not in use, place your jewellery items in the boxes or cases specially made for them, which are provided by your jewellery manufactures at the time of buying jewellery.
Without wanting to appear rude or anything, I feel like explaining a few things here, for those who might not know about them…
Obviously your grandma thought WRONG about those shrines, mistaking them for “garbage cans”, just because she saw empty bottles of water & oil probably, and maybe small match boxes (some people, mostly the ones living in the vicinity of the shrine, leave flowers as well; other people may leave a few napkins also, in a corner there somewhere, for wiping oil off hands after lighting the respective candle). Those bottles were probably left there by the people passing by (usually faithful passers-by) so that the oil burning candle existing in many of those shrines, could be constantly kept burning or alight, and the water & oil replenished by other faithful passers-by etc. And the fact that they were empty, maybe they emptied in the meantime and at the very moment you saw them & those people handling them etc, everything might have appeared something else, completely different, and you have interpreted that your own way, as you weren’t aware or accustomed with this little practice specific to the place. This similar practice exists in some places in Romania as well - especially in certain mountain villages where the sort of shrines described by you can be found. But most often tourists do not know it, as it can be specific to a place and common only amongst those inhabitants and maybe to some of the native pilgrims etc. The shrines ‘encaged’ in glass boxes are a more ‘modern’ and ‘up-to-date’ version of the ‘older’ ones (many of them still exist these days), which used to be built in the open air and mostly in the shape of a crucifix, sometimes with a small cover on top, to protect it from rain/snow, and most often made of wood (or cement/stone/metal – but most of these ones usually are monuments built in memory of some heroes from the war or an important event, or built in memory of someone who could’ve died at that respective place, in an accident or so).
Regarding this ‘practice’ described above, I think it could be classified as another of the ‘unwritten’ religious customs of certain places, and I’m guessing this must be an Orthodox thing to do…
Quote:
"The trip down the mountain was relatively easy. We stopped once to look at a little tiny roadside shrine, which you find all over greece. Sometimes they are more elaborate, but they are usually just a little glass box on a stand with a cross on top, looking like a tiny glass house or church. Grandma commented that people thought they were garbage cans and she had seen several with old water bottles and such in them. I couldn't believe this, so we stopped to look at one. Inside the tiny shrine was an old water bottle filled with olive oil, a bag of incense, a couple of icons, a lighter, an oil lamp, and some tiny candles. Beautiful. Orea."
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