Mount Athos

The church bells brought me back to my cell from another restless dream. I felt the stone walls closed around me and the first gentle rays of early morning sunlight escaping through the colored glass, caressing my fingers. Another day of prayer and worship was starting and I was expected to conform with the procession of silent monks gliding along the halls of the monastery. Their heads hung and long black robes slithering like a snake on the polished floors towards the prayer room.

But my eyes stayed closed and my body was refusing to break from the heaviness of sleep.

It was getting harder and harder for my mind to return from the places I visited in my dreams. Last night I was swimming. Again. Last night I felt my body weightless in the crystal waters, caressed by the waves. I stretched out my arms and legs and floated there in the greatness of the big calm, free and careless. The golden sun glimmered on the surface and I laughed along with the seagulls playing in the wind.

Suddenly I felt a cold grip on my wrists and I was being pulled out of the water, back to the darkness of the monastery's basement, locked up and soon to be punished, for a monk was not allowed to swim in the waters surrounding the mount.

For the first time, 2 months ago, the cracks started to form on the surface of the highly polished religion we practiced here at the now infamous monastery, day in and out. The scandal engulfing our monastery and it's millions had left me untouched. I didn't see it as my place to question what the brothers did to secure the wellbeing of our monastery and the preserving of it's great treasures.

2 months ago my father took ill and I had gone to visit him in Thessaloniki. The day I got there I went for a walk along the beach, I had always loved the sea, ever since I was a child.

I saw her in the water, her arms and legs stretched out floating in the waves, her radiant smile bathed in sunshine. She saw me looking at her, an old bearded monk looking at a beautiful young woman. I felt ashamed but she looked straight at me, like she had known me all her life, recognizing an old friend. That evening she taught me that the cracks on the surface are there to let the light shine through. And so I started to realize that God did not only dwell in the hard work and prayers of the celibate life of a monk, in the broken body tied down by heavy rules and restrictions. God lived in every one of us and God shined on me through her beautiful eyes.

The church bells tolled again and I opened my eyes. 7.30am. I got out of bed and walked across the cold stone floor over to the wash basin. As I poured the water from the jug into the metal bowl I looked at myself in the small mirror.

A long beard with sunken eyes in a thin, tired face. I brushed my hand over my eyes, my hands feeling the deep lines left there by time that now instead of a gift felt like a tyrant within these monastery walls. In the distance I could hear the waves rushing to the shore, roaring their greatness over the cries of the seagulls, soothing my mind. And I remembered a letter she had given to me when I had left to come back to the monastery.

“I can see you so clearly. Your eyes, always your eyes. Looking straight through me. Your face that is tired. I want to take your face into my hands and caress your weathered cheeks, kiss your wrinkles. You understand me, understand everything I say and everything you say is like an affirmation of what I think. You are so close to me, close to my soul. But in life, in this "real" life we can never really have each other. I wish I could caress your face now, look into your eyes and banish all the chains around you. I want to make you free...”

I took the scissors and started to cut off my long beard. I felt like a fraud hiding behind it living in this cordoned off world where no women were allowed, not even a female animal, except the cat.

She had broken the walls and I was no longer able to hold back the light that was pouring through.

The bat hunt

There stood the old train station. A big and grey building with, what seemed to me, millions of people rustling in and out of the great stone walls. My mother was holding me by my one hand and my little bag was dangling from the other. I had my ticket in my pocket and my heart full of anticipation.

My mother was dropping me off at the train station and my father was picking me up to take me to the countryside. They did the exchange almost every weekend, and I never really noticed that they hardly spoke to each other.

I loved going on the train. I loved looking at the wold whizzing past me from the big windows. Houses and people, roads and cars would turn into trees and rivers, fields and gardens. And after I had counted 11 stops, it was time to get off. My father took me by my hand and we walked the old bridge across the river and entered the trees. I was excited and skipping along because tonight we were going to catch bats by the river.

My father's house was old and a bit tired but full of life around it. Big trees turning into a forest at the end of the road and a river running past the house just 17 steps away, I had counted. Bim the old wolf dog and Snowflake the fat cat were sunning themselves in the garden as usual. Bim jumped up and ran towards me knocking me over with his affection, Snowflake dangling around my ankles. For me that was freedom, being in nature, having animals around me and no buildings obstructing my sight to stop my thoughts. There I swung from the trees, swam in the cold river, ate berries from the forest and was one with nature, wild.

The preparation for the bat hunt was simple, an afternoon nap and a big white sheet. Warm clothes for the chilly end of summer night and some tea in the thermostat that my father and I would drink while we waited. We went down to the river where the old silver willow had stood for hundreds of years, inside it a hollow nest for the bats to keep warm. My father spread out the white sheet and we sat down to wait. I cherished those moments there in the stillness of the night. The river crawled past us singing the fish to sleep while the stars got stuck in the darkness of the water. I would wonder about the world inside the water, how different it was to our world on land. Different animals, a different kingdom where us, humans, did not rule. We were just allowed to visit until our lungs needed another gush of air.

I would ask my father endless questions and he always knew the answers, he knew so much about nature, not so much about the nature of humans. And then, a bat would land on the white sheet. Quietly my father and I would crawl closer, take one end of the sheet and close it on the bat. Just for a moment we caught him. Just for a moment we laughed with joy and victory and then we opened the sheet and let the creature take off into the night to be free and wild again.