Morning Walk

I slept deeply last night, but woke at 5 a.m. and couldn't get back to sleep, so I took a walk around the hotel when I finally gave up at 5:45. We are literally across the street from Hadrian's arch. Andy says his sense of awe is not as strong this time, but mine is--I still find the arch breathtaking. I walked around the perimeter of the gated temple and down some side streets. There were already people heading to work, the air heavy with pollution. A few stray dogs begged me for food. Hardly anyone was walking on the streets--I saw only two women waiting for a bus, one runner (I think she was American), and a man who was in a hurry. Nobody makes eye contact in the city except the hotel workers and bartenders and shop owners. I am used to greeting everyone I see in Morris, whether or not I know them, but here, the women looked suspiciously at me when I greeted them, as did the man. I looked funny, I'm sure, with my long t-shirt and gym shorts, and as usual, I'm very conscious of my accent and my struggle with the language.

When I got back to the hotel, I did yoga for about a half hour, feeling every muscle giving in to the positions, stretching, stretching. I feel like I am letting go of grief and fear here, like part of this trip will be about facing those emotions squarely and moving forward and through. I sat on my balcony and drank some water. I am facing an apartment building, and two elderly women were out on their balconies, tending flowers and mopping the floor. One of them gave me a half-smile. I love how the old women here create gardens everywhere they go, even in the middle of this city, even on the ugly concrete balcony facing a hotel made for American tourists. One of the balconies has some artwork by someone named Leni. They appear to be carved concrete blocks with paint on them, but it's hard to tell. Leni signed each block in the corner and included the year, ranging from 1986 to 1989. Whoever she is, she is talented. I imagine she made these pieces for her yiayia or her mother, that she's my age now and did these pieces in her teens. I feel myself easing back into the writer's mindset. Maybe I'll actually get to work on the novel I drafted two years ago from my research. Being here has got to inspire a return to that piece, and I owe the women activists I interviewed, now old women living in apartments or homes in the Athens suburbs, a finished novel that witnesses to their roles in World War II and the Civil War, stories that, as one woman told me, "Americans need to understand."

The shops below me, along the street, are opening now. I can hear the men talking about last night's soccer game and about a sale one of them made yesterday to a blond American. (Last night, the "football" fans were loud, shouting and singing all night long, and I would wake occassionally and vaguely register their voices--Greek, Italian, another language I didn't recognize). The birds' songs are starting to fade into the background as the voices on the street grow clearer, but at 5 a.m., they were loud and insistent on my getting up, calling back and forth, back and forth.

It's almost time for breakfast, so I'm going to head downstairs. Today we go to the Acropolis and some other ancient sites in the cities, and then have our first class session in the late afternoon. I look forward to being there again and hope it's not too crowded...

In Athens

I am in Athens! It is 12:20 a.m., so I'm heading to bed shortly, but it feels good to be back in Greece. Returning to Greece is always a strange feeling--half homecoming, half entering a strange land in which I'm only a passing visitor with a strange Kariotiko accent decorated with old-fashioned words--when I can find the right words.

My friend Andy and I are teaching a class in cross-cultural aging again this year. We'll visit Athens and Kalavrita--and spend a lot of time in class--between now and Sunday, when we'll head to Ikaria, the island my family is from, the place that feels most like "home" to me besides my little house in Morris, MN. Visits to the "gerokomeio" in Ikaria are an important part of this service-learning study abroad class. Two years ago, we painted a mural, planted a garden, created a brochure to recruit more volunteers, and created a scrapbook of stories based on interviews with the elders. We also planned daily activities, from teaching the elders to make chocolate chip cookies to dancing the macarena along with traditional Greek dances. It will be easier to teach the class this year because we know the staff and know the literature--but I am sure this year will prove to be a different kind of adventure in one way or another.

I didn't sleep on the flight, even though we met at 8:15 a.m. in Minneapolis, traveled to Atlanta, where we had a four hour layover, and then headed to Athens on an 11 hour flight. I don't know why; I'm usually a good plane sleeper. But once I got into my little private room at the Hotel Parthenon, I sat on the balcony and had a beer, then fell into a deep sleep for four hours. I met up with Andy for dinner later. We went to our favorite restaurant from two years ago, called Platanos. It was comforting to see the same waiters who had waited on us before and great to catch up. Later, we sat in the hotel bar and prepped for the first couple days of class. Our students wandered into the hotel; they'd all gone exploring and already had stories, which is a good sign.

Soon I'll get to see my family members who are in Athens--cousins, aunts, and uncles--albeit for a brief visit. In Ikaria, I'll get to see Theo Aleko, Thea Mary, and Theo Foti, who live there year-around; the others on my dad's side have homes in Athens now. I have family on my mom's side that I'm going to try to reconnect with--but we're here for only three short weeks.

Returning, as I said, is bittersweet. I love the smell of the city, love the Plaka, love the surprise on people's faces when I respond to their English questions in my semi-functional Greek. I love seeing the excitement on students' faces who are in Greece for the first time, watching them click photos through the moving bus window on the way home from the airport.

But I will miss my cousin Lia's wedding, the oldest of my younger second cousins with whom I'm very close. Two years ago, I met up with my partner at the end of the class to explore Athens, Olympia, and Skala Erasou in Lesvos with her--returning to Greece is another reminder of the break up, but I think it may also be the last passage through my mourning. I feel torn about the decision not to stay longer on this trip, not to continue research I started two years ago (interviewing women elders who had been activists during the the civil war), not to spend more time with family--but I am focused on the adoption process and focused also on saving money and paying off my debts, so I know I made the right decision.

I remember, too, those I've lost--my Thea Agglaia who died while I was here in 1998, my Thea Sophia, Theo Harlambo, and Thea Bethlehem, who died soon after that trip. I feel so grateful that I got to spend a lot of time with them before they died, but again, returning is a reminder of those losses. I am sure when we arrive at the gerokomeio we will discover that some of our beloved elders from the trip in 2005 are also dead now. And yet our project--to create lasting supports to the elders at the nursing home, as well as to improve their daily quality of life while we are in Ikaria--continues. It feels right to go back, and I am grateful for the opportunity--for Andy's willingness to give it another go, for my friend Deb's willingness to serve as a second translator (since cousin Dean is in the U.S. for his sister's wedding--he'll be missed!), for the willingness of the nursing home staff to welcome us back, and for the willingness of our 12 students this term to take the risk of studying and serving on this trip.

I'll keep everyone posted, at least while I'm in Athens, where I have e-mail/blog access while in Athens for free from my hotel. Two years ago, I couldn't seem to get access in Ikaria, but we'll see...

Really Listening

Acts 11:1-18
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13: 31-35

A few weeks ago, a former student of mine and I took a walk around town to talk about our very different spiritual beliefs. I approached her because she had hurt some GLBT students in conversations about her faith; she admitted immediately as we started walking that her goal was to convince them that they were not living the life they should be by living as “out” GLBT people. Our conversation was not an easy conversation, to say the least, but in the end, we hugged, and she agreed to be more careful about how she approaches GLBT people about her faith, and I agreed to try to be more accepting of the Evangelicals I encounter, working to treat them with love instead of anger. We both feel equally strongly that we are right about our reading of the bible; we both feel equally strongly that we have the truth about what Jesus’ message means in relation to GLBT people.

At one point, we talked about what made us each so sure we were right, and how we could come to such different conclusions. She accused me of using the bible for my own purposes; of course, it would be convenient for me, since I am a lesbian, to decide that God thinks it’s OK for me to be a lesbian as long as I live a life committed to social justice. It’s convenient for her to believe that it’s not OK to be GLBT; this gives her a focus for her ministry and allows her to be certain her own sexual orientation is OK with God.

We started out by talking about the bible and its historical context, but in the end we ended up admitting to each other that it’s not only about the texts, but also about our private prayers, our own deep seeking for truth. She said to me, “Do you believe you could change your mind? Because I believe God changes people every day.” I said, “Well, do you believe you could change your mind?” She said yes. I have to give her credit for this; I am so certain of the messages I’ve received along the way about my sexuality that I have no doubt that I am right about what I believe on this issue, and ultimately, on most social issues (though there are some more private/personal matters over which I struggle regularly and for which I do not see a clear-cut answer).

So when I encountered the story of St. Peter’s dream of the unclean animals today, I was struck most by the line, “Who was I to think I could oppose God?” St. Peter dreamed that a large sheet of “unclean” animals was lowered before him, and that God told him to kill and eat. He refused, saying he would not eat anything unclean, but God persisted, saying, “Do not call anything unclean that God has made clean.” In this way, he knew he was supposed to spread the gospel to Gentiles. When he explained his dream to those who opposed his new ministry, he ended with the question, “Who was I to think I could oppose God?”

Here is a story about a man who listened to God’s voice rather than listening to the teachings of his faith community. To me, the story is so clearly about opening the gates, the doors, and our arms to people who don’t fit the norm, a story about listening to the message God gives each of us personally about what work we should do in the world. Of course, my student would probably tell me I am reading this story for my own purposes, using it to justify what she calls my “lifestyle.” When I look at the world through her eyes, I can understand why she thinks this. I think the same thing—that she and people like her are using the Bible for their own purposes, because certain elements of our current culture—like families that don’t fit the norm--are threatening to them for some reason.

Lifestyle is an interesting word. Many GLBT people find it offensive. We don’t live a cohesive “lifestyle,” because our lives are all very different. Right now I’m a single, celibate lesbian living in a small, rural town in the process of adopting a child. My “lifestyle” has more to do, at this time of year, with reviewing adoption profiles and grading final papers and writing out graduation notes than it does with anything related to my sexual orientation. I will be hosting the end-of-year GLBT student celebration at my home this week, but my work with GLBT students has more to do with being an advocate for equal rights for all people and wanting to help GLBT students survive their coming out process and thrive in a homophobic world—i.e., my work with them has very little to do with me.

Yes, I think I have a biblical and moral responsibility to do the work I do. But if someone asked me what my “lifestyle” was like, would I mention that I am committed to working for social justice in everything I do, and that I think about how I spend my time in terms of what activities will best sustain me for that work and best support that? Would I mention that I am a lesbian? Probably not. Probably I’d mention more mundane things, like grading papers and going to meetings and reading/writing during my free time and working toward parenthood. Even when I lived with my partner, I might have mentioned eating dinner together, or going away for the weekend, but probably not specifically that I was a lesbian--only that I had a companion whose gender was the same as mine. My student, however, would probably talk about what she had done to spread her faith. We both think of our lives as being infused with our faith, but we live this out in very different ways.

I learned recently that my old church community conducted a “staw poll” one Sunday and decided not to move forward with the open and affirming process. The process that was described to me seemed incredibly bizarre and based in paranoia. I can’t say for sure that this is what happened, as I was not there, but the process went like this: four Sundays were designated as Sundays when a straw poll might be taken. On each of these Sundays, someone drew a card from a cup that included three white cards and one orange card. On the Sunday that the orange card was drawn, a vote was taken. Apparently this was meant to ensure that neither group would fill the church with members on their side on the day the card was drawn—that the service that day would hold a typical weekly crowd. To me, this method speaks volumes to just how divided our society is on this issue, and just how paranoid we have become about the people on “the other side.”

I don’t want to make too much of my conversation with my former student, because ultimately, neither of us changed our minds after talking to the other. But we talked. And I think we listened to each other, as deeply as we could. We probably hurt each other in the process—I know I was hurt by some of the things she said that felt like personal attacks—but we talked, ultimately, more honestly, I think, than any two people on opposite sides of the issue had talked in my former church. Perhaps I am naïve to think this, but I have to believe that taking the time to engage has got to matter in the long run, that this willingness itself is transformative even if the result is not. And I thank her for taking me up on my invitation and going for that walk with me.