Temenos: Temenos 2019--Ten Years After

February 2009--the Palaiokastro near Pylos

Ten years ago, in February 2009, Ann and I packed up our three kids—then ages 13, 11, and 7—and moved to a small fishing village on the coast of southwestern Greece for a long-planned sabbatical. Our family blog, called “Temenos: A Family Journal,” was born. Readers can scroll back to that first trip for a better understanding of the genesis of our ongoing Hellenic adventure.

“Temenos” is an ancient Greek word, variously translated as “temple,” “shrine,” or “sanctuary.” For us, temenos is more than a word, it is part of a family dynamic. We take our sanctuary—that is, our family—wherever it will go. Its strength, joy, love, and persistence never fail us.

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Although our long-planned Grecian residence was cut slightly short, owing to an ill family member back in the States, our five-month residence in southern Messenia—on the rural, agricultural southwestern tip of the Peloponnese—was fulfilling, exciting, cathartic, and magical. In every way imaginable.

In the course of the ten years since, all or some of us have returned to this special place nearly every year. The adventure became ongoing with the purchase and major renovation of a small, traditional house in a mountain village in the vicinity of Finikounda, our first home.

Amid the olive groves and vineyards, we keep a watchful eye on the expanse of Homer’s wine-dark sea below, lost in our daydreams, and grateful for our good fortune and the many friends we have met along the way.