Meditators keep calm at the airport!

After a full LAST day in Athens, a trip to the temple of Poseidon at Sounion, a visit to the Archeological Museum in the city and being ripped off by a clever taxi driver who told this blogger that there was a demonstration in the city and he would need to go by a scenic route to get me back in time to the hotel and then charged me 4 times the right price, I settled into a taxi to the airport thinking of home.
My companion kindly took me into the British Airways lounge and when our flight was called we were fast tracked through security to the departure gate!  Only it was the wrong departure gate which we only discovered when it started boarding and we saw with surprise that our plane which was nearby had its doors closed and a BA person at the gate barring our way and pointing the way to collect our luggage which had been taken off.
No flights out that day, we stoically accept that we will be in Athens for another day so what to do?  We decide that we don't really want to creep back into the hotel in Athens under the eye of the rest of our philosophic friends who might be surprised to see us so we ask the Travel Agent if we can find a not expensive, nearby hotel by the sea, expecting that this may be difficult.  But in a trice we are booked into the Hotel Medusa, right on the beach with a cheerful Taverna outside, 90 euros for collection and delivery to the airport, breakfast, en suite shower (if you can get round the door which has been designed as a door into a cupboard and doesn't leave room for much manoeuvring inside).  We can't believe our luck even if the proximity of the airport means the regular roar of jet engines.
Of course, we have to pay for our tickets and I am now hoping that my bank manager meditates and finds the same equanimity that we have found in our extra 24 hours in the land blessed by the Gods of old.

Images which pass from one mind to another

Can you see this image of a body lovingly held?  Does it remind you of the Michelangelo Pieta? in St Peter's in Rome?  Well it is much older, it is from a 5th Century Temple in Athens.  Of course, the techniques involved in sculpture are copied from generation to generation and images of man evolve through art and sculpture.  The more interesting and moving thing is the essence which is captured again and again.  Man's story in its heroism, its joys and its intense grief are depicted again and again.  It is part of a movement to express something felt inwardly in every generation which comes out as image and word.  Whatever we believe we are, what ever we meditate upon, will be expressed as the measure of that belief and meditation. See below for something that man has always loved! And still does!

The feeling of Meditation left in buildings

This is from the crypt in the 10th Century Monastery called Hosios Loukos where we spent some time  on the way back to Athens.  One holy man who wished to withdraw and simply contemplate God in solitude became so imbued with light that he drew many disciples to himself.  When he died, they built a chapel round his tomb and from there a whole community of monks grew, a thriving order which provided refuge over the centuries to people fleeing from wars, from famine and from plagues.  The Church which is above the Crypt and the even older one next door are all decorated with mosaics and wall paintings which are full of meaning.  The atmosphere, even with a cafe and shop is markedly still. Then, on to Athens where we have a top floor room with a view of...the air conditioning unit and the back of the other side of the hotel.  However, we crane our neck sideways to see, wonder of wonders, the Acropolis which looks like a tiny but real model Acropolis.  This is because I have never seen it before.  Its delicacy and positioning make it rather like seeing a far off star and apart from any other consideration on the architecture and sculpture there, reminds us that we need reminders of the possibilities lying in our human condition.  The tiny flash of it above the air conditioning unit is wonderful and a bit different to other pleasures available in the city!  See below

Not for the faint hearted

Meditation will seek out your weakness and not let you fool yourself.  You will notice the thoughts which persistently intercede between you and the focus of your attention; they come with stealth to steal the extraordinary power of attention which is a present gift.  After all, it is the same attention which has made the whole creation as well as every beautiful thing in the heavens and every curious thing on the earth.  It is the power of attention where we are most akin to that which is behind everything.  And it is a waste of that power to be thinking of the day ahead, it will go its own way without any interference from you   It is a waste of energy to try to put right wrongs in your head, you can do that when you aren't meditating, it is a waste in my case to wonder how the grandchildren will manage the modern world or how the broody hen will manage to keep her chicks safe when she has chosen to hatch them out under the cement mixer.  It is a waste of energy when I can just join the movement back to the real home by meditating properly.  This is a statue of Apollo which was thrown into a pit in Delphi and didn't come out for over a thousand years.  When you stand in front of him, it is clear that the power he represents is undiminished so why should we worry about what might happen when we just don't know.

Those Feet were made for Walking

Being in Greece where the feel of the earth, of the landscape, of the sound of cicadas and cockerels in the morning, of life getting going around us as we meditated, make the stories of old seem as if they aren't so far away.  A footfall on the path beside our balcony is Odysseus making his way back home through the Greek landscape to Penelope, the old dog recognising him, he bends to scratch it behind the ears, the reality of what has happened in his absence, all these things were there in that footfall.  The old story of absence and return were pressing a bell in memory, the way the suitors, the pretenders have to be expelled and killed once the real owner is back is exactly what happens in meditation or should happen in meditation but this morning the suitors make a really good play for why they think they should be allowed to stay.  Meditation is an ongoing project on the way home. 

 

                                                         

Fascinated by feet even in meditation

 I am woken up by feet which are behaving badly, cramp sends them into an awkward fixed ballet mode and I have to jump out of bed to calm them down and make them available again for getting me up!  They have done this for a reason, to alert me to the beauty and wonder of feet and what feet do and also how they look.  The feet in the museum at Delphi, of which these are just a selection, are quite beautiful in their detail and of course show the humanness of the sculpture as much as the face.  The feet on the right are fifth century BC, they were part of sculptures which were hidden in a pit just outside the sanctuary to avoid them being looted.  The golden-haired Apollo and his mother and sister were also thrown into the pit.  It is moving to think of their history and their preciousness that they should be preserved nearly three thousand years later.  And that they were formed and observed and hidden and found is all part of that history.
Are you wondering how I am going to get meditation in now?  Well, the feet have been climbing round my meditation calling for attention but that isn't why.  It is the fact of the enduring beauty of something which is truly beautiful or essential.  The secret truths of all the religions is hidden in meditation and has endured and is available now for many people, many more than the few initiates of olden times.  We should be as grateful for meditation as we are for our miraculous feet.

Christian Meditation and Father Laurence Freeman

So, Sunday in Delphi, and immediately the memory of the word Sunday evokes the need for Christian practice.

On Saturday,visiting the museum attached to the Temenos of Apollo yesterday, I am struck by several statues which are so Christian that reading that they are pre-Christian by between five and eight centuries makes the case that the Christian experience is an eternal one and has always been available to the seeker.
One of the heroes of Christian Meditation is John Main, who found and passed his experience of meditation on to Father Laurence Freeman who passes it on to thousands through the message of Christian Meditation.   Father Laurence is Director of the World Community for Christian Meditation and says it is an urgent necessity to rediscover the contemplative dimension of Christianity and that we can only do that by experiencing the power and meaning that silence holds.
"Silence is not an absence, nor a canvas waiting to be filled.  It is not threatening but something deeply attuned to our humanity.  "In silecnce we touch a universality that words usually only point to.  It is not an escape from reality but an embrace with the divine reality that we know as love.  Relationships are changed by this experience of silence in transcendence, in ways that words cannot achieve.  We live together in a new way when we have been patient together in the silence of love."