Tinos II

I apologize for the abrupt ending of my last post. I ran out of time in the internet café and decided not to get more. The Megalocharia icon on Tinos is so covered with jewels that you cannot even see the icon anymore, really. It was covered with a silver repousse sheath with only the faces showing many years ago, and now you can’t see the silver icon anymore, just the painted faces peeking through. Pearls, gold and silver crosses and rings, panaghia icons from bishops, and many other precious items cover both the face of the icon and the stand around it.

The church itself is huge and quite ornate. There is actually a reader’s stand with spiral steps up to a kind of lectern at the top, about 20 feet high. As Christopher said, one would have to have a pretty good voice to get up and read from there! A lot of the iconography and decoration is rather baroque, and not as interesting to me as the older and/or more traditional styles of liturgical art. But what is most stunning about the church is the number of lampadas hanging from the ceiling.

We Orthodox use lampadas in front of our icons. They are sometimes very small and simple hanging oil lamps, and sometimes very large and ornate, what we might call a chandalier. When one prays before a particular icon, or has a place/icon in mind during great distress, and then has the prayer answered, he/she may donate a lampada commemorating the answered prayer. In this particular place, there are probably several hundred lampadas, each one representing an answered prayer. I looked at some of the smaller-sized lampadas in town and they were approaching 200E, about $350. Many hanging there were very large and elaborate, probably costing thousands of dollars.

Additionally, an emblem hangs from the bottom of the lampada signifying the nature of the distress. Some have incredibly beautiful boats, obviously people were saved from shipwreck, or a loved one was returned from sea. Others have hands, legs, or other parts of the body. We also saw houses, probably saved from fire or some other disaster. We even saw horses, goats, a helicopter, airplanes, and a tractor! Emma had fun seeing what she could find. Of course all these lampadas cannot hang in front of the icon; they are hanging from huge chains draped across the ceiling of the church. As you look up, the high dome is above, with a spiderweb of chains strung across it bearing these hundreds of lampadas. It is a pretty tremendous sight.

After visiting the church, we walked down a narrow pedestrian street crammed with tiny shops offering icons, prayer ropes, incense, and other “religious paraphernalia,” taking our time in the heat of the day. Coming back down to the harbor, we walked alongside it for several blocks until we found the turnoff for our hotel. The landmark was a beautiful small blue-domed church right across from our hotel. We all went back to our rooms for a little siesta.

After sleeping for an hour or so, Christopher and the kids and I walked down to the beach, a few minutes away. Grandma had some time to write postcards in the air-conditioned room and Fr. Nicholas and Gabriel were catching up on their jetlag.

Eventually we were all ready to go for dinner and found a small taverna right near the hotel. The evening was pleasant, and for the first time it actually felt a little cool. Tinos was know as the “Island of the Winds” in ancient times, and it certainly is very windy. In fact, when Emma swam the next day her flip-flop blew away down the beach!

None of us knew exactly what our plans would be next day. Christopher, Basil and I went back to go to bed and the rest of the gang took a walk in the evening. We were only 5 minutes’ walk from town, so it was very easy to get around.

Macrina signing off from the windy isle of Tinos