ON THE EDGE OF THE OLD WORLD

This happened on New Year’s Day in 1977. I remember the bus letting the three of us off at night near the youth hostel. I remember the darkness so dense that I could not see the path and barely discerned the white building in front of me. The wool blankets were rough and smelled of lanolin. I was surprised, given the darkness of the night, to awake to a brilliant cold blue sky and the sight of the monasteries isolated in the distance on the bluffs.

This day being New Years, there was no transportation. We were unsure that the monasteries would be open, but having nothing else to occupy our time, we decided to walk. Along the way, we passed these small scrubby trees from which we heard munching sounds. Being urban kids, we had no idea that goats climbed trees to get at the leaves.

The first monastery was a convent. We were allowed in at least far enough to give a donation. We were hurried through a few rooms. I can only recall that the young initiates avoided looking at us as if we were the source of sin and temptation. This brief glimpse into what seemed a medieval mindset was a new jarring experience.  

Afterward, we hiked to the largest monastery. At the foot of several hundred steps that led to its entrance, a woman and her albino son sat in front of a fire boiling water for tea. Through a combination of signs and gibberish, we learned that the monastery might open to visitors at noon. Soon, one of the fathers, a spry old man, came down the hundreds of steps to talk to the mother and her albino son. They seemed to be in no hurry to end their conversation.

·   Being Americans, noon meant noon. When the hour struck, we decided that the monastery must be open. We ascended the staircase, which now seemed endless. But we arrived, winded, and confronted a closed door. After a short debate, we decided, since nothing indicated we were not to enter, we went in. The monastery felt deserted. Sensing we were doing something not quite right, we walked down a hallway with a series of doors. The hallway wasn’t that interesting, so I tried a door to see if it was locked. My friends and I were horrified. There on shelves were bones—specifically human bones—sorted by type. Skulls on one shelf, thigh bones on another. An ossarium is definitely a thing that you should read about before experiencing it. We had not, of course.

We now had the sense that we were intruding. We looked through a window and saw the old priest still talking to the mother and her son. Again we contended with the push-and-pull feeling of whether we should leave or not. We tentatively continued toward the end of the hall, where there appeared to be a chapel. We wanted to see more than a room full of bones.

Before we got to the chapel, the old priest was beside us, cheerful and full of conversation, having climbed the steps in half our time. He decided to act as our tour guide. The only problem was he did not have much English, and we had no Greek. Despite that, he pointed to this mosaic and that icon and said things about them.

I saw on a pedestal an old hymnal with vellum pages and square blocks for notation. I conceived a wish then, and the old priest read my mind. He went up to the hymnal and, for ten minutes, sang to us the ancient hymn in a resonant baritone communicating through the music the beauty of his faith. I felt I had ascended a pinnacle on that strange cold brilliant day and seen a different world. I’ve had other moving experiences throughout my life, but none similar, in the least.