Nostalgically reminiscing about our childhood...
we are, in essence, seeking our lost innocence!
“Unless you become like children… you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!” (Matthew 18:3)
INTERPRETATION: You adults, if you do not become - through your personal struggle against the passions... and with the help of God's Grace - like children: good, pure, innocent, forgetful, unashamed, ungreedy... you will not enter the Heavenly Kingdom, where only innocent beings enter...!
Somewhere in the depths of our 'aged' -mainly, by passions- soul, in a remote and dark corner of the 'basement' of our existence... 'lives' like an abused girl, abandoned to the shame of her wounds and pains... a 'seduced' childhood. A 'suffered' innocence... which has been definitively 'dethroned' from the kingdom of purity... but even as fallen from its virginal throne, it continues to dazzle us with the 'remnants' of its beauty... powerfully drawing us into a nostalgic reminiscence of the 'past grandeur' of its beauty!
"Past glories... that make you cry when you tell them!"
(From the "Hymn to Freedom" by Dionysios Solomos)
September, Beginning of the "Indicus" (New Ecclesiastical Year), typical beginning of Autumn... and the beginning of the decadent alterations of the Beauty of Nature...! Transformative changes of 'deconstruction' of Creation, through which the All-Good Creator offers us, His logical creations, reasons for fruitful and philosophical existential reflection... which could lead us to spiritual awakening! Opportunities, to 'see' our godlike existence in the dimension of a super-space/time... meta-biological... and super-worldly perspective of life..., completely beyond and above the living space/time 'microcosm' of our earthly experience!
Among all the environmental 'dramas' [ 1 ] that the Genius 'Director' of universal harmony and beauty 'directs' and stages on the 'theatrical stage' of Nature, the Autumn dramaturgy 'steals the show' by far... 'speaking' to our souls with the greatest resonance! Because, our soul 'inherently' yearns for the Kingdom of Light, from where it fell... and desires to return! This 'nostalgia for a return' to the 'kingdom of innocence' (a state of pre-fallen, Adamic purity...) is greatly intensified as a 'desire to exit' [ 2 ] from the intracosmic futility, every time an 'existential despair' depresses us... with the decadent decay and alterations of earthly life!
The decadent symptomatology of Nature… which the 'season of metaphysical hints' (Autumn) brings with it, if not passed over hastily, frivolously and carelessly… can mark the starting point of a divine existential perception of the world! If this season, if the projected sensory information is carefully 'read'… introduces our 'theo-nostalgic' [ 3 ] souls into a supramundane 'realism'! That is to say, even though we are intracosmic beings (space/time), we are subject to an imminent… so to speak 'migratory' perspective of departure from this ephemeral world! A flight… without return, and with a destination for a world… more supramundane: above and beyond the universal immensity!
Observing, therefore, the Autumn 'abstract transformation' of Nature... we can 'see' mentally [ 4 ] our brilliant Creator, 'painting' on the blooming flora (trees and plants) of Nature, a 'visual' pre-image of our biological decline...! It is a 'suggestive' reminder of the Creator-God to His rational creatures, of the temporary & changeable nature of our living life. A realistic certainty... that we casually forget! An indisputable truth... that God, out of Fatherly love, constantly reminds us, so that we may worry... ceasing to exhaust our desire for life in the 'here and now', indifferent to the eternal afterlife of our existential destination!
Indeed, as soon as Creation around us begins to transform, through decadent alterations of the surrounding Natural beauty, an 'overflowing' river of tender memories from innocence... floods the meadow of memory! Torrential associations of nostalgic reminiscence, of all those innocent 'challenges'... that once 'touched' our childish heart (but now leave our adult soul indifferent!) now rush in attractively as 'pourings' of nostalgic memories! Joyful memories of the mind, which comfort the heart with the memory of our childish 'relationship of intimacy' with God, which we enjoyed, completely freed from every 'bond' of sin... and 'chains' of empathy...!
Reflecting, therefore - in the first person, now - with deep nostalgia on the indelible memories of an 'other' era (of 'exiled' innocence), bathed in the secret rays of another Light (of the conceivable "Sun of Justice"?), I remember... that, still a pure-hearted child, I had a 'window' wide open before me with a view... to an unseen world! A spiritual and invisible world... which always allows, in innocence alone, an 'intuitive' approach to the mysteries of the world and the super-worlds...!
And it was amazing, I remember… to see -then- within me, the thick fog that surrounds the mystery of life and death, thinning out from the incident Sunbeams of that mysterious Light, which penetrated my soul. And then, all the darkness of ignorance began to be illuminated, all the secrets of existence to be revealed, all the mysteries of life to be rationalized… within a, particularly revealing, 'deepening' and 'broadening' of the perceptual limits of my childish intellect…
And then, I remember, I felt something inexplicable... indescribable... undefined... unheard of... unimaginable... 'beckoning' invitingly to my childish soul, disturbing it, and powerfully drawing it to a world... beyond the one that falls within the perception of conventional senses! And then, 'melted' by an inner, irresistible impulse, I would wander away from company and games, to isolate myself in the eastern wilderness of my village [ 5 ], on the hill of 'Dastepe' [ 6 ] and in the lagoon of 'Lafri' [ 7 ] to welcome - together with the wild animals and wild birds of the wilderness - the 'invasion' of Autumn on Nature and... on my soul (!), on which (my soul) she (Nature) exerted an inexplicable attraction!
It was a fascinating dramaturgy! An 'abstract' transformation of the beauty of Creation, into something 'vaguely promising' as more perfect...! A de-composition of beauty, leading towards a more qualitative re-composition...! A de-construction of harmony, tending towards a renovating re-construction...! 'Suspicious' glimpse into the present decline of Nature... its future restoration to a perfection of incorruption, promised by God... I had no 'reason' to be depressed about a biological end... which leads, by divine will, to a new beginning-resurrection of eternal life...!
A psycho/mental 'alarm' echoed within me, a 'mobilization' of all the senses... and a 'disruption' of all the (co)emotions... from which an 'eerie' peace was about to flow! My soul then tasted an experience of 'rapture'... in front of a dramatized scene of the deconstruction of natural beauty, which did not refer, however, to death or loss... but to something completely different: as a 'passage' or 'transition' of Creation, from the present state of death and decay... towards a future, inconceivable perspective of eternal life and incorruption!...
It was a silent… but shocking ‘festival’ of all the ‘detecting organs’ of existence: the mind, the heart and the senses… in the face of an ‘alien’ beauty, decadent and deconstructed… in relation to the flourishing and structured beauty of Spring nature! An emotional, awkward ‘flatulence’ of the soul in the face of something vaguely melancholic… but, at the same time, inexplicably peaceful and incomprehensibly promising…! And my childish soul, in the face of all this… to seek ‘non-negotiable’ and with agonizing persistence… not the obvious existential ‘meanings’… but those secret and occult ones, behind aesthetic events…!
The emigration of migratory birds… the changing of the leaves of trees and plants… the blooming of flowers… the Autumn showers with the torrents of rain running downhill and hastily towards the sea… the plowing of the earth and the 'burying' of cereal seeds in its excavated bowels… all of these are imprinted on the white canvas of the child's soul like golden 'cross-stitches' of an infinite Artistic Genius! Of a supreme Mind… that knows HOW to hide within Nature, coded 'messages' of a metaphysical realism… which can existentially 'suspect' every soul that is free from passions!…
The child's mind refuses to 'devalue' semantically anything... of what it perceives sensoryally! Underneath all the cold phenomena it always finds secret meanings... that draw it to tender, poetic interpretations! Visual representations of Nature, such as the mass gathering of 'winged residents' on the electric wires... towards the end of August, refer the child's soul to associations of flight and migration...! A 'reductive' interpretation of the 'metaphysical hints' of Autumn, from this ephemeral life... to the post-biological eternity of real life!
A diffused 'sense' of flight to other worlds in the air… wonderfully harmonized the migratory emigration of birds, towards the turbulent and 'unruly' scenery of Autumn. Huge flocks of winged migrants in forked flight formations, leaving farewell sounds, flew towards the South…! And I, a silent spectator of their stranger… remained behind them tearful, watching them disappear into the horizon… and wishing them a 'good journey' on their ethereal journeys…! My soul, saddened, "could not be pleaded with" [ 8 ] by logical explanations. My only consolation… was the hope of their Spring homecoming!
But this exciting drama… was not forgotten with the flight of my feathered friends. My childish mind, miraculously silent and embarrassed… in the face of what was happening, was unable not to closely associate the migration of birds… with the mystery of another ‘emigration’, of our souls… to the supramundane beyond! Because, the good ‘nostalgia for God’ [ 9 ] and His Kingdom, always seek with insatiable desire, the truth… beyond our mortal nature! Considering it disproportionate and unworthy, to the godly perspective of man (created ‘in the image and likeness of God’…), they reject the ‘cold’ flattening of an inhuman materialism… which ‘wants’ man to end definitively with de-existence!
In a sense of an indefinite 'melancholic ecstasy' resulting from the Autumnal transformation of Nature... I enjoyed - I remember - listening to the 'lyrical' rustling of the trees... when they 'threw' their withered leaves to the earth. But while I enjoyed the 'directorial' beauty of this melancholic dramaturgy... I stubbornly refused within myself to remain only in its aesthetic dimension, because this significantly limited the scope of the Truth... which my soul longed for and sought in agony! A Truth about our mortal nature, which we completely ignore... but also willfully refuse to know!...
I couldn't get enough - I remember - of looking at the melancholy sky... with the ashen-gray clouds passing by in a hurry, searching for thirsty places on earth... to empty the heavenly blessing of rain! And when the First Rain showers began... if I was outside playing, I never ran inside to 'keep' myself dry! If I was back at home, I would go outside to get wet to the bone... as I didn't feel any 'threat' from the rain! On the contrary, I felt a thirsty attraction... like the thirsty earth, which was thirsting with me greedily, offering to God feelings of gratitude and sacred promises of spring fertility...!
After the first rains… it was exciting - I remember - to run like a deer on the hills with vineyards… opposite the fields of Lafri, to watch with rapture the ritual of plowing… and the ‘burying’ of the cereal seeds in the grooved entrails of the ‘rat’. [ 10 ] I admired the hardworking farmers… (the hardworking, and therefore… ‘naive’ cultivators of the fields, as opposed to the hardworking, and therefore… ‘smart’ abusers of European subsidies…)! [ 11 ] And in the face of these ritualistic depictions… I remember my childish soul trembling silently, from a chilling realization: that, if these seeds do not die and decompose in the cold Winter earth… they will not rise in the Spring, as new shoots of reborn life…!
How deep, within me, penetrating… how excitingly harsh… how irresistibly powerful… how irrepressibly dominant… how sweetly intoxicating… was that innocent certainty of my childish soul, which considered the visible… to be gloriously ‘embracing’ by the invisible…! The pure and keen ‘gaze’ of innocence, drawing upon it the Grace and illumination of God, could ‘see’ the elusive grandeur of an eternal life… beyond space/time, and that ‘seeing’ provided my childish soul with a sense of liberation… from the terror of death!
I remember… and I am tormented by that childhood goodness, which could (before… 'suffering' from the pathologies of adulthood!) inspire in my soul a profound poetic insight…! A natural tendency of the soul to borrow beauty and harmony, from God's decoration, to 'clothe' with philosophical & light-hearted meanings… joyful emotions… and good feelings… all the everyday, colorless… odorless… tasteless… and 'naked' from light and sadness… dramas and things of this world!…
Half a century later - today - I understand inconsolably... what I have lost 'growing up'!... But while I mourn irrevocably for the drastically reduced 'aesthetics' of my (aged by my sins and passions) soul... I refuse to surrender to the despair of compromise...! An all-powerful desire to recover my plundered treasures... pushes me to recover in the 'kindergarten' of purity, reclaiming (through processes of therapeutic repentance!) the reconstruction... of my deconstructed integrity... and the 're-establishment' of my prostituted innocence...! [ 12 ]
Mourning my BADLY aged soul for its sinful mistakes… it has been 'recuperating' therapeutically -42 years now- in the 'Workshop of Repentance', the Holy Mountain of the GOOD Elders, contemplating with hope of recovery from suffering the few earthly years I have left to live. In front of the seaward border of my Athonite parish and in the awe of my Athonite wilderness… as I 'breathe' the "Coming Kingdom of God...", I joyfully and doxologically greet the most eloquent prototypes of the mystery of eternal existence… and of the 'migration of our souls', as God-nostalgia beings, towards a supramundane… supraessential… eternal life!
'Witness' of the expected "New Creation" [ 13 ] the morning light... which proclaims the Eastern Horizon, after a moonless and gloomy night like death, illuminating creation again! And 'witness' the Spring... which, after the 'old age' of the Autumnal blossoming... and the 'death' of the Winter frost... resurrects the sprouts of life, from the (dead) seeds buried in the soil... when the Spring rebirth of Nature comes! And 'witness' He... who, with the unfalsifiable promise of the Gospel Word, assures the unbelieving mind... comforting the despairing heart, that: "He who believes in Me, even though he dies... WILL LIVE!" (John 11:25).
An Athonite BADGER…
from the Holy Mountain of the KALOgeri
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[ 1 ] Over time, people's 'attitude' towards dramaturgy (both of nature and of art...) was and still is somewhat 'variable': "You write dramas, they laugh... you write comedies, they cry..." Aristophanes aptly wrote! This 'psychological' phenomenon, condescendingly... makes tolerable the difference in sensitivity (from absolute sensitivity... to absolute insensitivity!) observed between different people, who find themselves and function under exactly the same psycho/emotional challenges, such as those of Nature...!
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[ 2 ] “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain… I desire to lose all and be with Christ…” (Phil. 1:21-23).
INTERPRETATION: For me, Christ is understood as life… and death is understood as gain, because it will take me to Him! I am possessed by a strong desire to die and dissolve physically… so that I may always be with Him spiritually!
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[ 3 ] “Theo-nostalgia” is what Saint Justin Popovic (Great Serbian Theologian and Confessor of the Orthodox East of the twentieth century) calls our souls, in his sacred writings! – See his book: “Man and God-Man”).
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[ 4 ] "The mind sees and the mind hears... the rest are blind and deaf..."
(Epicharmus, ancient Greek poet from Kos, 530-440 BC)
INTERPRETATION: The Mind (i.e. the mental energy of the soul…) is what sees and hears… and the senses, by themselves, are blind and deaf…
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[ 5 ] Refugee village (formerly Serdivan, today Mandra…) that traces its ancestral origins to Bithynia (the province of Nicomedia and the region of Ada Pazar). After the Asia Minor catastrophe (1922), it was 'uprooted' from its "lost (?) homelands" and sought refuge in the Greek north… to be 'transplanted' in the Xanthiotiko south… sometime in 1924.
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[ 6 ] Destepe (Petrolofos): Hill with a spectacular and panoramic view, over the entire surrounding plain triangle of Mandra-Vistonida-Kesani, a plain with endless greenery… in front of a sea of 'endless blue'…!
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[ 7 ] “Lafri” and “Lafrouda”: A wetland of indescribable natural beauty and amazing biodiversity… next to the Vistonida lagoon and facing the Thracian Sea…!
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[ 8 ] “In the day of my trouble I sought God with my hands in the night, and I was not deceived; my soul was silent in its supplication…” (Psalm 76:3)
INTERPRETATION: In the days when I felt great sorrow, I fled with great desire to God, asking for His help. At night I called upon Him with uplifted hands, and I was not disappointed in my hope. From excessive sorrow my soul refused all comfort…
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[ 9 ] See reference number [ 3 ].
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[ 10 ] The word "aroura" is ancient Greek and means field, cultivated land. It comes from the ancient verb "aroo" which means "to plow" (hence plowing, ploughing...), and refers to land suitable for cultivation or already sown and hopefully heading towards fruition...
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[ 11 ] What we once knew, from our wise and enlightened ancestors, that "Goods are acquired by TRYING..." and we all tried honestly and diligently to apply it to our personal lives, our immoral era has transformed it into something... dishonest, but supposedly 'smarter': "Goods... are acquired by TRYING..."! To support this argument, let's look at the scandals of "OPEKEPE"...
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[ 12 ] “Thus says the Lord: Though your sins be as scarlet… they shall be as white as snow! Though they be as scarlet… they shall be as crimson…” (Isaiah 1:18)!
INTERPRETATION: Our all-good God affirms, through the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah: “If your sins - as dirty stains on the purity of your God-made souls - have become like the color of crimson... I, with my Fatherly Forgiveness (which presupposes only your own sincere repentance...) will make them white as snow!... Even if they have become like crimson... I will make them white as wool!...
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[ 13 ] The phrase “We look forward to new heavens and a new earth” is an apocalyptic phrase, which comes from the New Testament, and specifically from the letter of the Apostle Peter (3 Peter 13:XNUMX). It refers to the expectation of Christians - according to the unfailing promise of the God-Man Christ - for the Second Coming of the Lord, during which the universes will be renewed… creating “new heavens and a new earth…” in another, spiritual and indestructible dimension of existence…
