Remembering Greece

I was just reminded of the beauty of Greece.

I've just been washing my hair, and when I wash my hair I take my ring of my finger, it's a double ring, one hand clasping another, and the hands are separate, it would snag in my hair if I kept it on, it's the only time I take it off. As I put the ring back onto my finger I just thought about how it all happened, when I truly said - God you are my everything, and no one else is ever going to have me, as the Misty Edwards song said "I say goodbye to my mother, my father, to every other love and I press on" whenever I hear those words I feel like I'm being reclaimed by God.

I don't remember all of my trip to Greece, I remember some of the grief that I took from my class, but mostly I remember the sheer beauty of standing watching the sun rays shine down over Delphi and Mycenae, the snow at Epidavrous (how perilous is walking across marble in snow!!) standing in the altis at Olympia and understanding how at these places the beauty of God's creation shines so brightly that there was no doubt that they gods were present. I've walked down the main road in Corinth, and imagined the buzz of the market and people who would have been around. I have knelt in the chapel at Ὅσιος Λουκᾶς (Holy Luke) in Boetia, and been provided for by the almighty in the Agora of Athens.

During that trip I was so overwhelmed that I bought a ring, a ring on which I made a covenant with God, that I would be His, and remain faithful, that nothing would ever stop me from worshipping Him, that I would be in his service into eternity and I would do what he asks of me. This ring was a beautiful but flimsy thing, and when it broke almost three years later, I bought a new ring, I saw this ring, clasping hands, and I knew that if I took that ring and wore it, how much it would symbolise God hanging on to me. Just like He was that day I almost fainted in the middle of the Agora, just like He was when I said 'enough of this' and the anxiety and depression left me completely (after 4 hours of prayer that stripped away everything) and for the first time in almost 14 years I felt complete unadulterated joy.

There are not three ages of God as Joachim of Fiore suggested, indeed revelation of God ended with Jesus Christ, there is no more revelation, but what there is, is God reminding us, through inspiration and dreams and visions of who we are made to be, who He has called us to be and how we need to do that. I have seen a church united, and I will not stop until I have seen this dream come into being.