Mikes Blog

Meteora and on to Delphi
Monday 7th May

What a place! These most wondrous great rock faces and towers. There have been 17 of these monasteries built on rock pinnacles over the centuries - the first byAthanasios in AD1382. Two ideas that are suggested for getting initial access to the top of a pinnacle are:
1. Use a kite to take a light line across the pinnacle and down the other side and use this to draw a heavier rope and then rope ladders up the pinnacle.
2. Use wooden wedges inserted into gaps in the rock to suspend ladders from the face and work upwards using these.
We visited two monasteries. In the second a young nun - maybe 20 - explained much of the meaning of the iconography in the inner church. Stories of Christ returning again, on judgement day to judge us for our sins, with the help of the Apostles. God will judge us differently to how humans judge things. There is a picture of scales with a good side and a bad side - where our lives are weighed. And on these scales, even though there is less on good side than the sinful, the good is heavier and hangs lower. There is hope!

We drive south again, back towards Athens but later we will branch off to the west. We hear there is an underground pipe line all the way from Russia to Athens carrying gas or oil. We see a place where there is a covering over the pipe where it is near the surface because the ground is too rocky to lay a deeper trench. We are driving through the Parnassus Mountains. They rise to about 2200 metres. They have lots of snow in winter and a ski resort. We see some left over winter snow high on the hills in the west.
All the art work in the church summarises the beliefs of the nuns. Do they take this all completely literally? That we will be judged according to the words of Jesus in the Bible? There are icons of Jesus, Mary, the Apostles - ambassadors between us and God. I can understand the need for that.
And as we climb up to these small, rock bound, communities of Chapels and dinning halls and sleeping quarters - we climb up steps now hued into the rock faces. But in earlier times, people climbed these rocky faces with flimsy ladders and unreliable ropes, hundreds of metres.
As we drove away to Delphi, we see rock climbers belaying up one of the many semi vertical towers, 6 to 8 rope lengths = about 350 metres of climb. "A dangerous sport" someone on our bus says. A lot safer than the lives of those early monks.

We arrive at Delphi (about 630 metres), a little town on a steep hillside with a a view down to the Aegean Sea. Big rocky hills rise to well over 1000 metes close behind and across the valley. Much of the valley below is planted in olive trees - there are about 100 million olive trees in Greece.

The bus drives through town and past our hotel and out the other side for a kilometre or so to give us a little orientation. . It then turns around to return to the hotel but first Zita, I and one other get off to walk back. First we drop down below the road and visit the temple of Athene. On the way down we pass an engraved metal plaque which I find deeply moving:

"The archaeological site of Delphi including the sanctuary and the natural landscape from Arachava to Itea and Amphissa has joined the list of protected world heritage sites. This designation confirms the universal significance of the architectural and natural assets of Delphi for the cultural evolution of mankind.
Unesco Convention
December 1987"

We climb up a little and pass through a gymnasium area used by the ancient Greeks for training for the 4 yearly games competitions. We cross the road and find the spring where visitors to Delphi would always bathe before entering the Sanctuary. A small splash of this water on forehead and neck us our symbolic sanctification.

We walk on to the museum. Very modern, beautifully layed out and presented. The sculptures and art is special. I love the relief of ?? and ?? arguing about ??. I feel that if the gods can argue, maybe I don't need to feel so bad about arguments I have with Zita, or conflict in general. (I often feel guilt about conflict I am involved in).

We walk back to town. I find a good book on Greek mythology which I will read. I am reminded of a comment - by author Robert Bly I think - that all those gods of the ancient world we in the 20th cenrury have internalised. But they are still parts of us and our humanity. Maybe the ancient Greeks enjoyed a clarity that we miss.