Temenos: The United Nations of Finikounda

We live in a mountain village about 3 kilometers above Finikounda, the main village in this area, which is "the place" to go in the evening--a town of about 300 souls (many more in the summer), it hosts over 20 tavernas, restaurants, outdoor cafeneions, bars, and the like.

Our poet-friend Niko refers to the United Nations of Finikounda, which is right on the mark. Just about every European nationality is represented in town—add to that the Moroccan sculptor up the road from us; a mysterious Afghan in a walled compound on the way to Kamaria; and the Russian oligarch over the mountain on the sharp bend heading to Koroni. A few years ago, the latter hosted a wedding for his daughter (who he flew to Paris in a private jet for a million-dollar, pre-wedding shopping juncket), and his guest of honor, Vladimir Putin, who arrived by helicopter. On that particular weekend, two men with sub-machine guns stood alert outside his iron gate, grim-faced and leather-clad.

All of which puts our little fence and aluminum gate in stark perspective.

A few nights ago, Nia and I joined her Czech friends, a couple of Greek boys, a German woman, and a French couple for drinks in the village.

The skies opened at midnight with a fierce wind-driven rain, which kept us under the canopy for another hour. Now we know that autumn is in the air, but the inclement weather was short-lived. It was sunny, dry, and 88 degrees at noon the next day, a perfect beach day with rarified air.

Of Nuns and Men

We set off early on Saturday for the town of Koroni, on the Messinian Gulf. The remnants of Venetian occupation in the late Middle Ages are everyway—lovely stone archways, narrow cobbled streets, the remnants of Catholicism in the Orthodox churches. High above the town, within the walls of the old Venetian castle, sits the nunnery of the Holy Virgin.

In the eyes of the official Orthodox Church, the nuns and the monastery are “heretics” because they are παλαιοπετρολογίτης/palaiometroloyitis or Old Calendarist (that is, they follow the pre-Julian calendar), as does the Russian Orthodox church. (This is why the Russians celebrate Christmas on January 6th, which they consider the “right” date).

Do not touch those rails!

She will have none of it

Room with a view

Although times have changed—they are no longer raided, the nuns heads shaved, the priests beards cut in retribution—they are still considered outcasts. Few of the faithful visit this monastery. We love this place.

During the German occupation (1941-1945) the nuns single-handedly kept the village from starving. German troops would regularly stole crops, sheep, and fruit to feed its vast army, leaving the locals to die. Small markers everywhere indicate places of atrocity, execution, and torture. Yesterday we passed a marker for a country doctor who was executed by the Nazi SS on that very spot in 1944 for the crime of doctoring local villagers.

The nuns, in a brazen act of courage and at great peril, baked bread in the bowels of the castle at night. They would walk the streets of Koroni late in the evening, with loafs of bread stuffed under their habits, tossing life-giving nourishment over the courtyard walls of houses, particularly those with children and the elderly. They risked their lives to save members of the same community that harassed and harangued them for their “deviation” from mainstream Orthodoxy. The truth is, the only difference between the Old Calendarists and the New Calendarists is...the calendar. All of the other rituals, liturgies, and saints remain the same.

The abbess, who we have come to know over the years, is a remarkable woman with a saintly glow. She welcomed us into compound, urged us to wander about. An elderly woman, she told us that as a young girl, after school, who mother would drop her off to help the nuns. She became a nun at age 16 and has been there ever since.

We entered the chapel, whose most famous relic is the skull of the founding monk, which sits like a shriveled grapefruit inside a simple wooden box near the iconostasis. The faithful kiss the skull and ask the Lord for His blessing. We opted to light a candle.

At the rear of the compound is the old Ottoman powder tower, a steep obelisk that towers over the monastery and offers a tremendous 360-degree view of the Messinia Gulf to the east and the Ionion Sea to the west. A sign advises that the climb is extremely dangerous, which is no understatement. I warned Nia, in a statment of counterintuivity, not to touch the iron handrails while ascending, as they are anchored in fragile, collapsing cement.

When we first visited the monastery in 2009, a visiting monk who offered us a nickel tour told us that the brethren who disobeyed the abbot were cast off the top onto the rocks below. He was joking, but he wasn’t joking. That was my sense.

But this is a nunnery, no monks live here. Rather, there are five nuns, all in their 80s and 90s. The monks visit from their own Old Calendarist monastery in Kalamata—men in their 20s and 30s—once a month to help the nuns cope with the gardening and to perform the Liturgy once a month on Sundays. There is something very sweet and endearing about this relationship, men and women, young and old. On the simplistic face of it, it is partriarchal relations, but this would be a simplistic argument. The truth is more complex. There a deep love and mutual care at work.

Another story: the nuns' quarters are behind doors that are no more than three feet tall. When Lucia, then 12, asked the nuns why the doors were so short, I offered the explanation in translation. If your saintly mind wanders toward the non-spiritual realm, you will surely bonk your head when entering your chamber. This will serve as a reminder that your thoughts must remain pure. Three cheers for purity.

I bonk my head all the time and it has done so little to reform my heathen ways.

The Tragedy of the Wildfires

Last month, Greece endured an extended heat wave, with temperatures hovering at around 112 to 115 Fahrenheit for more than ten days. The inevitable occurred—a massive wildfire beset much of Greece, with the once-pine-clad island of Evia (north of Athens) suffering the worst of all. Over one million acres of pristine pine forest were consumed in its entirety. And with it a way of life that extended back to antiquity, supporting dozens of villages and ancillary enterprises. The villagers collect the pine resin, which of the highest quality, and is used for a variety of high-end activities. There are small factories that process the resin, horses that are used to collect it, blacksmiths who shoe the horses, farmers who grow grain for the horses. And on and on. All lost forever. A way of life has now ceased after 2000 years.

But the fires were not limited to Evia, they occured throughout mainland Greece and on the islands. Here in southern Messinia, in the Peloponnese, the worst of the fires were centered near the village of Vasilitsi, through which Nia and I drove this morning, on the way to Koroni. The devastation was heartbreaking, entire olives groves (thousands of trees) obliterated, 18 homes lost, many more severely damaged. It is a scarred landscape of epic proportions. And only 6 kilometers from our little house.

Food, beach run, haircut

Nia would like to share some of our food adventures--in pictures. But she eats with vigor before I can get my camera out!