It is, of course, the latter. In the early Byzantium period it was not unusual for supplicants to follow John’s example and seek salvation through asceticism in the Wilderness. The shelter of cave dwelling as a hermit followed naturally and as caves tend to come in clusters, building a surrounding wall around them for safety - and the company and discipline of congregation - was the next progression. As enlightened hermits attracted their own devotees the congregations needed an organized structure and by the time Mars Saba was founded, in about 550 AD, there were already fifty or so monasteries in this John the Baptist desert part of the Holy Land; there would later be as many as one hundred and fifty; now there are nine, of which Mars Saba is the most prominent and permanent. It cannot however claim total permanence from 550 AD: in 614 the Persian army invaded and massacred all four hundred monks in residence; their skulls are still neatly arranged in the Chapel of the Cross cave in Mars Saba, as neatly arranged as the prayer cushions in an Anglican church in the English shires. Within two weeks of the Persian massacre other hermits from nearby caves came to bury the dead, preserve the skulls and revive the monastery.
***
In Mark Twain’s time all monasteries were open to pilgrims and travelers, and as he wrote: “The convents are a priceless blessing to the poor. A pilgrim without money, whether he be a Protestant or a Catholic, can travel the length and breadth of Palestine, and in the midst of her desert wastes find wholesome food and a clean bed every night, in these buildings. Pilgrims in better circumstances are often stricken down by the sun and the fevers of the country, and then their saving refuge is the Convent. Without these hospitable retreats, travel in Palestine would be a pleasure which none but the strongest men could dare to undertake.” He should have added Orthodox too, whether Greek, Syrian or Armenian - and it was Greek in the case of Mars Saba.
For himself, “I have been educated to enmity toward everything that is Catholic, and sometimes, in consequence of this, I find it much easier to discover Catholic faults than Catholic merits. But there is one thing I feel no disposition to overlook, and no disposition to forget: and that is, the honest gratitude I and all pilgrims owe, to the Convent Fathers in Palestine. Their doors are always open, and there is always a welcome for any worthy man who comes, whether he comes in rags or clad in purple.”
***
Not so today. Firstly, of course, there has been a massive decline in Christianity as a whole in the region. In Twain’s time there were about half a million people in the Holy Land; one reads estimates of a quarter of them being Christian - and devoutly Christian too. Today, although the population has increased twentyfold the number of Christians has declined to about five per cent - and many - most - of those are lackadaisical in their worship. Secondly, religious intolerance has increased as every headline will aver, partly because the Muslims associate Zionism with Judaism, partly because Judaism associates Islam with terrorism and partly because the Christian bloc has fractured into increasingly acrimonious factions. And thirdly, the whole concept of monastic life sits at odds with the way we live today; it is no longer a variation on home life - and for most it was a variation with practical material advantages - but a complete repudiation of how humans are living and how human conscious- ness is evolving.
All of which brings me to the current dilemma as I say goodbye to Mr. Farki and Gillian at the gate of Mars Saba. It is no longer possible to just arrive, Excursionists-style, at a Greek Orthodox convent and ask for shelter - or even a visit. As we have observed before, the Greek Orthodox Church in the Holy Land has gone off on a seemingly un-Christian tangent in its attitude to pilgrims, visitors and even to itself. As I write there has been a coup d’état in the Greek Orthodox Patriarchy in Jerusalem with the extant patriarch under house arrest and the current patriarch, a Greek, fighting off an Arab insurgency among his flock.
Sin-wise46 the problem has been sevenfold: a combination of wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy and gluttony - but especially greed. The fully titled “Patriarch of the Holy City of Jerusalem and all Palestine, Syria, beyond the Jordan River, Cana of Galilee, and Holy Zion” has accumulated massive holdings over the centuries and the temptation for a bit of asset stripping has become too much. While it was bad enough to sell church land to property speculators in Tel Aviv for apartment construction, it wasn’t such a good idea to get caught selling church-owned property in Jerusalem’s Old City to right-wing Zionist settler groups like (but not) Ateret Cohanim. It gets worse. Recently it has come to light that the patriarchate has been selling land in East Jerusalem to proxies for the Israeli government for more settlements on land the Palestinian Christians - and all Palestinians - hope will be part of a future Palestinian state. The scandal has now gone diplomatic with the Greek, Israeli and Jordanian governments, the Greek Patriarchy in Athens, the Israeli Supreme Court and the Palestine Authority all trying to protect their positions. Meanwhile the extant patriarch, languishing behind bars in Jerusalem, has been demoted to a monk and refused criminal immunity by the Greek government - under pressure from Israel, Jordon, Hamas and common decency - after he sought voluntary repatriation for himself and his burgeoning bank account.
So back to my dilemma. For a non-Orthodox to stay, or even visit, at Mars Saba one needs written permission from the patriarchate in Jerusalem but in view of all the shenanigans they have not replied to my phone messages, then emails and lastly a registered letter. Cold calling didn’t work either. Meanwhile in Jerusalem I heard that convents like Mars Saba are so disenchanted with the patriarchate that they are rowing their own boat. I decide the only option is to arrive alone (as the Muslim Mr. Farki and the female Gillian certainly won’t be allowed in) with copies of the correspondence and appeal to their better selves. If unsuccessful I am to call Mr. Farki and Gillian and they’ll come and fetch me; it is as we say goodbye we realize there is no cell phone signal in the middle of the Judean desert. Oh, for the simplicities of a caravanserai parked on the doorstep.
I need not have worried. The gate opens and particularly hirsute monk ushers me in unspoken in a swish of black robes. I am led down the first of many staircases to a courtyard and the refectory off it and gestured to sit. All the windows are wide open and a hint of a breeze cools the air. It is about four in the afternoon and a shadow dissects the room. After ten minutes a young monk, in his late twenties, arrives and says, “Yes?”
I introduce myself and explain about Mark Twain and the patriarchate. I show him the correspondence but he just glances in their direction. I start to explain who Mark Twain was but he holds up his hand - he knows. He looks at me intently and I’m disarmed by his kind eyes and fear my explanation must seem a rush from another world.
“My name is Father Spiro. How long do you want to stay?” he asks softly. “Well I’m following Mark Twain’s footsteps, so one night if possible, just as he did.”
“I hope you are not too hungry,” he smiles by way of acceptance. “We live simply.” Outside bells chime.
He shows me to the room - up a dozen steps - one is always going up and down steps in this place. Fr. Spiro is in his early forties, not late twenties, and has been here for fifteen years. He visited once with a pilgrim tour from Thessalonica and decided then and there to change his life, to “find God for myself, directly”. And the English? He was a teacher in Greece and now he reads the Bible47 in English - the proper King James version I’m pleased to report - as well as in Koine Greek.
The room, really a small cell, has stone floors, whitewashed walls broken up by a Greek Islands blue dado, a homemade bedstead, a dozen blankets for a mattress, coarse sheets and an embroidered cushion for a pillow, an empty shelf, a window, and a lantern. There’s a stool, a desk - homemade like the bedstead, two candles and a box of matches. Fr. Spiro sees me looking at them and laughs: “There is no electricity. And this is one of our luxury cells for visitors.”
***
When Mark Twain stayed he
re there were seventy monks; now there are twenty. He was at first shocked by their life choice, then the next day apologetic for being shocked - of which more later. “They wear a coarse robe, an ugly, brimless stove-pipe of a hat, and go without shoes. They eat nothing whatever but bread and salt; they drink nothing but water. As long as they live they can never go outside the walls, or look upon a woman - for no woman is permitted to enter Mars Saba, upon any pretext whatsoever.
“Some of those men have been shut up there for thirty years. In all that dreary time they have not heard the laughter of a child or the blessed voice of a woman; they have seen no human tears, no human smiles; they have known no human joys, no wholesome human sorrows. All that is lovable, beautiful, worthy, they have put far away from them; against all things that are pleasant to look upon, and all sounds that are music to the ear, they have barred their massive doors and reared their relentless walls of stone forever. They have banished the tender grace of life and left only the sapped and skinny mockery. Their lips are lips that never kiss and never sing; their hearts are hearts that never hate and never love; their breasts are breasts that never swell with the sentiment, ‘I have a country and a flag.’ They are dead men who walk.”
I presume Twain and the New Pilgrims stayed in the same row of “luxury cells” as I am staying in and at least observed the same regime as I’m following now. Fr. Spiro has told me I’ve missed the one meal of the day, always bread and salt, boiled vegetables and feta cheese, which they take at midday “when the sun is at its fiercest”. They only drink water. He told me the monks were resting in their cells now.
***
“I’ll say good night.” It was twenty to five. “Do you wish to join us for morning office?”
“Yes,” I reply, “I’d like that very much. And to join in everything else that you do while I’m here.”
“Very well. The church bells ring to wake the monks. A hand bell will sound outside our door to wake you too.”
It’s too early to sleep and anyway I have the day’s travels to wash away. I climb down to the communal washing area, aware that even bare foot my rubbing trousers are making far too much noise. Back in the cell I am writing down these notes and thoughts, waiting for it to be dark enough to enjoy the excitement of lighting a match to light the lantern and candles. There are adjustments to be made: the feeling of a sudden vacuum and empty space after all the activity at Jericho and the Dead Sea, then a feeling of having to fill the space, and then living in the peace of having nothing to do, nowhere to go, no need to plan, no one to talk to, no questions to answer, no reason to rush, no past to recall and no future in which to escape; just, being here, sitting quietly, doing nothing.
Ding-dong-ding-dong; ding-dong-ding-dong. The sleep is deep, the ringing is urgent and from high above the cell. When we first wake up our different faculties wake up in turn: first the universal feeling of existence, then the memory, then the shared intelligence and then the egoic mind. Mind wants to know what time it is so it can start bossing me around. I strike a match and see it’s one o’clock and lie back down and fall asleep as the ringing from the campanile continues outside. Ding-dong-ding-dong; ding-dong-ding-dong. The ringing is now from right outside the door. The struck match shows one thirty. Still back to doze if not to sleep. Ding-dong-ding-dong; ding-dong- ding-dong. This time the bells from the campanile above again, joined now by other flatter sounds from closer bells. Five to two. Can prayers really start at two? They do; at two all the bells in the monastery ring in unison, if not in harmony, the storm before the calm.
I regret to report that I fall back to sleep but with every intention of getting up “soon”. “Soon” turns out to be just before five. In the cold and darkness I struggle into the clothes and feel my way down to where the sound of monastic chant and murmur is coming. The soft scent of frankincense guides me in.
One enters directly into the nave; there is no narthex, the space in which the non-Orthodox normally must wait. The basilica is lit by four lanterns resting on a high sill around the northern and southern walls and a dozen candles around the horos, the chandelier above the nave. The effect is to light the rim of the dome and the icons above eye height across the walls. The iconostasis, at the eastern end of the nave remains practically unlit. Below that the light is dim and flickering so the black-robed monks cannot be individually discerned, only heard as a mass, as it were.
The liturgy is heavily ritualized with breaks in the chanting, the noiseless swinging of frankincense in censers and ringing of hand bells. All chant and pray together in the biblical Koine Greek and all pray together facing the east, the monks behind the priest. One cannot help considering what a massive error it has been for the Catholic Church to reduce the language of their liturgy to everyday speech and have the priest turn towards the congregation and not towards God, thereby turning the sacred and the mystical into a sort of humdrum business convention. The Orthodox tradition is still with purpose another world, one beyond the analytical mind to dissect and justify, an artificially created parallel universe which invites its devotees to forsake their egos and join the Godhead in a state of presence leading to transcendence.
This similarity between the Eastern Orthodox tradition, with which I am not familiar, and the Vedantic tradition, which is more home ground, became clear at first light, just before six o’clock. The monks have by then been at prayer for four hours, filling the monastery with the same chants and prayers and murmurs that its walls have heard, apart from the two-week Persian incursion, every morning for the last 1460 years. The early light shows the Christ Pantocrator - the creator of the universe - in the dome. Below that and above the iconostasis hang three large icons of Father, Son and Spirit - not three gods but God as Three, very intentionally mythological and therefore available, with devotion and discipline, charity and compassion, to human comprehension - even if, by the terms and conditions of Reality, ultimately ineffable.
***
We shall never know if Mark Twain saw or maybe even heard any of this liturgy, although he could hardly have missed the constant, and seemingly random, peeling of bells; it is not mentioned in The Innocents Abroad, or in his notes, or articles for the Alta California, or as far as I can tell subsequently at all. However, his stay at Mars Saba did have an effect on him. When he arrived he commented rather acidly about the monks as quoted above and yet the next morning he was moved to observe:
“These hermits are dead men, in several respects, but not in all. There is something human about them somewhere. They knew we were foreigners and Protestants, and not likely to feel admiration or much friendliness toward them. But their large charity was above considering such things. They simply saw in us men who were hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and that was sufficient. They opened their doors and gave us welcome. They asked no questions, and they made no self-righteous display of their hospitality. They fished for no compliments. They moved quietly about, setting the table for us, making the beds, and bringing water to wash in, and paid no heed when we said it was wrong for them to do that when we had men whose business it was to perform such offices.
“We fared most comfortably, and sat late at dinner. We walked all over the building with the hermits afterward, and then sat on the lofty battlements and smoked while we enjoyed the cool air, the wild scenery and the sunset. It was a royal rest we had.”
He does not elaborate on why these “dead men who walk” should now be seen differently, but my instinct is that he not only came across charity at Mars Saba, as he acknowledged, but he also came across love, and came across it for the first time since the Holy Land tour started. I’m imagining that the Holy Land Semites whom Mark Twain came across are very much, deep down, the same Holy Land Semites one comes across today. Now although the Semites, Jewish or Muslim, have many fine qualities - hospitality, honesty, generosity, courtesy - I cannot really say that love, in the Christian sense, is among them. My feeling is that
when Twain came across pure, unconditional, unsentimental love at Mars Saba he was taken aback by the experience.
I think it’s fair to say that the evolved liturgy and symbolism notwith-standing, the Eastern Orthodox tradition is far closer to the original message of Christianity than the Western one; if nothing else the language of prayer is the same. Our Western understanding of the Trinity as mentioned above, for example, has lost all its original mythological and mystical flavor and has become a barren intellectual concept to be argued this way and that in the same evolved language in which the revised message is heard. Jesus himself was after all a Galilean Hellenic Jew, and the Greco-Roman Jew Paul took his version of the meaning of Jesus’ life, turned into the sacrifice of Christ’s death and took the message that became Christianity to a Hellenized gentile world. Neither Jesus nor Paul were unreconstructed Semites. It’s a short leap from self-sacrifice to universal-love, a longer leap from Pauline Christianity to Eastern Orthodoxy but given time the connection is there. The quality of Love after all transcends time; Love is perfect kindness, also timeless. What Mark Twain experienced was descended directly from Christ’s message of love - and in the Holy Land would have come as much a shock for him then as it has for me here at Mars Saba now. I would only suggest to Sam that it is because they live as hermits and without ego that he found Love here, and not in spite of them living like hermits as he implies; a sort of TLUC in reverse.
Innocence and War Page 27