I began to love going to my new job at Flemington Markets (1994)

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“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” (Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein)

“Be on the watch. The gods will offer you chances. Know them. Take them.” (Charles Bukowski, The Laughing Heart)

 

https://www.weekendnotes.com/free-parking-paddys-market-sydney/

It took some weeks getting used to replacing my freshly pressed black cassocks for the loose-fitting cleaning overalls, but I began to love going to my new job at Flemington Markets, popularly known as Paddy’s Markets.[1] It was a season of peace compared to the rancorous world I had recently removed myself from, and at the same time it was a new type of learning. Raymond Carver says it well in Cathedral, his astounding short story on ‘inner vision’: “I’m always learning something. Learning never ends.”[2] I was hired as a cleaner: toilets, floors, potato conveyers, fruit crates, large vats, giant coleslaw mixers, windows, walls, and more. My balletic moves around [and on] the vegetable sorting machines had to be seen! I was also proud of my new ‘vestments’: a pair of weatherproof boots, gloves, the teal overalls, and a yellow raincoat with a hood. The hours as well, they suited a night owl like me. Work started eleven at night and I would clock off the following morning around seven, it was not full-time so I had rest days in between. There were many things I enjoyed during those months that I was able to stay at Paddy’s before I left to focus on the first of my dissertations on the Apocalypse of John, the one dealing with the infamous “number of the beast” (666).[3] Each night I looked forward to greeting my new ‘con-celebrants’: the Asians who would cut and prepare the salads; the sunburnt farmers; the animated stall owners; the testy truck drivers; and the pest-control fellow with the silver earrings, who would also moonlight as a Reiki Master.

 The coffee-breaks were history classes in themselves, ‘evidenced-based’ as I would later call them. I heard many stories of divers kind in that smoke-filled kitchenette from these well-weathered men who had seen much. Some would show genuine interest in the books I would bring along with me. Tough but honest folk, with a beamish quality about them. They reminded me of the abattoir workers I used to help load the meat trucks in the early hours of the morning, to add to my allowance when I was a theology student in Thessaloniki. These burly fellows who would drink cold ouzo throughout their shift from their secreted hip flasks to then hurl verbal [but ‘friendly’] abuse at each other, were also not lacking in the stories department. I felt troubled some days, perhaps even guilty, for I would think there was more real understanding of the mystery of God in the lives and in the raw dignity of these men and women, than I had discovered among members of the clergy. Of course, I knew then as I do now, there are priests who move about us marked by the grace of Pentecost. I would read whenever I could steal a few minutes during the morning breaks or in between my scheduled jobs. The Philokalia[4] and the Art of Prayer,[5] were invariably within my reach. Yet again, I would be taught that wonderful and encouraging lesson often heard on Mount Athos: “It is not the place, but the Way.” For are not the rainbow and the moonbow both dependent on the reflection and refraction of light? I might have been without a pulpit, but still I would soliloquize on these and other things.

Other times it might be as simple as the positive energy good spirits release into the air. The felicity between humans who appreciate the history which the ‘other’ brings into the room. Is it something similar to ‘sonder’? Given my earlier life growing up at our café, and the years I spent as a little boy living and breathing in the atmosphere of this great old ‘ark’ of the human condition, this was not unexplored territory. Later I would largely draw from all of these experiences when I first began to experiment with the micro-story format. I look back over more than twenty-five years[6] later when I first put on the cassock and I realize it is with these ‘straight-talking’ people, at places like Paddy’s markets and King Street, Newtown, where I am most happy and comfortable. I would have stayed at Flemington for much longer if not for my pride: “this perpetual nagging temptation” as C. S. Lewis referred to it. I knew, too, that I had ‘unfinished business’, to paraphrase Martin Heidegger. I also learnt more on friendship. And this I must admit, did in some good measure frighten me. For I was, for the better part, almost entirely left alone. This awareness would haunt me for years to come and it was not a good thing. It was like coming to the sudden realisation that as much as you might love the world, you will never get to experience all of it.


He then secretly blessed them through the soap suds and the potato crates

https://unsplash.com/photos/EroYdeZY71I

The young priest Grigori G. Popov was now unemployed. It seemed that there were “two” Gospels. They should have informed him of this during orientation week, he thought, or at the very least, made a note of it in the course handbook. He made the hard decision to stick with the older version. Unemployed priests who opted to receive the “older version” would find some few hours of work at Flemington Markets. Grigori G. Popov chose the late night cleaning shift; he would put on his yellow uniform and waterproof overshoes with pride and honour. He remembered the “putting on of the vestment prayers” when he would prepare for the Divine Liturgy, and these he would now recite once more… I will enter Thy House, and in Thy fear, I will worship toward Thy Holy Temple. Though no one knew he was once a priest, they would instinctively call him “Father” and he would rejoice, Lord, how he would rejoice. He then secretly blessed them through the soap suds and the potato crates.[7]

[1] https://paddysmarkets.com.au/history/

[2] https://www-s3-live.kent.edu/s3fs-root/s3fs-public/file/2f%20Stein.pdf

[3] https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1679&context=infopapers

[4] https://orthodoxwiki.org/Philokalia

[5] https://www.amazon.com.au/Art-Prayer-Timothy-Ware/dp/0571191657

[6] As I now write it is closer to 35 years from that Sunday morning of the 25th of January, 1987, when I was admitted into the priestly ranks of the Eastern Orthodox Church, ordained by the then primate of the Greek Orthodox Church of Australia, His Eminence Archbishop Stylianos. The ordination took place on the Feast Day of Saint Gregory Nazianzus.

[7] This micro-story was originally published in Southerly (70)1, 2010. It belongs to the longer collection titled: “Short Stories off the Wing”. Here I have made some few changes but the essence of the story remains the same. It is a good example of how my little stories are inspired by real events [or biographies] or at other times by an observation in real time which might manifest onto another landscape.

The world at this moment is looking towards Europe with a broken heart

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But Jesus said to him, “Put your sword in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.” (Matt. 26:52)

“Hullo, my relatives.” (Native American greeting)

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.” (Letter to Everett “Swede” Hazlett, July 22,1957, Dwight D. Eisenhower)

“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.” (Once There Was A War, 1958, John Steinbeck)

“The cocks don’t crow to wake the morning, [t]here’s not as yet a sound of man, [t]he owls in glades call out their warnings, [a]nd ash trees creak and creak again." (Taras Shevchenko)

 

The world at this moment is looking towards Europe with a broken heart, and those among us, that are compelled to prayer, send supplications to the Creator that a benevolent intercession may quickly put an end to this war which has broken out in the Ukraine. May it be the brave Ukrainian people survive and endure best they can and that the Russian political leaders come swiftly to their right senses. Howard Zinn, the American World War II veteran, philosopher and historian, expressed the awfulness of war with powerful comprehension as to its ultimate cost: “[t]here is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” We are all members of humanity, “consideration of others” and  “philanthropy”,[1] the defining characteristic of this universal body of ‘blood-beat’. And unpalatable as this might sometimes seem to us, that we are ‘tied to the hip’ regardless of our nationalistic or eschatological predispositions, this world is all we have. Our one and only opportunity to live out the meaningfulness of “compassion”, that is, to suffer together with our neighbour. To make our life, and the lives of those around us, the best they could possibly be. All else, however spectacular or mesmerizing it might very well be, like flying rockets to Mars and the like, is at best but a welcome bonus. At worst little more than a distraction, a bug about the ears, to the plaintive cries of all those who are needlessly maimed and killed in theatres of ruinous conflict across the world. The only real winner is the military-industrial complex and the defence industries which drive it. As Metropolitan Anthony Bloom has said: “[t]here is no idol that doesn’t claim blood.” [2] The sad truth that throughout the history of the human race, it has been much easier to find the devil in ourselves, and even easier still to point him out in others, than to genuinely seek after the Creator, or the ‘Form of the Good’, in our own hearts. And, yet, I must confess, there are hours when it could be hard to know the difference, like discerning what stands behind the shadow of a shape caught between the rays of light and the cold ground.

                          

[1] https://www.etymonline.com/word/humanity

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l2OtD5OkHHo

During ‘the hours’

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“Theologians may quarrel, but the mystics of the world speak the same language.” (Meister Eckhart)

 

https://flushinghospital.org/newsletter/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/ThinkstockPhotos-469850273.jpg

The light drops off their lips like thick honey

From the mouths of bees, and their large eyes

Are like those of the great horned owl.

I listen. I look. During ‘the hours’.

Their words make a knot in the middle of my throat.

Discerning glances burn an amethyst in my heart.

‘In the desert a city’ they say, cells like beehives

On the sides of mountains drenched in starlight

This is to have understood something of electricity

When it is revealed as a flash of white lightning.

Like life itself which brings everything.

  

MGM, (Gerringong, Jan.24th, 2022)

The Mysterious Little Christmas Tree

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Kiama-Gerringong, NSW

For you beautiful heart whoever you might be

“Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.” (Heb. 13:2)

“Everything in this world has a hidden meaning.” (Nikos Kazantzakis)

“There are millions of homeless people in the world because humanity does not have a proper conscience.” (Mehmet Murat ildan)

“Sometimes it's easy to walk by because we know we can't change someone's whole life in a single afternoon. But what we fail to realize it that simple kindness can go a long way toward encouraging someone who is stuck in a desolate place.” (Mike Yankoski)

There are moments in our lives that have a deeply moving effect on us. They manifest a change in us. We normally remember these moments for the remainder of our lives. They can be sad experiences brought about by some devastating event or they can be joyful happenings which we might normally recollect as anniversaries through the passing of the years. Then there are  those “moments” which can leave us spellbound and spine-tingling with awe. Think back, if you will, to some of those occasions. Perhaps it was at the Louvre in Paris when you first came ‘face-to-face’ with Leonardo da Vinci’s famous ‘Mona Lisa’. Or maybe it was that time in London’s National Gallery when you saw Rembrandt’s ‘Belshazzar’s Feast’. Something inside of you is viscerally shifted, your response to such artistic human endeavours touches you to the core. And what of such places which have been flamed by the divine: the Temple Mount; the Church of the Holy Sepulchre; the Blue Mosque; the Bodh Gaya. So then it can become too easy [or habitual] to dismiss those occasions which might fill us with a different sort of awe, and to oftentimes pass them over thinking, yes, quite lovely, but way too mundane.

Source: https://www.kiama.nsw.gov.au/Council/Projects/Hindmarsh-Park-upgrade

Today, on my early morning walk down by Kiama’s scenic harbour in the company of one excitable Mishka, the canine member of our family, we came across a profoundly moving sight. In a rarely used bus shelter on the lower end of Hindmarsh Park,[1] what I saw brought me to tears and what is more, touched me no less than those times when I stood in awe before the sublime artistry of our great masters. What did we see? In the shelter were two suitcases and a blue trolley with an umbrella strapped to its side. Through one of the side glass panels my eye caught a shimmering object on the bench. It was a small plastic silver star. It was placed there with a purpose as the surrounding evidence would show. Below the star itself, was a colourful [but broken] toy windmill. Little pieces of twig were arranged strategically around the windmill’s wooden blades. Attached to the twigs were a variety of shells as ornaments. All this industry was laid out on the top half of the bench. Clearly, this was a Christmas tree. I wondered which sensitive heart was behind such an honest creation. What might have been this person’s story? My eyes welled up as other parables of a similar sort came to me. I thought of the symbolism of what I had just seen and of the significance of such an act by someone who had obviously lost a lot somewhere along the way. I reflected on my comfortable life and my home which lacks nothing. And maybe once or twice before I had felt such raw and brutal proximity to that origin myth and of the implications of the exile from Paradise [if you still believe in such things].[2] There is much I would have liked to have said to this ‘angel’. To have embraced them and for my tears to have spoken to their heart when my words would only have meant something if I was to hold them back anchored to my tongue. I was defeated by the untold grace of this unexpected encounter. This work of angelic inspiration poured from the purest gratitude is reminiscent of the “widow’s offering” who gave all she had from her poverty (Mark 12:41-44). And no less magnificent in its intent than the breathtaking creations we come across in the great museums of the world.  I was dwarfed by this humble little Christmas tree. And religion, at least of the rubric kind, had little to do with it. It was the ‘tremendous mystery’ of the hour.

Postscript

The next day, on the afternoon of the 14th, Mishka and I were again out walking down at the harbour, which on our return will take us back past Hindmarsh Park. As we approached the bus shelter which the day before with its mysterious little Christmas tree, had opened up that flood of emotions in my heart, I could see something circular, like a bright large orange ball. Now, I wondered, what could that be? The closer Mishka and I got to the bus shelter, the one which housed this mysterious little Christmas tree, it became clearer that the bright large orange ball was in fact a small furry head. I once again peered through the glass window. It was a teddy bear! I smiled. It was perched on the window’s ledge watching over the Christmas tree with its hands outstretched as if in the orans position, like a ‘platytera’ on a half-dome. At the same time its eyes, which were still intact despite the unmissable signs of age on the body, were also surveying, protecting the bags and blue trolley from the day before. On the way back to the car, Mishka and I paused. We turned to look at that fantastic spot from where only minutes ago we had walked past. I understood the manger, or better still, the creche in the traditional Nativity imagery in yet another light and felt grateful beyond words to this travelling soul. Saint Seraphim of Sarov, Leo Tolstoy, and all the others, and those who came before, the Prophet Isaiah, and after them, Gwendolyn Brooks, were right, of course. Real beauty which is neither artificial, nor affected, is more often hidden, and waiting to be discovered, where you might least expect it. I remember Rembrandt and am struck by that spellbinding awe, but this recall does not comfort my spirit when it is aching. On the other hand, this ‘wandering angel’, already, is comforting my night pains and revealing insights into another, more enduring splendour.

 

[1] https://library.kiama.nsw.gov.au/History/Explore-Kiamas-Past/Local-history-stories/Hindmarsh-Founding-Orphans

[2] I use the term “myth” here in a similar way to Carl Jung’s conventional interpretation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hcogiUUNnM

How many great symphonies have not been written

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“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jer. 29:11)

“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something moulded.” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)

“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.” (Anais Nin)

“Love is our true destiny. We do not find the meaning of life by ourselves alone we find it with another.” (Thomas Merton)

“This is the urgency: Live! and have your blooming in the noise of the whirlwind.” (Gwendolyn Brooks)

“Nobody can teach me who I am. You can describe parts of me, but who I am - and what I need - is something I have to find out myself.” (Chinua Achebe)

“The purpose of life is to discover your gift. The work of life is to develop it. The meaning of life is to give your gift away.” (David Viscott)

They wait for the mysterious Godot who never arrives

The endearing Didi and Gogo meet near a “leafless tree” [already such a marvellous irony] to engage in a series of discussions. They wait for the mysterious Godot who never arrives. It all appears meaningless. They consider suicide. Perhaps they had read Camus! Whether they are to be taken seriously or not is beside the point. But the problem is neither of these characters actually articulates what they want; or what they are looking for; or who Godot actually is. Or even if he ultimately exists. Ennui is at them. Entropy. Apathy. In existential terms, it is not even knowing what you want. It is, as some critics have said, the most successful literature ever written about “nothing”. Nothingness leads to ‘nothing.’ And to the deepest of despair.

“Nothing happens. Nobody comes, nobody goes. It's awful.” (Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot)

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.” (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus)

How many great symphonies have not been written

There are times when we are scared to approach that which we believe to be beyond us, like a great challenge which will push us to our limits, or when we are terrified of speaking our truth for fear of ‘cancellation’, or of declaring our love lest we be rejected. It has been asked how many great symphonies have not been written because composers were reluctant to compose their own Ninth, the ‘curse of the Ninth’ they call it, for the fear of comparison with Beethoven’s ‘Choral’ masterpiece. And yet, is this not the most agreeable of things? To keep climbing the stairs, to follow Jacob onto the “stairway” until we have reached our limits and to have exhausted the depths of our capacity [that which can ‘contain, take or hold’]:

“Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Harran. When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it.” (Gen. 28:10-12)

“The purpose of life is to be defeated by  greater and greater things.” (Rainer Maria Rilke, Poem)

It was only when I allowed for my heart (extract from a letter) [1]

It was only when I allowed for my heart to become vulnerable again, that is, to love without any fear of reprisal, to not set limits on the geometry of my embrace, that I was permitted some few insights such as these which I am now sharing with you. Similarly to the human eye which is amazingly adaptable and works to correct light deficiencies, the heart also as our ‘spiritual organ’ functions in an analogous way as it filters ‘darkness’ and ‘light’. A contemplative has somewhere said: “In fact, one question is enough. In everything that happens to me, do I remain free enough to love?” In recent times I have been pondering, that sadly, we do not rightly reflect on the actual love of the malefactor crucified next to the Christ, the one who asked to be remembered by Jesus when he came into his “kingdom” (Lk. 23:42f.). This love which he quite literally expressed through his ‘confession’ and ‘compassion’ as he himself was dying, opened up to him the gates of paradise. Father Seraphim Rose has articulated well the question behind this fearsome mystery:

“Why is the truth, it would seem, revealed to some and not to others? Is there a special organ for receiving revelation from God? Yes, though usually we close it and do not let it open up: God’s revelation is given to something called a loving heart.”

“The heart governs the entire bodily organism and reigns over it, and when grace possesses the heart, it governs all the members and all thoughts, for it is in the heart that the intellect is found and all the thoughts of the soul as well as its desires; through its intermediary, grace equally penetrates into all the bodily members.” (Saint Macarius of Egypt)

I would take away its trustworthy lessons (extract from a letter)

During the darkest hours of an interminable sense of hopelessness which plagued my spirit and bruised my bones, I thought that all being, all striving, all life was for nothing. It was the temptation to an extreme pessimism; the seduction of nihilism. That it was all animalistic chance, a throw of the dice. Still, even here, in this deathlike existence, when by the grace of God some little shards of light dropped down on me, I would take away its trustworthy lessons. From this place of mournfulness which separates darkness from the light itself, anarchy from order, death from life, and hell from heaven, good things can still pour through. Salvation, however we might understand it, is not to be trifled with. Sometimes outside a good discernment, these polarities may not always be clearly identifiable one from the other. So, we might continue to confuse what is evil for good, and what is unrighteous for righteous, like a hesitant tincture caught between two colours. Yet, like a constantly recurring musical phrase, a leitmotif, which you can’t quite place, the stirring of the Holy Spirit is asking for us to give Him a name. I was on a train in London on my way to the monastery in Tolleshunt Knights,[2] when I first read these overwhelming words from the English writer and lay theologian G. K. Chesterton which I will share with you below. I straightaway copied them into my little notebook which I would carry most anywhere I went. They struck an inherent chord within me. I was comforted in a way I could not explain, other than that an unassailable truth had been disclosed to me:

“Every man has forgotten who he is. One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God; but thou shalt not know thyself. We are all under the same mental calamity; we have all forgotten our names. We have all forgotten what we really are. All that we call common sense and rationality and practicality and positivism only means that for certain dead levels of our life we forget that we have forgotten. All that we call spirit and art and ecstasy only means that for one awful moment we remember that we forget.”

“Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer. From the ends of the earth I call to you, I call as my heart grows faint; lead me to the rock that is higher than I. For you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the foe.” (Ps. 61:1-3)

It is temperature shock which hardens steel (extract from a letter)

Transformation, sometimes used for the metamorphosis of the life cycle of an animal, will not happen overnight. It will be a long journey and it will demand much spiritual labour and large amounts of patience. It is good to remember when things get difficult, as they undoubtedly do, that it is temperature shock which hardens steel and that it is intense heat which changes molecular structure. Change can hurt, and it will often hurt a lot, but it will make all the difference. Franz Kafka who was fascinated with ‘transformation’ considered “patience” very high on the list of virtues. Conversion is only the beginning. It took Christ an eternity to reveal his blinding glory to his creation, “where his face shone like the sun” at his Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1f.). Allow for the grace of God to fall on you and to make the necessary changes, similarly to new colours which are created with the passing of the years on natural landscapes. I know, too well, sometimes it can be like breaking your knuckles on steel or smoothing your heart on a piece of pumice stone. Yet how wonderful it is when with every little step forwards, there is an additional revelation.

“Then Peter answered and said to Jesus, “Lord, it is good for us to be here…” (Matt. 17:4)

“What you are you do not see, what you see is your shadow.” (Rabindranath Tagore)

The mindful thing is to admit to our ‘longing’


”Movement” by Katina Michael

We leave a place never to return, but we spend the rest of our life reflecting over it and going back, often without even realizing it. For me this location is ‘Redfern’, it is both a physical and spiritual place. It is the priesthood and where I was given my new name. We never can wholly escape. It is like Joyce who was desperate to leave Dublin but never could, and Faulkner who thought he could escape Lafayette County, or Armen Melikian in Journey to Virginland who cannot forget Armenia despite his exile from the homeland of his forefathers. These writers like many others, spend a great deal of their lives going back. The mindful thing is to admit to our ‘longing’, to embrace it, to take what is good and to transform the rest. The nostalgia, this longing unto sickness to return, is not all bad and is the central refrain in one of our earliest ‘blockbusters’, the great Homeric epic, the Odyssey. It is bringing back beautiful scents [lavender, vanilla] and sounds [the clickety-clack of trains], and dreams which can still rouse the adrenalin.

“When I die, Dublin will be written on my heart.” (James Joyce to Sheehy Skeffington)

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.” (William Faulkner, Faulkner’s county: tales of Yoknapatawpha county)

[1] These three letter extracts from a recent correspondence with friends have been here modified for their readability.

[2] It was late in 1990 during the First Gulf War when I returned to Europe. My primary intention was to visit the Patriarchal Stavropegic Monastery of Saint John the Baptist in Essex, England, to spend time with its monastic community especially celebrated for its practise of the Jesus Prayer and for its beloved abbot Elder Sophrony. hhttps://www.thyateira.org.uk/archdiocese/monasteries/monastery-of-st-john-the-baptist/