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| Bishop Van Kleef in the gazebo |
The gazebo itself was a charmless concrete cube erected to one side of the cobblestone plaza outside Iviron's main entrance. I suspected it was built -- all too hastily and cheaply -- to welcome dignitaries to Iviron during Mount Athos's millenium celebration in 1963. It clearly hadn't been re-painted since. Standard elements of Byzantine architecture were incorporated: a square plan, round arches, a circular drum supporting a shallow dome. But the combination, a kind of Bauhaus Byzantine, was hideous.
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| Iviron's main entrance |
Beyond these two particular disappointments, Iviron was generally sad and tumbledown. With few exceptions, masonry badly needed repointing. Most wooden elements, lacking paint for years, had weathered to a rheumy gray. Iviron was simply too big for twenty-five aging monks to keep in good repair.
* * *
I shifted my attention to the sea. Two hundred yards away it lapped placidly at the arsanas bulkhead. This boded well for accomplishing the day's objective: hitching a ride southward on the afternoon caïque to the peninsula's tip and the monastery of the Great Lavra (Megisti Lavra).
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| Megisti Lavra |
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| Cover of the Great Lavra's "Phokas Lectionary" (10th cent.) (from a Greek postage stamp commemorating the Holy Mountain's millenium) |
I could have walked there from Iviron, but it would have taken eight hours: two hours to the monastery of Karakallou ("Of Caracalla") and six more to the Great Lavra. Physically I could have done it. I'd have to carry sufficient food and water to keep me going, of course, but that wasn't the problem. The problem was actually getting there in eight hours before the gates were locked for the night. I had a map, but I couldn't be certain how accurately it marked the paths. Signage on the Holy Mountain ranged from poor to none. I'd be completely alone much of the way (if not for all of it), so I couldn't count on local guidance. One wrong turn and I'd be sleeping rough overnight. And I didn't have enough days left on my diamonitirion to break the journey into two stages with an overnight at Karakallou. It would have to be the caïque or nothing.
* * *
But even the caïque option was fading. By lunchtime, oily clouds driven by a freshening breeze were sliding over the mountain behind Iviron. They portended rough seas, in which case the caïque wouldn't sail.
But the moment of truth was still several hours away, so after lunch (onion soup with lima beans) I decided on a walk. Turning left from the main entrance I followed a stone-paved footpath that ascended gently uphill. It first passed alongside a wooded valley, then through a small olive grove and past an immaculate kathisma with its own chapel, the occupant nowhere to be seen. In many places, the path was bordered by a low stone wall. Farther on I came to the remains of a fountain, then crossed a small ravine by means of a charming stone bridge. Beyond, the path continued through dense green forest. Here, despite the mid-day heat, all was shady and cool. At my feet, fluffy moss grew between the paving stones.
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| The Garden of the Virgin |
* * *
On turning back, I encountered a bearded fellow visitor, a Greek university student studying physics. As one does when meeting a stranger on the Holy Mountain, we fell into conversation that occupied us the entire distance back to the monastery.
Greek curiosity about the stranger is a quality well known since antiquity, and this fellow fully lived up to his heritage. He seemed to know practically nothing of America and was particularly intrigued to meet a native. His probing began with benign generalities about the U.S. but quickly penetrated to the personal: "Do you believe in Christ?" "Are you Orthodox?" Had it not been for where we were, such questions coming from a total stranger within a few minutes of first meeting would have been terribly rude. But on the Holy Mountain, discussions of spirituality and religion were not at all unusual, and I answered affirmatively.
He then asked about my occupation, and here my answer baffled him: "How can you believe in Christ and also be a lawyer?" Trying not to laugh I assured him there were many Christian lawyers in the United States. But that didn't square with his idea of Christianity. "They must be Catholics," he huffed.
* * *
Grateful to part company with him on reaching Iviron, my attention was caught by a liturgy just wrapping up in the Portaïtissa chapel near the main entrance. Its conclusion gave me another chance to examine the icon's painted surfaces. They were hard to make out, however. Not only were they dark, but they were also recessed some two to three inches beneath layers of embossed gold leaf, which were themselves behind glass. On the Virgin's throat, I could vaguely discern a mark the size and shape of a keyhole where Barbaros supposedly delivered his life-changing blow. The monks take this mark to be a scab. To me it looked like a knot in the wood.
Much less ambiguous were the two strands of votive coins strung across the lower part of the icon, one consisting entirely of gold pieces, the other of silver with several U.S. dollars among them. At the bottom of the case, a heap of watches evidenced still more devotions.
* * *
After gathering my things I walked down to the landing. The bus from Karyes came and went, but no 4:00 caïque to the Great Lavra. I'd have to spend yet another night at Iviron.
Walking back up to the entrance I fell into conversation with two students who'd arrived on the bus. Koichi was studying tax law at Kyoto University. Albrecht was on the verge of obtaining a Master's degree in biochemistry from Tübingen University. He'd been attending a conference on photosynthesis in Kassandra and had left his girlfriend behind in Ouranoupolis so he could spend a few days on Mount Athos.
After dinner (the same tomato-rice soup as the day before), Brother Kosmas showed the three of us to a room for the night. As we were settling in, he introduced a young Greek priest traveling with two longtime friends, Manolis and Takis. The three of them had met Koichi and Albrecht on the boat from Ouranoupolis and now wanted to say hello. I didn't get the priest's name, but he could have been my cousin Nick Christopher's twin brother, both in appearance and irreverent humor.
Someone produced a bottle of ouzo, and for the next couple of hours the conversation caromed around from off-color stories to incidents of travel in Greece to philosophical musings. At one point Koichi asked the priest why Christianity has Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox denominations when there is a single Bible. "Different people read the Bible differently" was the priest's œcumenical answer.
At the time, my feelings about the Greek clergy were shaped by a bigoted bishop whose preaching I'd recently encountered at New York's Holy Trinity Cathedral. "There is only one baptism," he thundered. "Orthodox baptism! And don't let the Catholics or the Protestants tell you otherwise."
After that travesty, it was refreshing to hear this open-minded young priest. I pressed him some more: "If there's only one God, why are there so many different faiths?" His answer gave me hope for the decency of a younger priesthood: "Because different people believe differently."
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