Digging at the Crossroads of Time

by Christos Morris

  he leaves you his rays

  when he sinks in the sea.

  “Whooooooopa!” he shouted, moving blissfully across the courtyard, dancing, raising a loose handkerchief out to an imaginary partner, spinning beneath it gracefully and singing to his soul’s delight.

  I wish you were the sea

  and I were a beach

  for your waves to come and

  be within my reach.

  I don’t want paradise and

  churches to give me grace

  I only want your body to

  tighten in embrace.

  Steffanakis proudly snapped his fingers to the rhythm of the captain’s dance. Inwardly his own heart soared, spinning with Dionysos. He could feel himself dancing, leaping above the perivoli. Mimis was bursting with joy. If this man ever dies, he thought, the soul of all Crete will die with him. Grieg’s music, Cavafy’s words and the captain’s dance all do the same thing. They open up the soul and set the spirit free. Mimis shouted: “Dance, Dionysos, dance! Leave gravity behind and leap into the heavens. Show the angels how it is done!”

  The huge man danced without respect for his age or gravity, his feet lightly skimming the surface of the ground. Mimis had see him dance like this a few times before. He had seen him on a rooftop in Plaka, beneath a palm tree on the beach at Vai, and on the Ithos Plateau while an old shepherd played his lute. Mimis clapped to imaginary music as Dionysos danced, a giant bull transformed into a butterfly. As Mimis watched he felt suddenly earthbound and awkward. Someone inside him wanted to leap up, grab hold of the handkerchief and spin gracefully. He wanted to twist the handkerchief around his hand to bear the weight of Dionysos spinning on one leg, allowing his other leg to kick outward, then with unknown strength, pull the huge captain to his feet again and again and again.

  The eyes of the man inside Steffanakis grew wide with reverie. He raised both hands, fingers snapping, inhaling the entire sky. He turned slowly, crouched down, and then leapt into the air. The man inside, the matador, was pleading to move forward and dance with the bull; pleading; set – me – free. Mimis felt his feet move forward as the panting Dionysos beckoned with one hand, bellowing, “Dance with me!”

  The bells of the Church of St Constantino and Eleni began to chime in the distance. It was Sunday’s reminder that God and the priest were prepared for a gathering. The sound pierced Dionysos’ ears, making him swear at this intrusion and stop dancing. He looked to Mimis with indignation and threw his hands in the direction of the church.

  “Arrrgh!” he screamed. “The Church allows no joy. Raki, Mimis,” he barked. “I need some raki.”

  Mimis returned with a bottle for the captain. Dionysos was still mumbling obscenities while he poured himself a small glass, tapping the table once for good luck.

  “To those bloody bells,” he said with fire in his belly. “Listen to those bloody bells. The people will be walking into the church down there. They think if they go every week they will find God and eternity when they die. The poor things. What they want is right here and has been all along. And I know you know it too.” He looked up to the sky. “The angels are just like us. They smile like us, drink our wine and share our sorrows. You can’t find heaven when you’re dead. It is the great lie of the Church. It’s found right here,” he thumped his huge chest, “within our sleeping hearts.”

  “You know, Mimis,” continued Dionysos, “I think the Minoans were the only people to really reach out and touch God. The only ones. And you know why?” He poured himself another glass of raki. “I’ll tell you why! Because they were the only ones to make God small – like a man.” He searched in his pocket and found a miniature clay Minoan figure. “Here. I found this beside the fig tree in the perivoli.”

  He handed it to Mimis.

  “I told the priest I have tried to speak to God many times but it doesn’t work for me. And you know what he said to me? He said: ‘Well, you are too full of yourself to ever see God, Dionysos.’ He said: ‘This is a bad thing for you, but you will find a way one day.’ For years, after my wife and boy died, I tried to find God, and myself too. I found no one. So now I drink raki and forget them both.”

  He lifted the glass in the air and looked at it. “Nectar of the gods. You set me free from this life and carry me to another. But only part way. You deceiver!” He mockingly spat three times on the earth. “Anyway, Mimis, will you ever dig underneath this place?”

  Mimis closed his eyes, raising his chin in defiance. It was the same response he had given over the years, except this time his words hinted to a weakening of resolve. “It’s not the time. Not yet.”

  The captain thanked Steffanakis for letting him overstay his welcome once again and walked to the gate, unlatching it.

  “You know, Mimis, last night while I slept, I think I dreamt of you.” He pointed to Oaxsa. “Maybe the man you found up there, you will also find buried here. Out there in the perivoli. You should dig here one day.” He closed the gate behind him.

  Mimis could hear Dionysos singing down the laneway, singing another Cretan mantinade. He studied the Minoan miniature, an ancient clay deity standing at attention, an arched back and one fist pressed against its forehead. He smiled with recognition, and then set it gently on the table, retrieving the words: “Dig here, Mimis. Dig here.”

  Elefsis, Crete

  September, 1980

  T

  his Sunday morning in Elefsis was serene. The sun’s reflection from the sea caused a dappling honey glow on the whitewashed wall of St Constantino and Eleni. Songs sung by the choir inside the church could be heard in the street. The lofty music was undermined by a cheap loudspeaker placed on the bell and clock tower.

  Demetra sat calmly on her boat sewing torn nets. Spargos did the same in his boat as he sang along with the hymns. Mimis entered the main street across from the platea on his way to hear the sermon on sacrifice. Church attendance for him was limited to weddings, funerals and Easter Holy Week because he liked the pageant of them. Otherwise, the religious service offered him no inspiration. This day, he thought, might be different.

  The church was filled to the back door. There were no seats remaining. The priest stood at the pulpit surveying the size of his flock. He waited silently while the congregation coughed and fidgeted, preparing themselves to hear about sacrifice. They were anxious to learn what the priest expected of them, and maybe God too. Other than giving up meat for Lent, what sacrifices had anyone made to please their Maker? They could feel His presence in the heavy incense.

  The air was full of tension. Salvation would not come early. Father Dimitrios calmly waited until all eyes were fixed upon him. He waited for total silence, until the discomfort was coughed out of every last person in the church. The last cough was his own.

  “I have seen the other side. I have heard God’s voice. His voice, the voice of Christ, has touched me here – on earth. This voice said that to enter the kingdom you must sacrifice the most important thing you have on earth. You must sacrifice yourself.”

  A murmur trembled through the church. Fearful eyes reached out to him, awaiting his next words.

  “ ‘Sacrifice myself?’ I asked. My friends, these words filled me with fear. Then, a light within me began to glow and I knew what He meant. I knew these words were true.

  “Have you ever been blessed by God’s voice? God’s touch? Or is He too remote, too distant? Is God too far away from your life?”

  He stared at the front row and pointed at each person, one after another. Bug-eyed and frozen with fear of accusation, the hearts in the front row tightened. They felt released when he pointed elsewhere.

  “Where have you failed in your journey? Where have we all failed? How might you hear God and He hear you? What must you do? What must you sacrifice? Manolis, what must you sacrifice? Stratis, what must you sacrifice? Marooko, you? Yannis and Katarina?” He withdrew his finger and spread his arms toward everyone.

  “What must we all sacrifice?” The priest repeated him
self, but this time quietly and more slowly. “What must we all sacrifice?

  “I have seen the other side. I have heard God’s voice. His hand, the hand of Christ, touched mine, here, right here. I know this to be true. But do you?

  “Are you going to church every week, praying every day, doing the sign of the cross: Father, Son and Holy Ghost? What happens? Nothing? And next week you go to church, pray to God, do the sign of the cross and still nothing happens. One week follows another, and another, ever since you were a child, and maybe your parents did the same. Don’t you look to the heavens and ask, ‘Isn’t there more than this?’ Do you ever wonder?”

  Aristides coughed loudly in the front row, scowling, breaking the priest’s concentration. Father Dimitrios paused, then continued. “Up there on Oaxsa, an ancient temple was uncovered after being buried for almost four thousand years. It was not a church but a special place of worship, a special place of sacrifice. In ancient times there were rituals of sacrifice to their god, offering wheat and fruit and animals. Each offering they hoped would please the gods so in return, food would be bountiful, animals would give birth, and all Minoan life would be perpetuated. What makes this temple so special to archaeologists and historians may be that there were four people buried within it. They were caught in a calamity, an earthquake that shook the building down upon them, the oil lamps spilling and burning what remained. They can prove that, and they may prove they were caught in an act of human sacrifice.

  “Did the explosion of Santorini cause desperate acts? Inexplicable forces may have forced these ancient people to offer the most valuable thing they possessed. Human life.”

  Father Dimitrios paused, distracted by the red-faced Aristides as he glanced around the church at the spellbound congregation. Anger rose up in Aristides’ face and he scowled toward the priest, whispering: “Look what you’re doing, you fool. You’re giving the pagan excavation up there status. They will all dream of it tonight. You bloody fool.”

  The priest continued. “The history of sacrifice is a long one. The Old Testament speaks of Hebrew sacrifices to God. They too held animal sacrificial rituals. These rituals included the spilling of living blood just as the Minoans had done many years before.

  “We read in the Bible of the sacrificial lamb used to appease God, the sins of the world being cleansed by sacrificing the blood of a lamb. Through blood our sins are cleansed. That is what Christ meant at the Last Supper when he said of the wine: ‘Drink, this is my blood,’ and he said of the bread: ‘Eat, this is my body.’ This is what God meant when he said he gave his only begotten son to free us from all sin and evil. It was his sacrifice, the blood sacrifice of death that was to free us all. To this day through Holy Communion you are cleansed by the wine, representing the blood of Christ.

  “Each week, through ritual, we reenact Christ’s death, participate in his sacrifice through communion. Each week we relive his sacrifice to us. This is the very foundation of our faith, the cornerstone of Christian belief, and yet who among you today know of it, know what it really means to be baptized or take communion? How many of you go through the motions, but without any knowledge of its real meaning? I ask this of all of you because I fear we lose sight of the true purpose. We have created rituals in our faith from sacrificial blood. The Minoans on Oaxsa were performing a ritual of blood sacrifice by offering the blood back into the earth from which they believed all life began. The shepherds on the mountains of Crete perform a ritual each spring with a young lamb in much the same way. Then they feast, as we feast upon the holy bread. Our history is long and rich and we can benefit from knowledge of it. Our history is steeped in sacrificial rituals.

  “Their ancient ceremonies we now call pagan rites, but upon inspection, they performed them as an act of obedience to their gods, just as we perform our rituals, a celebration of our obedience to Christ our Lord. The winds of the past blow into the present.”

  Aristides’ face turned crimson. He was enraged. He stood to his feet, scowling at the priest, then the congregation. He shook his head furiously and walked to the pulpit, facing the priest. He bared the golden tooth as he spoke with a sharp whisper. “Have you lost you mind? You may well lose your church should the Archdiocese hear of this outrageous sermon linking those devil worshippers up there, those murderers, with the ritual of our church.” He stood back and pointed at the priest. “You have lost the word of God. You speak like the devil.”

  He gathered his wife and daughter and marched down the central aisle, aiming for the door, glancing once at Steffanakis. Their stares rushed toward each other, wild bulls colliding, a skull-cracking moment frozen for all to witness and not forget. Aristides then pushed his way through the crowd and departed, leaving the rumble of whispers behind him.

  Father Dimitrios closed his eyes, lifting his face to the church dome as if in prayer. He raised his hands in the air to ask for quiet, but he could not quiet the pounding in his heart.

  “And what sacrifice does God ask of us today?” He paused, looking about the church as though someone might raise his or her hand and answer. He looked down at his notes. His stovepipe hat began to slip. He straightened it, and then continued. “Do you make a sacrifice by avoiding sin and living a holy life in God’s eyes? That would be the view of the Church, of course. Or is it meaningful to say we should sacrifice our anger, our jealousy and ego, replacing them with kindness and understanding and love? Is it too much to ask of us to be generous in spirit and generous in deeds? Or is our nature dependent on being aggressive, jealous and self-absorbed? Can we love God out of love and not out of fear? If we can do this we can join our hands to His. Not in another time, but here, while we are living. Now this, my friends, is the art of loving and the subject of another sermon.”

  Seeing worried eyes surrounding him, Father Dimitrios cut the sermon short. The words of Aristides filled his skull. The priest raised one hand to signal to the three-voice choir that the service had ended. He stepped from the pulpit to serve the holy cubes of bread that had been blessed for every man, woman and child to ingest. The line for the bread was unusually long and Father Dimitrios handed out each small bread square in a subdued manner. He could see by their faces, their manner, that the disturbance had affected nearly everyone.

  Look at them, he thought. Are those the eyes of embarrassment or the eyes of distrust? I cannot sense the difference. Look at them. I have created more fear, not less. I have spoken outside my realm, but I did speak the truth. Ah, the archaeologist. He stands in the back in silence. In silence he stands. Silence. He has learned the art of silence. I have not.

  The priest looked up to attract the expressionless eyes of Steffanakis who was standing against the back wall of the church. Look up, Mimis, he willed. He wanted to make contact; his eyes stretched out for acknowledgment. Nothing. He knew they were too far apart. The church air was thick with incense, heavy and unforgiving. The choir trio sang loud and shrill through the loudspeakers. The priest’s subtle glance went unnoticed. Mimis turned and walked out the door.

  Athens, Greece

  September 30, 1980

  VILLAGE PRIEST PREACHES OF THE OCCULT

  w

  ithin a week of Father Dimitrios’ sermon, a newspaper story with this headline was published in Heraklion. It told of people storming out of a church when a local priest had linked murderous ancient sacrifices to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. The article refrained from mentioning the church by name but attributed the story to the Elefsis area.

  A follow-up article in an Athens newspaper inflamed the Church hierarchy by mentioning both the priest and the church by name. The article accused Father Dimitrios Vassilio of urging villagers not to dismiss pagan rituals, but to embrace them. Both articles caused the many-headed monster of rumour to grow.

  The reports created an avalanche of hostile messages to be sent to the Church of St Constantino and Eleni. Father Dimitrios tried arduously to defend himself, but how could he defend himself against rumour?

  F
ather Dimitrios knew the Bishop of Crete and the Archbishop in Athens were troubled by the publicity. His explanation on the telephone had not satisfied the Bishop of Crete nor, he suspected, anyone else in the archdiocese hierarchy. The media continued to run with the story, forcing the Archbishop to summons Father Dimitrios to Athens.

  The priest obeyed, travelling to Athens the following week. As he sat in the majestic hallway of St Paul Cathedral, he felt the weight of the publicity on him. In his briefcase he carried a copy of his exact sermon in order to prove that what was written in the newspaper was out of context and maliciously designed. He wanted to name Aristides but he could not be certain that the businessman was his sole enemy.

  Father Dimitrios knew he could argue the truth of the case with clarity and indignation. The certainty of his innocence seemed so clear. There was the simple truth of it, or was the truth more brittle than he thought? Amidst a barrage of media publicity, would they be prepared to defend him, the rogue priest? Was there not a simple solution for these Generals of the Church? He heard the words of Aristides: “Have you lost your mind? You will lose your church … you have lost the word of God. You speak like the devil.”

  Dimitrios sat alone for two hours in the massive cathedral beneath the heavily gilded Corinthian columns. Everything was dripping in gold. The air, like the surroundings, was glistening, almost wet, reminding him again of Aristides’ glistening tooth and his last words: “… because you may lose your church.”

  As he waited, the overpowering largesse of the hallway began to feel hollow and godless to him. Vainglorious. So often he felt that church architecture was designed not to inspire, but more, to leave humans in awe. Cathedrals, with their embellishments and riches, seemed closer to God and yet, at the same time, colder, more distant. Father Dimitrios could see the paradox of man’s religions in trying to construct a house of worship commensurate to the awe of God. As churches were made larger and the heavenly painted domes higher, the more diminutive the people within them became. As the priest looked to the ceiling, an ugliness descended.