Mount Athos astonishment

A long time ago, when I was being confirmed in the Episcopal Church, my stepmother lent me a book which I never read. It was about a trip to the Mount Athos peninsula in northern Greece, a place of many monasteries.

Mount Athos, the easternmost finger of land in the "Chalcidice" or "Chalcidian Peninsula."

I don't know what pushed me away from the book-- perhaps that at 22 I didn't want to hear about the monastic life-- but I kept it with me. Every moving of domicile, I put it into a box and then took it out again and put it on my bookshelf, and never read it.

Then last week, with nothing pressing to read and Holy Week fast approaching, I gave it a try. It is Mount Athos, by Gerhart Kaestner, a book translated from the German in 1961. Kaestner was in the Nazi army in Greece during World War II, and he was also a prisoner of war, though he does not dwell on these details.

What he does dwell on is this magic peninsula, about which I had no idea. Apparently it is a kind of nation unto itself, an area much bigger than the Vatican City but sovereign and holy to the Greek Orthodox Church the way that the Vatican is to the Roman Catholic Church.

"Constantinopole is our head," a Greek says in the book, "but Athos is our heart."

Kaestner writes with great sensitivity about his travels within the Athos peninsula. It is a mountainous place with cliffs and overhangs and impossible views of the Mediterranean. I lost count of the ways Kaestner described the water. It has thousand-year-old monasteries, and cliffs and huts where solitary monks live. The monks tend terraced gardens, and there are orange and lemon trees.

Then here's the big thing: women are not allowed on the peninsula. The Greek Church is very traditional about a lot of things, including doing services in Greek, but also in not having women priests.

Photo courtesy Bulldozer. Thanks, Bulldozer!

In these days of automatic, expected equality in all things, it was astonishing to read Kaestner's justification of no women on Athos (which he knew would be controversial, even then). It is too long to quote fully, but the upshot is that women represent

the world of the Mother Divinity, of the matriarch, of the home-maker and of the womb in constant travail; the joyful bringing of life into the world and then supporting it; darkness and love-making; hearth and home...Eternal recurrence."

While Jesus emphasized that the world is not man's home, but just a brief sojourn. So the monks don't let women in in order to remind themselves that the world is temporary.

Wow.

The book is chock-full of thoughts and conversations and detailed observations that make one think deeply, whether one agrees or not. It is very serious, somewhat humorous sometimes, but always strong, like strong coffee.

Intrigued, I browsed around the Internet for more on Mount Athos, and I came upon the website memoir of a Greek-American whose life had been spent with wine, women, and song. He also went to Mount Athos to see a cousin who had become a monk, and his experience was much different.

After walking for an hour we came upon a small cluster of houses and decided to ask directions. We picked the friendliest looking house and I knocked on the door. We were met by a very old monk with a long white beard who beckoned us in and sat us at a small table. As we discovered for the first of many times that day, it is customary to greet all visitors with a large glass of clear mountain water and a small glass of even more clear "Tsipuro", which is like Ouzo without the licorice, only a lot stronger. Monks don't get visitors very often, in fact that's sort of the point of being a monk, and this is especially true of those living in the houses scattered around the wilderness, away from the monasteries. However, when they are blessed with a guest, especially from the outside world, they want to know everything and they want to keep you there as long as it takes to hear it and that is where the Tsipuro comes in. By the time we left the little house, we were staggering through the woods and the directions he gave us might as well have been in Turkish.

His attitude towards the all-men situation?

But there was very little seriousness up there on the holy mountain those two days and nights. There we were, four guys, two of them monks, having a great time, drinking wine. Eating spaghetti with cheese and french fried potatoes. And at no time did I ever think, "Golly this is great but I wish there were some women around." Mount Athos is the most elite boys club in the world.

At the end of his journey the author has clearly been moved, but not enough to take the plunge into the monastic life:

Mount Athos was great and the after-life is probably pretty good too. But I'll take my heaven now.

Which is to say that I sure would like to go to Mount Athos and form my own opinion.

Comments

[Iulia]

What a wonderful post! I though immediately of "Report to Greco" (Kazantzakis)-- Have you read it?
I think I've made a couple of successful recommendations in the past ("To the Lighthouse," possibly?), so I'll go out on a limb and say you *should* read "Report to Greco," too.

[DF]

Yes, To The Lighthouse was a terrific suggestion. I will see about Report to Greco. I have never heard of it.