I’ll never forget the strange sense of wonder I experienced the first time we were in Prague. It was the first location we’d ever visited which was formerly “behind the Iron Curtain” and I was shocked to find that the sky was blue, the trees green, and flowers were, well, colorful.
I attribute my surprise to the effects excellent propaganda. You see, having grown up during the Cold War the photos I’d seen during my formative years were 1) black and white, 2) of bleak scenes, and 3) calculated to show how barren and cold life was for those living under the heel of communist atheistic regimes.
On that trip we were enjoying a Danube River cruise with a group of Tandem bicyclists. We pedaled & floated through Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary. From the start in Prague my senses were treated to scenes & sounds & smells of Real Life in places where I might have expected, based upon my upbringing, to find only cold, dark misery. Instead, the smell of freshly baking bread was delicious no matter where the bakery was located and the fields of sunflowers were no less brilliant on one side of a border or the other. As a guide in Egypt once observed, “most people, everywhere, want the same things: shelter and a couple meals a day. Happiness follows.”
I know this. I’ve been constantly reminded of it in travels through 40+ countries: most people could get along with each other in most places. But greedy, power-hungry politicians cultivate fear, suspicion, and hate… oh, don’t get me started.
Our guide in Santorini yesterday, Katarina, has lived and worked there for twenty years. She was born in the former East Germany and describes an idyllic childhood in the socialist state where children played (imagine that!) and attended schools and summer camps where they grew and laughed and loved. The Wall came down when she was fourteen, she finished high school and moved on to new opportunities. She is married to a native Greek from Santorini and has three children. “I had to be baptized in the Greek Orthodox Church before we could be married, which was fine with me. I was raised an atheist, naturally, and still find the religious stories to be only interesting – like the stories from Greek mythology – but respecting other people’s beliefs is not difficult.”
Earlier this week we visited Corinth. Our wonderful Greek guide, Helen, wove a beautiful tapestry of historical, geographical, cultural, political, and religious stories, helping the ruins of both the ancient and classic cities come alive. She spoke of the Greek gods, the Roman ones, and the ways in which the myths varied from region to region and even village to village or time to time. She even read he words of Paul, found in he Book of the Acts – spoken while we stood just a few yards from the podium where he stood nearly two thousand years before.
Like my Prague surprise years before, visiting Corinth with our guide was another experience of a new reality. My childhood imaginations of that city were informed only by stories of Paul’s visit and subsequent letter to early christians who lived there. Those mental images lacked any historical context or depth – or life.
Black and white is useful for some purposes, such as dramatic effect.
I appreciate the colors of life. Even if the life was long ago.
The ‘bios’ of ancient Corinth may have passed away, but the ‘kosmos’ comes alive as we open the windows of our minds and let the colors begin to flood in.
We’re not in Kansas anymore….
B & B 