My Greek Odyssey

A Blessed Christmas and Happy New Year

2009-12-23T17:25:10-05:00

As we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, let's pray for peace and goodwill to all men while we remember Christians throughout the world who are persecuted and even martyred for their Faith. Best wishes for a blessed Christmas to all MGO readers and for a Happy New Year, 2010.

Panagia With Us All

2009-12-15T20:50:15-05:00

A Few of My Favorites

2009-12-13T19:25:04-05:00

I've added a new MP3 player named Streampad, as you can see at the bottom of the page. It automatically plays the MP3 files on this page. If you get tired of listening or would prefer to listen to your own music while surfing the web feel free to switch it off or choose another file. I'll add more later. Special thanks to Susan and Petros for finding the Poulopoulos track. 15-Savvatovrado_Stin_Kaisariani ΡΙΤΑ ΣΑΚΕΛΑΡΙΟΥ - ΤΟ ΔΙΧΤΥ Το κουρασμένο βήμα σου (Μπάμπης Μπακάλης) ΠΑΙΔΙ ΜΟΥ, ΩΡΑ ΣΟΥ ΚΑΛΗ! - FAREWELL, MY CHILD! Αποχαιρετισμός (θάλασσα)- Κ.Μουντάκης

The Deeper Meaning of Life

2009-12-11T14:58:24-05:00

From Spiritual Awakening, V0lume II of the Counsels of Elder Paisios People haven't grasped the deeper meaning of life. They don't believe in the other life. This is where the whole torment of life begins. "I've been wronged," someone says "others are happy, but I am not happy." They have aren't satisfied with what they have. Egoism enters into their life, and they are tormented. God loves everyone in the world. To each person He gave whatever is of benefit to him: stature, courage, beauty, intelligence and so on, whatever will be helpful, if utilized fully, for his salvation. And yet people are tormented. "Why am I like this, while he is like that?" But you have those qualities and he has other qualities. A Romanian fool for Christ who lived ascetically on the Holy Mountain said to someone who had such thoughts, " A bullfrog saw a buffalo and said, 'I too want to be a buffalo.' The frog huffed and puffed himself up so much that he finally burst. God made the one a frog nad the other a buffalo. The frog tried to be a buffalo and burst!" We must rejoice in the way has made each one of us. When a person is helped to believe in God and in the future, eternal life--that is when he grasps the deeper meaning of life--and repents and changes his way of life, divine consolation comes immediately with the Grace of God, which transforms the person and transforms all...

Separation and Loss:The Songs of Xenitia

2009-12-06T23:51:32-05:00

Down by the river Dafnos, by the dense rose bushes, three partridges are singing But one partridge isn't singing "My little partridge why aren't you singing?" "Why should I sing? What should I say?" I abandoned my mother without any solace. Don't cry my mother, Don't have a heavy heart. Our fate has written that we must part, Go home, mother, Farewell. The faded photographs speak to me. And the ghosts in them stare into my soul through their melancholy eyes. They speak of separation, of loss, and of mourning. Greeks have always been migrants, forced to leave their homelands for either economic or political reasons. Over the centuries, Greeks have likened migration to foreign lands or xenitia, to death itself, since both of these phenomena represent forms of separation and loss. Greek folk poetry in the tradition of songs of migrancy, ta tragoudia tis xenitias, cover a period from the fifteenth to the twentieth centuries. They relate the profound sense of loss, of loneliness and anonymity in a foreign place. In particular, the songs referred to the ways in which women experienced migration. The experience of being left behind to take care of elders and small children, being forced to marry older migrant men as picture brides and follow them to America or finally of migrating themselves. Even today, xenitia is still a part of the Greek reality. Greeks are still forced to migrate to improve their standard of living. In the old days however, before the advent of...

Children of the Diaspora

2009-11-27T19:59:51-05:00

I came across this video quite by accident but had to share it. Nowadays we often complain that the younger generation is hopeless. As I recall my elders weren't exactly optimistic about my own generation. Now and then I come across something that keeps hope alive. Bravo.

Obituary for Patriarch Pavle by Srdja Trifkovic

2009-11-19T13:07:02-05:00

Let us guard against inhumans, but let us guard even more against becoming inhuman ourselves. – Patriarch Pavle As the Bishop of Kosovo, Pavle faced tribulations that were of different nature but similar magnitude. In seeking to win over the Albanians of Kosovo during his wartime struggle to seize power, Tito promised them autonomy and duly proceeded to change the character of the province in their favor after the war. Over 100,000 Serbs were forced out of Kosovo by Albanian Quislings during World War II; incredibly, they were not permitted to return after 1945. An additional 200,000 Serbs left the province, often under duress, between the late 1950s and early 1980s. On the other hand, 200,000 Albanians from Albania settled on deserted Serbian farms after 1945. Their “cadres” took control of the local Communist apparatus. In 1948 the Albanians made a half of the population of Kosovo; by 1981 78 percent; and over 90 percent today. By the 1970s Orthodox priests in Kosovo were routinely harrassed. Bishop Pavle himself was assailed by an Albanian while walking to the post office in Prizren, and slapped in the face by another at the city’s main bus station. The authorities were invariably “unable” to identify the culprits, however, let alone to bring them to justice. Monastic properties were damaged or confiscated, well before the wave of KLA destruction unleashed by NATO in 1999. The biggest church in Metohia, in Djakovica, was demolished by the authorities to make room for a massive “Partisan” monument....

100 Years of Greek-American History

2009-11-14T23:41:31-05:00

The photos below are from various archives. They are included in a very well done and highly recommended documentary about Greek-Americans by Maria Iliou in collaboration with Alexander Kitroeff: The Journey: The Greek-American Dream. Above: A newly arrived immigrant at Ellis Island Right: A shopkeeper in front of his grocery store Below: Miners in Utah Right: Cooks at a Hotel Below: Newspapermen at a Greek language newspaper Left: A family picnic Right: Greek Independence Day Parade Below: Sponge divers in Tarpon Spring, Florida Above: Dr. George Papanicolaou, discoverer of the Pap Test Right: Easter service at a Greek Orthodox Church Below: Greek Battalion, World War II Above: Archbishop Iakovos and Dr. Martin Luther King in Selma Greek-American protesters in Washington, D.C. after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus

The Simpleton: A Short Story

2009-11-01T08:12:21-05:00

He was born with what seemed a perpetual smile on his face. His mother, in the throes of a deep depression and premature labor pains brought on by the execution of her husband by the Germans, had cursed God. And God in his wisdom had given her a son who the midwife had immediately understood would be a simpleton, a child that would never be like other children. Some of the villagers whispered it was the sins of the parents being visited on their offspring or was it simply God's way of laying his hand on all those who the life of the infant would touch. Nothing happens without a reason. In her madness and despair she named him Gelasios. Already weakened by hunger and the loss of blood in childbirth, she died two days later. He was given into the hands of a childless widow who loved him and raised him as her own. She had a solitary goat and it was that goat that helped them survive the stone years during and after the Occupation of Greece. Gelasios was the object of many village jokes and in spite of his innocent cheerfulness and genuine attempts to play with the other children, he was never fully accepted. It was just too easy to take advantage of him, naive to a fault, generous without exception. The village schoolteacher tried without success to teach him but gave up after two days, banishing him from school forever. The other children envied him....

At the Movies

2009-10-06T22:37:42-04:00

A nostalgic view of village life from a bygone era. This 1958 production from Finos Films highlights the collision between modernity and tradition in a small Greek village. It is about about the hilarious conflict between the newly arrived village doctor played by Orestes Makris and a savvy midwife, Georgia Vassiliadou. With English sub-titles.

Walking Down the Road

2009-10-04T19:45:41-04:00

For hundreds of years Greek life has been centered around village (horio) culture. During the postwar era, a gradual migration from remote villages to a handful of cities, primarily Athens and Thessaloniki, took place. Even when Greeks moved to a large city like Athens they congregated in neighborhoods that took on almost a village like culture that emphasized sociability and the maintenance of village ties. Village life is often the subject of much nostalgia, especially for those that were raised there as children. To be sure, rural poverty, the lack of opportunities and the periodic upheavals brought by war and occupation, forced many villagers to leave, either migrating to Greek cities or emigrating to foreign lands to find work. Life in the horio or village was characterized to some extent by a lack of cooperation, superstition and competition between families. It was also marked by a sense of solidarity in the face of outside dangers and a common religious and cultural context. Attributes that are very much in evidence on a wider scale in Greece, even today. Most Greeks share a lifelong ambition to build a house in the village of their parents. Many put a great deal of time, effort and money in restoring their ancestral homes. Like migrating birds they return on holidays like Easter, Christmas, the village patron Saint's day, or for weddings, baptisms and funerals. The populations of villages that are normally inhabited by sparse numbers of elderly residents during most of the year, swell instantly...

Refreshing Turkish Memories

2009-09-25T23:39:10-04:00

The very foundation of a civilization which is the heritage of centuries, the property of all mankind, has been gravely attacked. The sacred things of our religion have been defiled, seventy of our churches and houses of worship destroyed and most of them set on fire. Our sacred objects of religion were desecrated, floundered and plundered. The graves of our dead, including those of the Patriarchs were broken open. Newly buried corpses were torn to pieces, the bones of the dead removed from their resting places, scattered around and set on fire. Our clergy men were everywhere persecuted. When found they were manhandled, threatened with killing, and one of them was actually put to death. The immunity of private dwellings was violated, virgins were ravished, and even the sick, old and children were maltreated. All of us, without any defence, spent moments of agony, and in vain sought and waited for protection from those responsible for order and tranquillity. From a letter to Adnan Menderes from Patriarch Athenagoras November 15, 1955 For the Greeks of Constantinople, September is a time of remembrance. It marks the sad anniversary of the 1955 pogrom, an event that my family and I lived through and which changed our lives forever. Things would never be the same. For the few remaining Greeks still living in Turkey, most of them elderly and those of us who now live elsewhere, this month, in particular is a portent of a future in which the more things change, the...

Semper Fi, Nick

2009-09-11T19:17:03-04:00

It was a beautiful day. The kind that makes you happy to be alive. I got up early that Saturday morning, awakened by the birds chirping outside my bedroom window. My wife was still asleep as I crawled quietly out of bed on my way to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee. That done, I got dressed and walked out to the mailbox to collect the mail. It was wrapped up in a copy of the Hellenic Voice newspaper. I walked back to the kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee, grabbed the paper and went out to the porch to sit on a rocking chair. As I opened the paper my eyes fell on the front page photo of a young Marine. I didn't know this young man however I had seen that familiar youthful countenance and the steely determined look before. It reminded me of the faces of hundreds of Marines I had known in the course of my twenty two year career in the Corps. Cpl. Nick Xiarhos, U.S. Marine Corps, had been killed in action in Afghanistan. As a father, I thought about the inconsolable grief of his parents. I thought about my own sons and about the sons we have lost and the sons we will lose. I remembered also the palpable gut-wrenching fear one feels in combat and the struggle to overcome that fear. To do your duty and above all not let down those by your side. I wondered about...

Say My Name by Dean Kalimniou

2009-09-07T11:30:09-04:00

“The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names,” Chinese Proverb. Modern Greeks don’t generally hold Northern Epirotes in high esteem. They tend to equate them to Albanians, a people generally considered as culturally inferior in the common consciousness. This particular trait of self-loathing is nothing new by the way. When the Asia Minor refugees arrived in Greece, expecting to find a safe haven from persecution and intolerance, they too were segregated, isolated, and made subjects of derision. The irony is greater however, in the case of the Northern Epirotes, because their ancestor’s endeavours and bequests are responsible for the construction of most of the landmarks of Athens and the foundation of some of its most enduring educational and financial institutions. Having endured some of the harshest forms persecution for approximately seventy years, which they did stoically, their eyes forever fixed upon Greece as a symbol of hope, Northern Epirotes generally find that apathy at best is their compatriots’ response to their plight. Sometimes, that apathy inexplicably turns into hostility, as is the sorry case among some insular Epirot groups here in Melbourne, unaffiliated to the Panepriotic Federation of Australia, and as was recently attested to in a bizarre incident in Canberra where a representative of a Sydney Epirot group purported to tear up Australian Hellenic Council submissions to Parliament on the subject of human rights for Northern Epirotes, claiming that “there is no issue,” and implying that he had been asked by ‘higher Hellenic powers,” to...

The Enemy Within: An Interview with Elder Dionysios

2009-09-06T13:20:57-04:00

Source: What is Enlightenment Magazine Photo by Douglas Demetrios LyttleWIE: What is the ego? ARCHIMANDRITE DIONYSIOS: When Satan, who was the first and highest angel, looked away from God and turned his attention to himself, there we had the first seed of ego. He took his spiritual eyes from the view of the Holy Trinity, the view of the Lord, and he looked at himself and started to think about himself. And he said, "I want to put my throne in the highest place, and to be like Him." That moment started the history, the reality and the existence of ego—which is not in fact a reality, but the refusal of reality. Ego is the flower that comes out from the death of love. When we kill love, the result is the ego. WIE: What is the character of the ego? How does it manifest within a human being? AD: When we don't trust. Ego is born when we don't trust others. When we're afraid of others, when we need guns against others, then we need to have an ego because we are in the wrong way of life. We think only of ourselves, and we see only our ego. But when we see each other, when we trust each other, there is no need for ego, no reason for ego, no possibility for ego. WIE: So in the way you're speaking about it then, ego is the insistence on our separation, our independence? AD: Yes, on our solitude. Our...