Anita Mathias | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

A Hike up Corfu’s Mount Pandokrater; an abundance of wild spring flowers

View from an olive grove on Mt. Pandokrater towards Albania and the mainland of Greece.

We hiked up Corfu’s tallest mountain, Mount Pandokrater today—not to the summit, sadly, but still an enchanted hike.

I was astonished to see so many of the bulbs which I’ve bought for my gardens just growing wild—stands of beautiful wild isis, muscari and chionodoxia.

Muscari growing wild in the rocks on Mt. Pandokrater.

Wild iris, Mt. Pandokrater.

Lots of sage and thyme a wonderfully fragrant wild mint.

A bank of wild sage with white flowers, Mt. Pandokrater.

Wild Mint, Mt. Pandokrater

What an amazing micro-ecosystem! Massive cactus growing side by side with olive trees, a smorgasbord of wild flowers, and delicate spring bulbs.

Cactus, probably not native, on Mt Pandokrater.

A delicate white wild flower.

A close up of very plentiful red flower

Star of Bethlehem (?). There were several–all in the centre, between the two tire ruts.

I had read how criminals visit the Great Smokies National Park, and leave with trucks of rare wild orchids which they sell on for $20-40 each. Well, there were thousands of pounds of bulbs growing wild here—nature’s beneficence!

I read yesterday how a family survived at the edge of the taiga in Siberia for decades off berries and bark, unaware that World War II had happened. Even there in that frozen climate nature apparently offered them enough to just about survive. The world is charged with the goodness of God!

Flowers grew out of rocks, abundance and goodness even in the most unpromising times and environments.

Daisies find a foothold in the rocks.

A healthy theology methinks is best worked out in the sun, and fresh air, in God’s creation, your muscles sweaty from hard work, or hard walking. Ora et labora. Prayer needs some work, or some walking to ground it. Saint Benedict got it right again.

Images from April Rambles in Corfu (A guest post by Roy Mathias)

By Anita Mathias

Mirtiotissa Beach at high tide

Mirtiotissa beach, described by Lawerence Durrell as the most beautiful in the world, is certainly one of the most inaccessible on Corfu. Until recently, it was accessible only by a footpath. The modern road is reasonably wide but impossibly steep. Like many of Corfu’s West coast beaches, it is a small expanse of sand beneath steep cliffs, and according to the locals it gets smaller every year. (It’s also a nudist beach, but we reckoned (correctly) that is was too chilly to be nude.)

The Philoxenia Hotel, Ermones.

Neighbouring Ermones beach is fascinating.

Ermones Beach is a mixture of sand a tiny black pieces of seaweed.

The beach is a mixture of sand and small pieces of black seaweed; pleasantly bouncy under foot when dry, but a treacherous quagmire when wet. 04-DSCN6734

The sea is dark blue, light blue, black (from the sea weed) and white. It was a very stormy day (earlier we had lost our power because of a fallen tree) and the surf was wild.

Black and white surf, Ermones Beach Corfu.

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Inland it was peaceful and pastoral as usual

Sheep grazing in a wildflower meadow, near Ermones, Corfu.

A unusual mixed herd of horses, donkeys and cattle being fed hay in a forest.

Severely pruned grapes with buttercups and other wild flowers.

One of Palaeokastistra’s beaches, as lovely as ever. (Again, very little sand)

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What does the Greek say:? “Don’t even think of tethering your donkey here”?

A peaceful end of the day at Glyfada Beach — one of the large ones in the area

Sunset, Glyfada Beach, Corfu.

How Nature Resets our Minds and Bodies

By Anita Mathias

The bay where St. Paul was shipwrecked, Malta. From our Christmas holiday there.

I am in Corfu on holiday, mainly walking on beaches and forests, and totally resetting my mind, body and most of all, spirit!!

I have excerpted two articles I read recently on the healing, restorative powers of nature on both brain and body

How Nature Resets our Minds and Bodies (The Atlantic) : According to this interesting article in the Atlantic, “nature restores mental functioning in the same way that food and water restore bodies.

Psychologists studying attention restoration theory, or ART, say that unlike draining urban environments, forests, streams, rivers, lakes, and oceans demand very little from us, though they’re still engaging, ever changing, and attention-grabbing. They give us the chance to think as much or as little as we’d like, and the opportunity to replenish exhausted mental resources.

Healers in Japan and Germany have long heralded the benefits of natural therapy, recognizing that humankind has spent 99.99 percent of its history living in natural environments. People who are exposed to natural scenes aren’t just happier or more comfortable; the very building blocks of their physiological well-being also respond positively to natural therapy.

Natural environments promote calmness and well-being in part because they expose people to low levels of stimulation. Interesting locations, including busy natural environments, are so beneficial that physicians have begun to suggest that they might offer a cheap and effective way to lessen the effects of certain cancers. Nature is an inexpensive and effective tool for dulling the impact of illness, and the intrusion of everyday stress.”

Easing Brain Fatigue with a Walk in the Park (The New York Times)

“Scientists known for some time that the human brain’s ability to stay calm and focused is limited and can be overwhelmed by the constant noise and hectic, jangling demands of modern life, sometimes resulting in a condition informally known as brain fatigue.

With brain fatigue, you are easily distracted, forgetful and mentally flighty.

But an innovative new study from Scotland suggests that you can ease brain fatigue simply by strolling through a leafy park.

The idea that visiting green spaces like parks or tree-filled plazas lessens stress and improves concentration is not new. Researchers have long theorized that green spaces are calming, requiring less of our so-called directed mental attention than busy, urban streets do. Instead, natural settings invoke “soft fascination,” a beguiling term for quiet contemplation, during which directed attention is barely called upon and the brain can reset those overstretched resources and reduce mental fatigue.

Previous studies have found that people who live near trees and parks have lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, in their saliva than those who live primarily amid concrete, and that children with attention deficits tend to concentrate and perform better on cognitive tests after walking through parks or arboretums.

The use of portable EEGs confirmed the idea that green spaces lessen brain fatigue.

Jenny Roe, a lecturer at Heriot-Watt’s School of the Built Environment, who oversaw the study said “Natural environments still engage the brain, but the attention demanded is effortless. It’s called involuntary attention in psychology. It holds our attention while at the same time allowing scope for reflection,”

The study suggests that you should consider “taking a break from work,” Dr. Roe said, and “going for a walk in a green space or just sitting, or even viewing green spaces from your office window.” This is not unproductive lollygagging, Dr. Roe helpfully assured us. “It is likely to have a restorative effect and help with attention fatigue and stress recovery.”

Wandering in Corfu in 7 Quick Takes

By Anita Mathias

Halikouna Beach, Corfu

A Day in Corfu in 7 Quick Takes

1 A glorious day in Corfu. Walked for miles, okay 7.22 km to be exact, on the Korission Lagoon, ocean on one side, a manmade lagoon, now a nature reserve on the other. We had the beach entirely to ourselves for hours, an unexpected experience of a lonely planet.

Halikouna Beach, Corfu, all to ourselves.

Korission Lagoon, Corfu

2 The Corfiots are a truly friendly helpful people, who go out of their way to help you—driving miles out of their way and asking us to follow us to the Lagoon when their English and our Greek could not patch together understandable directions.

Philoxenia, kindness to strangers, is a value they prize—and in line with a recent New York Times article that kindness, helpfulness and generosity actually help you get ahead in business and in life, this artless philosophy is good business. Tourism is the major source of income, and nobody who comes to Corfu could fail to want to come again, or recommend it!

This openness is apparent in the airport, the most borderless I’ve seen (apart from driving into the Republic of Ireland from Northern Ireland. Turn the corner, see the EU starry symbol, and a welcome to Ireland, and there you are)! In Corfu, we just walked through a line holding up an EU passport, which an official perfunctorily eyeballed. We had a US and a UK passport on us being dual citizens, but quickly produced the British one, and we were through in seconds. No stamps, and such like fuss!

I look forward for the day when Europe will be truly one country, the United States of Europe, like the United States of America. What a fascinating powerhouse it will be!

3 Corfu has all the blessings and abundance of a beneficent climate. Every garden has a lemon tree, and often an orange and fig tree or so.

A lemon tree just outside our apartment.

The lemons are huge and ripe

A roadside orange tree.

In the credit crunch, which disproportionately hit Greece, many Greeks have found it makes sense to go back to the countryside, where is easier to survive with little cash.

We saw signs of this parallel economy, living off the land, everywhere. Two older women in head scarves wandered among the lagoon, then walked back with a massive bunch of wild onions, with thick, long, leek-like leaves. Voila, a nutrient rich, anti-viral aromatic wild onion soup for dinner, and for free. Men walked into the lagoon with massive nets, an apparently fool-proof method of catching fish.

Wild onions growing on the thin strip of land between Halikouna Beach and the Korission Lagoon.

Gardens had crowded chicken coops, or flocks of kids and lamb–ethical tax-free wealth!!

A flock of chickens near the Korission Lagoon, Corfu.

An enclosure of sheep and goats near Korission Lagoon, Corfu.

I had Greek salad and little cheese pies with fresh ricotta for dinner. The restaurant owner told me that he had grown or made every ingredient in the salad himself—including the olives and the olive oil and even the yummy fresh feta!

I was charmed by the living off the land I saw, women harvesting the thyme and rosemary and sage growing wild off the fields, families with their own olives and lemons and chickens and kid goats. But the restaurant owner said sadly, “I work, work, work. I wish I could travel like you, but I may never have money to. How long do you think this economic crisis will last?”

Living off the land, working in the sun is a romantic idea, and a healthy one—but yeah, no money to travel—that would be a major drawback.

4 The Olive.

Colonization leaves behind a richness of ideas and imports and customs, even while it strips the colonies. In the big scale of things, the Columbian Exchange probably did more good than harm. (And incidentally, immigration today brings about the cross-fertilization of ideas, customs, culture and cuisine that colonization once did.)

Anyway, Corfu was ruled by the Venetians for 400 years, and they badly wanted olive oil, and olive wood for their ships. So they encouraged every family to plant some olive trees, offering peasants who planted 100 trees a cash bonus. Today, there are 3.5 million olive trees in Corfu, and every family owns a few.

The olive groves are shady and extraordinarily beautiful, and remind me of the Garden of Olives in Gethsemane, some trees 500 years old.

A terraced olive grove in Corfu.

The Corfiots eccentrically don’t prune their trees. Saint Spirodon, the island’s beloved saint, appeared and told them it was cruel to harvest or beat trees. So the unpruned trees grow thick and gnarled, and the Corfiots spread a mesh beneath the trees, and harvest the fallen olives. We saw middle-aged men and women working beneath them with a wheelbarrow.

Olive grove — note the rolled up netting.

5 I love the donkeys on the island, and have petted every one. Yesterday, we saw a traditional olive mill in the Theotokos monastery. The acolyte explained how donkeys were harnessed to the spokes around the basin and walked around it, crushing the olives, extracting the oil.

“We saw donkeys on the island,” Roy said brightly, delighted by Corfu. The monk looked at him with infinite tact and pity. “Not the same donkeys,” he explained eventually, and very kindly. “Maybe their great-grandchildren.”

A friendly donkey in Paleokastristra, Corfu.

6 Corfu has its own seasons—daffodils appear in January. By April, the gardens are in full bloom, purple Judas trees blaze in the countryside, and there is a profusion of wild flowers.

Lovely purple flowers on a Judas tree by the road.

Images from Corfu: The Garden of the Gods

By Anita Mathias

We are in Corfu for the week, and are greatly enjoying it.

The sea views are amazing, and I have never seen such lovely turquoise seas. Love the rock formations.

The view from our apartment

A cove on the “Main Beach” at Paleokastristra.

Some of the many cliffs that surround Paleokastistra.

The “Main Beach”, one of six beaches at Paleokastistra.

Gerald Durrell blamed himself for making Corfu such a popular holiday destination.

I blame Gerald Durrell (who incidentally was born in the same small town as I was, Jamshedpur, India!!) for the hordes of the most gorgeous stray dogs and cats everywhere.

Two friendly strays outside the monastery.

The only dog allowed into the monastery.

Irene, who loves his books told me of a scene in “The Garden of the Gods,” where Durrell asks the owner of a pregnant dog for a puppy. The Durrells already had four dogs, and their mother had refused to have any more. However, he reckoned that if he arrived with a puppy, their mother would not say no. So the owner shows up with a pup, but not the one Gerry wanted. When he goes back with her, he hears the ground barking and heaving. She had buried the blind pups alive, and excavates them, their mouths filled with soil from their barking. The more they barked, the more soil entered, until they would have choked to death. He showers her with his best Greek curses and takes them home, and his mother lets him keep them. All of them! Wondering if the descendants of these fabulous eleven now populate Corfu.

We went to the Paleokastristra Monastery, also called Theotokos Monastery this morning. My, what a monastery—quite unlike any Catholic monastery I’ve seen. A strong odour of cat’s pee. Dozens of beautiful cats all over, on the grape arbour, in the courtyards, mating on roofs, tiny newborn kittens suckling in cardboard boxes.

Four cats on the grape arbour.

The most spectacular view from the courtyards of the glittering Ionian sea. 39-DSCN6630

Glorious icons and mosaics.

Mosaic in an alcove under he grape arbour.

Mosaic in an alcove under the grape arbour.

Mosiac in an alcove under the grape arbour.

Icon of the Virgin (In the church)

The communion of saints (Painting in the church)

Ceiling painting of the Trinity, and the Virgin.

I particularly loved the layout, gracious courtyards beneath grape arbours. Another thing which struck me was the complete absence of the cat-loving monks.

A bell tower typical of the area.

Anita and Irene test the echoing well.

The monastery’s upper courtyard.

Walked to modestly named Bella Vista with startling views of the Ionian islands, and explored a couple of gorgeous beaches.

View from Bella Vista

View from Bella Vista (Note peninsula with Paleokastritsa Monastery)

Our Garden on Easter Sunday

By Anita Mathias

The wintry weather has delayed the daffodils, so we have mainly Hellebores.

Crocus Pickwick (?)

Bed of Helbores

Yellow spotted Heleborus. (Yellow is the rarest colour or Hellebore)

Yellow spotted Heleborus. (Yellow is the rarest colour of Hellebore)

Heleborus Purpurescens (?)

Close up

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Helleborus Foetidus. They self=seed freely, and we have lots.

A closer view of the flowers that usually face down.

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Fritillaria imperilais lutea, emerging from underground.

Fritillaria imperialis lutea, emerging from underground.

Waterperry gardens, the snow looks like crests on the sea (at least to me)

Saxifrage (from Waterperry’s national collection of saxifrages)

In which Heaven will be like Handel’s Messiah on Good Friday at the Royal Albert Hall

By Anita Mathias

Image Credit

Yesterday, on Good Friday, I listened to the Royal Choral Society sing Handel’s Messiah at the Royal Albert Hall.

Gorgeous, glorious, a worship experience in itself. I sat still for most of it tears streaming down my face, as I listened to prophecies of the gentle lamb that was slain, who before his shearers was dumb, who becomes the lamb upon the throne hailed by ecstatic choirs:

Blessing and honour, glory and power
Be unto Him, be unto Him
That sits upon the throne, and unto the Lamb

Worthy is the Lamb that was slain

And has redeemed us to God, by His blood
To receive power and riches, and wisdom
And strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing

And who, as the Kingdom of this world becomes the Kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, in the ultimate triumph of meekness and gentleness, is worshipped as the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords who shall reign forever and ever.

* * *

Tradition has it that moved by the majesty of the music, King George II stood as the Hallelujah Chorus began, and remained standing. And following the custom of standing when the King stood, the entire audience stood too.

Certainly, everyone in the Royal Albert Hall stood yesterday–the music was too majestic not to!!–though, in America, some in audiences insist on remaining seated through it.

* * *

Legend has it too that Handel’s servant came upon soon after he composed the Hallelujah Chorus and reported him saying, “I did think I saw heaven open, and saw the very face of God.” I don’t doubt it. The music is divine!

And if the music in heaven is anything like The Hallelujah Chorus, my, what a treat we have in store for us.

Linking with Laura Boggess http://www.lauraboggess.com/

In which God Chose to Let There Be Darkness as Well as Light–and Pronounced Them Both Good

By Anita Mathias

Beautiful~<br /><br /><br />
cupcakemugshot: Let there be light (via Christolakis)

Image Credit

Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ⁴God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the darkness. ⁵God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”

³¹God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Gen 1: 2-31)

* * *

Darkness and formlessness were the natural state of things. But God loves order and light.

And with four words God created light out of the darkness and formlessness in which he did not delight.

Dawn, sunrise, sunlight, blazing sunsets.

All good.

And he could have given us a world of these, of sunrise and sunset and sunny days.

But he chose to leave darkness. For rest.

And for his own mysterious purposes.

And God pronounced this world, of light and darkness, of birth and death, of babyhood and old age, of beginnings and ends, very good.

* * *

In that beautiful Last Supper, Jesus sits with John, who adored him, practically draped on him. And on the other side, Judas. Sweet love and bitter hate on either side. And, in front of him, his father, on whom the eyes of his heart were ever fixed.

While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it. (Matt 26:26)

Within a day, he would be dead, and he knew it. And he gave thanks before the brokenness.

For this is the world the Lord has made, there is light, and there is darkness, and God pronounced it very good.

Darkness will turn to light again and again, and one day we will leave this earth we so love, and this life we so love, and be with him who is all “light, and in whom there is no darkness at all.” (1 John 1:5).

* * *

The Spirit of God hovers over the world, insistently hovers, and so we can forth into it knowing that God, the great alchemist can bring good out of everything, all the darkness that sometimes oppresses us.

anita.mathias