I am not Greek, but I have been enamored and fascinated with what I would call the Greek spirit since I was a young child. My adoptive mother was a Greek-American whose father was an immigrant from Greece. She had many Greek relatives, all of whom had big personalities and big celebrations, and wonderful home-baked pastries. My father was not Greek, but he had an eclectic taste in music. He often played music from other nations, including Russian ballads and Greek folk music, most of which was composed by Mikis Theodoraki, my personal favorite. When the movie, Zorba the Greek, came out in 1964, we went. I was only seven-years-old at the time, and looking back, I have to wonder what my parents were thinking taking me to such a grown-up movie. Perhaps this is why the movie industry began to rate movies for child appropriateness in 1968, but I digress.
I don’t know how it happened that at such a young age, the story, the landscapes, the characters, and the music drew me in like an irresistible siren. I identified with the young British-Greek bookworm character whom Zorba took under his wing. I too was terribly shy and inhibited. I could understand why he needed Zorba much more than Zorba needed him. I understood how liberating it must have felt to this young man when he finally let loose and danced with Zorba on the beach—that unforgettable last scene in the movie. The story moved from one catastrophe and tragedy to the next, yet, Zorba danced, and finally, the young bookworm came to understand what the old man, Zorba, had been trying to teach him—to let go and love life no matter what happens. I loved this story because I too needed to learn to let go.
I guess it should be no surprise that I was destined to meet my immigrant Greek husband many years later in an unlikely place, a tiny liberal arts college in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. Since then, we have made several trips to my husband’s childhood home on the island of Chios, Greece to visit his family, and each time I learn something new as I have continued to try to understand the mystery of the heart and soul of the Greek people and this place, which has an energy in the air that I can only express as mystical. I feel the ancient past of Greece living in the present everywhere we go, from the sea to the mountains, to the city, to his family’s village, and to the abandoned villages. I feel the trance-like ecstasy of the dancers in the village square during their celebrations, and I remember one young Greek soldier who parted the crowd with his amazing solo dance. The other dancers intuitively knew this young man was in a special trance, maybe even sacred, and they gave him space. They formed a circle around him and clapped a steady beat in unison to support him. I had a special view of this moment from the balcony of my in-laws’ home. It was hypnotic, incredibly beautiful, and something I had never experienced before.
During one visit, I sat on the bench in the village square with my husband’s elderly uncle who was holding something close to his heart under his shirt. He said he was holding an egg from one of his hens to help it to incubate. He held that egg with the tenderness of Saint Francis, and it was clear, he would never let it go until the egg hatched. Even though I had grown up on a farm in Illinois where we raised chickens, I had never seen anything like this. My uncle back in Illinois had a machine to incubate eggs. However, to this Greek man, the task of keeping the egg warm was personal and even holy.
On more than one visit to Chios, I have roamed the village streets with my sister-in-law, stopping to light candles at every church and pray, and I felt honored that she would let me into her otherwise very private moments, especially given I still had not managed to learn the Greek language, and all we had between us for our conversations was a pocket-sized Greek-English dictionary. During one of these conversations I mentioned that it seemed women suffer more than men, and she responded, with the help of the dictionary, “All except Jesus.” She tossed me a wry smile, and I understood her meaning that everyone suffers, men and women. Life is full of suffering, and instead of complaining about it, accept it and let it go.
On one of our trips to Chios, we visited monasteries and convents, some that were high up in the mountains. One monastery no longer had any monks residing there, but the villagers kept it alive by holding regular services in its church. A kind gentleman agreed to let us in and take a look around. He showed us the cell where the last monk lived and prayed. We were told he had lived there for 80 years, and every day he spent hours praying at his marble alter where now we could see the deep imprints of his knees. At that time in my life I could not imagine why anyone would choose to live this way, so much time alone in prayer, and so many years after his fellow monks had died. I didn’t even want to imagine the pain he must have endured in his knees when I saw the depth of the imprint he had left behind in the marble. He must have been a man of determined conviction, and I could only hope that he had found some peace and joy from his experience.
In one convent, only women were allowed to visit the nuns, so my sister-in-law brought me there. The nuns quietly went about their daily routine and smiled at us when we passed. They seemed serene and comfortable as they worked. At our request, they showed us some of the icons they were creating. They were modest about their art, and most conversations entailed mostly nodding of heads and smiling as though they were silently blessing us. Their sublime peace was contagious, and when we left them, I continued to feel it for quite some time.
On another day, when monks allowed women to enter their monastery, my husband and I visited Aghios Minas where many monks resided. My husband struck up a conversation with one monk who had been sitting in the courtyard. He gave us a tour and opened a storage closet that held the skulls of the Greeks who had been massacred by the Turks during the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire in April of 1822. These skulls were from the people who had fled to this monastery for refuge, but the Turks discovered them and slaughtered all the men, women and children without mercy. The sight of these skulls was shocking to me, but to the monk and my husband, they were simply evidence of this event in Greek history, and like the honored graves of soldiers in the United States, the skulls of the people who died there were revered and honored in prayer. During the massacre of the people of Chios in 1822, virtually every man, woman and child throughout Chios had been slaughtered. Only a handful of people managed to survive and escape the island to find safety elsewhere. After the Greeks won the war, these survivors returned and rebuilt Chios.
We visited another prominent sight of the Chios massacre, an abandoned village, Anavatos, which had originally been built as a fortress inside a mountain to protect the villagers from pirates. They had been successful at protecting themselves from pirates for many years. However, they were not able to defend themselves against the Ottoman Turks. When the women of Anavatos saw their men defeated, they climbed to the top of the mountain of their fortress with their children, and together they jumped to their death. They knew the Turks would rape and torture them, then kill them or take them for slaves. The women decided they would die on their own terms. Anavatos is a beautiful place, and one can still look into the small homes and sense the quaint and peaceful lifestyle the villagers must have enjoyed before they were attacked. I could almost smell the bread they must have baked in their ovens and see the children playing on the grassy poppy field at the bottom of the fortress. If one did not know the history of the massacre that happened there, the beauty of this place might be all one would see. Yet, even though their lives ended so tragically, I could feel the essence of the lives they had lived. Their energy seemed to still be there. I don’t know how, but I felt the love they had for each other.
My sister-in-law took us to another place where the ancients still seem to be alive—a church built with slabs of marble from several even more ancient temples. These marble slabs still showed reliefs of various pagan gods and goddesses throughout the walls of the church, all the way to the top of the church that had been crowned with a Byzantine dome and a Christian cross. My sister-in-law delighted in showing us this church because it represented nearly all the history of Greece, including the different faiths and philosophies that had been blended and intertwined and evolved into a new way of seeing the divine through the teachings of Christ.
I have often been moved by the Greeks’ pride in their history and their awareness of the influences of different schools of thought and beliefs that, in their minds, do not contradict each other, but instead compliment each other and evolve to further the enlightenment and the spiritual growth and strength of the people. One day, my sister-in-law returned home from a Greek Orthodox funeral she had just attended, bearing a plate of Kolyva, which is boiled wheat with cinnamon, brown sugar, and almonds. She informed me that this Greek Orthodox funeral tradition had once been a pagan ritual that had honored the Goddess of the Earth, Demitra.
Another unforgettable moment that occurred during one of our visits in Chios was a time when we were having dinner at my sister-in-law’s house. It was Mother’s Day, and my husband was having a conversation with his family about the miscarriages I had experienced, one that had happened on Mother’s Day of the last year. All this conversation was in Greek, but my husband translated for me. At the end of it, his father stared intensely at me with is his steel-blue eyes as he tossed his Koboloi beads repeatedly around his hand. Finally, he said, “Have faith.” That was it. Nothing more needed to be said.
The other day, as I was thinking about all these moments I experienced in Greece, I came across the news that September 10 is International Suicide Prevention Day. That triggered my curiosity about the international suicide rates and how they compared to the United States. What I learned did not surprise me. Among the developed nations in the world, the United States has the highest suicide rate, and Greece has the lowest, but what is interesting is that Greece is not experiencing any less stress or trauma than the other nations. In fact, it can be argued that in recent years, Greece has been suffering more than the other nations. For over a decade, the Greeks have been suffering from economic decline and the austerity measures imposed upon them from the EU while simultaneously trying to care for the political refugees from Albania and Syria. The Greeks can barely feed their own families, and now they are enduring the COVID-19 pandemic along with the rest of the world. So why, I asked myself, does Greece have the lowest suicide rate?
In that moment, I had the revelation I had been wanting all my life: resilience! That is the special quality that makes the Greek people unique. Resilience is the heart and soul of Greece. They have mastered all the resilience factors that give them the strength to endure suffering and to hope for a better tomorrow. They do not expect life to be easy. In fact, they assume everyone suffers, and, as Plato and Jesus taught, kindness is the only way to help each other through life’s hardships. By keeping their country’s history alive in their hearts and minds, honoring the lessons from their ancient and current teachers and heroes, and remembering stories about how others have endured, the Greeks find the strength to accept and adapt to all the changes that occur throughout their lives. They know that no matter what challenge they must face, life is still worthwhile as long as they continue to love, forgive, and be generous with their neighbors. As Plato said thousands of years ago, “Please, my friends, be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” To tourists, Greeks may seem like fun-loving people without a care in the world, but the reality is they just know how to suffer, then let it go through faith, love, grand celebrations, and, yes, just like Zorba, dance.
Original photo by Lark Syrris
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