Happy New Life! (Kali Anastasi!)

Dear Courageous One,

With a special welcome to everyone who recently signed up for Courage Words: thank you!

It’s a pleasure to write to people who know me already and heartwarming to connect with new members of community: people who are cultivating courage in many different ways, or hoping to find the inspiration to do so. Give yourself some praise for that—small or large acts of courage you’ve done recently, or wish to do, or even did long time ago . . . Call it up now and carry it over . . .

Because we really need courage at this time in history! It is a fundamental, transformative quality. Maya Angelou said that all the other virtues depend on it. Courage is like our core strength for seeing, for knowing and testing what is real, what is essential. (Core, surprise-surprise! comes from the same etymological root.)

At any time, including this very moment . . .

. . . we can place our hand on our heart and breathe in, thinking of those who need courage right now. And breathe out, sending our courage to them (or receiving it inwardly, if we need a dose ourselves.)

Courage is literally a heart word—from the Latin for heart cor (coeur, corazon) and, earlier, from the Greek, kar . . . (as in cardiology, and still, today, kardia for heart in Greek). In pre-Greek times, the Great Kar, or Car, was the goddess at the heart of the world for the ancient Carians: the sacred empress of life and death, wisdom, augury and poetry . . .

When the word ‘courage’ jumped from medieval French to English, ‘courage’ meant any of the feelings we carried in the heart: pained courage, sneaky courage, evil courage, sad courage—these were all common usages.

(Sad courage—oh, my! These months of the destruction and fear, the ongoing conflicts in many different parts of the world . . . The necessity and danger of protest . . . Our own personal losses, whatever they may be . . . Sad courage is also, perhaps, a new-old way to say: Grief.)

The capacious medieval usage recognized how complex the heart is: not just the multiplicity of emotional states, but also our human need to express them even if we do not or cannot comprehend them.

When I sign off my letters with Bon Courage, I try to be mindful each time and pause: I take a moment to think of one strand or another in this rich braid of meanings and history alive in this single word.

Let me say it again: Bon courage!

**

Breakfast in the Olive Grove . . . (Neighbour's eggs, a different neighbour's olives, Andoni the hardware guy's mom's dried figs, and one stolen lemon . . . from another neighbour's tree. I don't think he'll mind . . .) Plus, driftwood, roses, clothespins.

The clothespin is a most loving domestic teacher: the ultimate symbol of holding on and letting go.

Greetings from the Greek island of Lesvos, just a couple days before Orthodox Sunday: ie, the Resurrection. No matter what your religious leaning/denomination/allergy or lack thereof, you may experience joy and giddiness while walking around the village and hearing people, from seven to ninety-seven, greet or say goodbye to each other, smiling, often laughing the words, Kali anastasi! Happy Resurrection!

They really feel it! It makes them giddy.

Well, me, too! Happy New Life! It’s spring. Kali anastasi! The Resurrection is everywhere in the fields and groves around the village and beyond, fields of poppies, chamomile, vetch, clover, daisies, wild lupins, and the olive trees in the grove I live in are covered with tiny white blossoms . . . Yes, the resurrection of life, always, despite the wilful war on civilians that continues to unfold not far away from this land.

Palestine and Greece are connected in many ways . . . When I was in Jerusalem and Ramallah, I could not stop thinking of Greece; these places felt mysteriously Greek to me, alive in the gestures of people, Jewish Israeli and Palestinian; Greece was there in the dances, the laughter, the hospitality. These worlds are connected by the olive trees, by the Mediterranean, by music, even by language. (There are many Arabic words in spoken Greek . . .) I was reading a Greek scholar who wrote that the psalter (the singing of the psalms and other liturgical music in Greek Orthodox church) was born of the desert of Palestine—where the earliest Christian communities formed– as well as from the urban richness of the Levant . . .

Those rhythms, tones and waves of sound feel distinctly Eastern . . . I wonder if they influenced the way Muslims intone prayers, and the call to prayer—for in the Psalter we hear chanting, rising and falling, a spool unwinding and unwinding through many tones, then being looped in again, back; it is entirely outside the bounds of western musical tradition. In fact, the psalter has no written music at all; it has been sung and passed down aurally and orally (and through various ‘secret’ memorized phrases) for 2000 years. Last night I went to hear friends sing the Psalter associated with Jesus’s death and resurrection, part of a rich ceremony of prayer and praise that runs throughout and even before Easter week. It was mesmerizing.

My friend Nafsica is a singer, and came from Thessaloniki especially to sing in the church in this humble village (she has quite the voice, so everyone knows her here; she is more famous than Beyonce). She reminded me that she and another friend were singing in the Greek of biblical times; the Greek Orthodox psalter is still sung in the language of the original New Testament! Maria said, "Thank God it's in almost-ancient Greek, that way no one could understand all the mistakes we made!" The two of them started teasing each other about where and how they made mistakes. (Of course, I thought every line had been perfect . . .)

For three hours, listening, standing and sitting, praying for peace for Gaza, for resurrection for humanity, I was (truly) converted

. . . Then this morning I did all my Buddhist chants and prayers under the olive trees . . . For I contain multitudes . . . I’ll convert for a few more hours tomorrow and on Sunday. (FYI, I have MUCH religious trauma in my family life, so for me the Orthodox Church is a healing link to the good parts of my religious education. I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness . . . Insert head-exploding emoji here. Jesus! Right?)

Also, I’m looking forward to the feast on Sunday . . . It’s not such a big deal for me, but my friends here have been fasting from meat, oil, cheese, fish, etc. for 40 days. That is faith.

I have very big news—I have TWO big pieces of news, in fact—but they both can wait until next time.

Courage and resurrection are enough for one letter.

Until then,

Kali Anastasi!

Bon courage and Happy New Spring,

Karen

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