From Athens

Sitting in the Athens airport, waiting for my flight to Berlin that’s been delayed. I’ve spent the last week in Greece (Nafplio, Delphi, Athens—in that order), seen dozens of Byzantine churches and kissed even more icons. If I had stayed here for a year it would change me for life, I’m quite sure.

I’ve been struck with a surprised sense of relief from being in an Orthodox country where the faith doesn’t have that anxious quality which it did in the United States. The earthiness of Orthodox faith and practice is tangible here, especially in the jam-packed church of Agioi Isidoroi. Fr. Paul (a frequent commenter here and my host in Athens) and I attended Hierarchical Vespers there after a semi-arduous hike up the hill on which was the small cave-church. As I watched people mill about kissing icons and lighting candles by the bunches—well-dressed old ladies and sloppily-clothed teenagers—, as I squeezed my way through the frenzied crowd for blessed bread, as I rubbed my myrrh-doused hands onto my face, it occurred to me that Orthodoxy here is something like an old, lived-in Malaysian house—warm, homey and poorly-lit rather than bright, tidy and sanitized.

I think Germany will be, let’s say, “different”.