Taking Inventory of the Miraculous
Church of The Seven Martyrs, Kastro, Sifnos
The uncertainties of this life are manifold, and we often don’t know where life is taking us or why our life has turned in another direction separate from what we’d expected or imagined.
It’s easy to get caught up in the “why” questions without reflecting on the “how” questions. Why did this or that happen is a question that can be transformed eventually into a ritual of remembering instead all of the small moments that might have sustained us through unexpectedly challenging times. This kind of inventory seeks to put the blessings and miraculous moments of our lives front and center.
This ritual has resonance given the upside-down world we’re living in, where brutal and inhumane behaviors are supported and justified, and we’re asked to believe, for instance, that murderous acts of cruelty are in fact brave acts, because some lives matter more than others. Of course there is immense dis-ease (and of course real disease) among us. It’s challenging to stay grounded in a world where manipulation of our gut feelings and intuitions are frequent. How do we believe in our truest, deepest notions and inclinations when we’re constantly being gaslighted by verbal dissembling and disinformation campaigns that assault individuals and the collective alike.
As a species, we’re losing our humanity rather than learning lessons from history. How can we manage our beings, our anxieties, our heartbreaks, our sense of betrayal and uncertainty? It is all so overwhelming. What direction is up, what’s down, what’s real, what’s a constructed reality made to look real?
What is a practice that might lift our spirits, or bring us down to earth, as it were, so that we see with clarity snapshots of our lives that we might easily take for granted, gloss over, or miss completely. Let us not pass over these moments but notice and appreciate them. We can search for rays of light, even when in Pollyanna- fashion we distract ourselves from the harsh truths we imbibe daily, blocking the sensations of our own breaking. hearts.
Can we give ourselves permission to feel it all, the heartbreak and the miraculous? What happens when we turn to the miraculous?
I met a ten year old child in a center to help refugees on the island of Lesvos, Greece, where I volunteered this summer (https://wwbthellas.com). During the mornings over a period of weeks, this child ( I’ll call her Zara here) wanted to work on her ABCs and on writing in English. She’d made the terrifying journey from Sierra Leonne to Istanbul, and across the dangerous Aegean Sea waters from Turkey to Lesvos, on an unseaworthy boat. Her family might at any time have been brutally pushed back into the sea and left to die in the ocean https://www.bbcselect.com/watch/dead-calm/.
Zara spoke English but had missed a great deal of schooling. She sat down at a round plastic table with me to work during my volunteer days, and she made up stories about her life; with help, she wrote them down on paper.
A trust developed between us, and during her last day at the center (she was being transferred to a place and future unknown, most probably another camp outside of Athens), we had the time to sit and chat. We communicated as a teacher and a student might. In those moments that we spoke, I knew that this girl’s friendship had made my journey across the world worth it. If nothing more were to have transpired on my trip, these moments would have been more than enough to sustain my soul’s desire to be in the presence of resilience itself, manifest in the body of a ten year old girl wearing a black headscarf.
Zara expanded the size of my heart—her voice and presence, her innocence despite all that she’d seen, her genuineness. Her quiet kindness, honest heart, and inner light seeped into my body like a heavenly serum, nourishing my soul.
An artist living in a small village on the island Lesvos named Marianna also made her way into my heart like a heavenly balm, but this time the light penetrated through the window of this woman’s artistry and hospitality.
On a hot, sleepy afternoon, Greek siesta time, I peered through the window of a traditional two- story house situated next to an orthodox church. Behind the windows of this atmospheric home, I could see displayed lovely, hand-painted icons. I thought it might be a shop, so I called the number on the side of the building. Marianna answered with a quiet voice and agreed to come to the gallery. I sat waiting for her with one of the omnipresent resident cats in Greece, themselves miraculous little reminders of the richness of creation.
Just adore me.
Marianna welcomed us into this house of creativity, showing us her collection of icons and lovely bucolic scenes, hand-painted on the bark of olive trees and small rocks. Her presence was gentle, and after choosing a few pieces of her art she invited us into her home, only a short walk from the gallery.
We entered into the delights of an artist’s retreat. As we sipped berry nectar, we chatted with Marianna and viewed more of her artworks. She explores her world through depictions of the glories of olive trees, strong , feminine women, and the high order mystics and archangels that she paints as an expression of her devotion to the Divine.
Her home displays colorful objects, elegant furniture, casual bouquets, as well as her own paintings and icons hung on the walls and propped up on couches and arm chairs like long-lost family members and soul companions. She lives in the presence of ancestral photographs and works of art created over a lifetime.
Her life is indeed full.
Every corner of her dwelling speaks to her incessant drive to create order and beauty out of nature’s materials. Her presence is a beam of light shining into a chaotic, hurting world. Marianna does not have to go out into the world, and engage with it directly, to be a healing presence in it. Her power comes from within, and this power is enhanced and cultivated in the silence of her creative hours.
I imbibed her warmth, calmness, and hospitality and was blessed and strengthened by virtue of the time I spent with her. She inspired in me a vision of what a life devoted to art, to the sacred, and to beauty might look like. She welcomed the guests upon her doorstep into the creative magic of her world, and in doing so she opened a portal into a powerful field of grace and love that surrounds us always, even if we cannot perceive it.
The large and miniature white and blue-domed churches and private chapels that dot the landscape of the Greek Cycladic islands represent to me another version of the miraculous. On the island of Sifnos, at the edge of a beach town called Platys Gialos, there is a small white -washed church perched just a short stairway above the village and a fifteen-minute walk from any point in the town. This structure provides an always-open door to locals and travelers seeking quiet and refuge. It is portal into the sacred.
Platys Gialos, Sifnos
This sanctuary oversees a seaside village, yachts in the harbor, and the Aegean Sea so calm and blue in the warm months that it lures swimmers into it multiple times a day. Seekers walk up the stairs to this sanctuary, even during the heat of the day, and their reward is a cool, darkened space and the sight of multiple hand-painted icons hung close together on the walls of the church. Those who enter are received by images of mystics and archangels. There are undoubtedly a few locals whose self-designated task it is keep “the fires burning” for Mary, Jesus, John the Baptist, Saint George, and the archangels Gabriel, Michael and Raphael among others, divine healers and companions along the way.
Visitors light candles in exchange for a few coins as a way to initiate prayers for relatives, friends, ancestors, and for our broken world.
This is quiet; this is protection, this is refuge; this is inspiration to go on, a stop upon the journey of our lives to gather the much-needed fuel that is required before we can wade safely back into the currents that that at times threaten to overtake us.
Interior of the sanctuary, Platys Gialos, Sifnos
There is a ship hanging from the ceiling of this sanctuary that pays homage to those who come and go from the island on the vessels that transport them. We are reminded of sailors navigating perilous waters as well as those waiting for them to return home safely. We are reminded as well of the refugees who risk their lives every time they overpay a ruthless smuggler to get them unsafely across the waters in an over-crowded, unseaworthy raft. This charming ship that hangs from the ceiling invites visitors to reflect upon their lives and how every day that we have left here is meaningful and not to be squandered.
Sanctuary in Platys Gialos, Sifnos
This sanctuary strengthened me for the unchartered emotional and physical waters that I will face ahead. My time sitting in the chapel endowed me with the wisdom to see how the inevitable and strong currents we face are often our most effective teachers.
Taking inventory of the miraculous is a practice that encourages us to pause and to reflect on the moments in our lives when we’ve been mysteriously sustained and blessed, especially during the worst of times. Some do not survive their perilous journeys. It cracks the heart in two.
All the more reason to light candles in the dark.