Day 14

Taking one step at a time:

The Tamarisk

boats before the stairway

There’s a house past the Blu Lounge that has a marble plaque commemorating Bud Colburn (1917-2004).  I don’t know who he is but the plaque, written in Greek, basically says this: With the best memories for the wonderful man who built this house.  Good night, Bud, God is near you.

Blue Star from a distance

The Stairway to Heaven

The promontory near Krios has a very special and spiritual significance for me that I will elaborate upon tomorrow.   So, the path leading up to it is like a stairway to heaven.

In the Bible (Genesis 28: 10-19) we are told the story of Jacob’s Ladder.  Jacob is running away from his twin brother, Esau, who wants to kill him for have stolen his inheritance.  So Jacob flees from Beersheba but, at dusk, tired of running, he decides to get some sleep.  While sleeping, Jacob has a dream about a ladder that goes high into the heavens and has angels going up and down it.  Then God appears and says he will give Jacob the land where he is sleeping and that his descendents will be like the dust and scatter themselves everywhere.  There are many interpretations of this story but it’s undeniable that the ladder acts as a bridge between heaven and earth. In other words, the ladder unifies the here with the there.

Vertical territory.

Our cat, Volver, like most cats, likes high places. It gives him the possibility to observe better what’s going on around him thus makes him feel safer.  It’s an instinct cats have inherited from their ancestors who had to climb high to protect themselves from predators.

Volver on Angeliki’s roof

Volver on the stairs going up

Volver’s destination

Originally, I had intended to get my mantra from Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” but eventually decided upon the Los Lonely Boys’ “Heaven” because of the phrase “How far is Heaven?” It made me think of taking car trips with little kids who are always obsessively asking “how much further?”  For me, it’s important not to think of the walk as a departure-arrival situation.  It’s the steps in between and what happens within me that I want to focus on. For it is this that makes the walk a spiritual practice.

Heaven is Here. OM. Heaven is Here.

Lift yourself up so you can get a better view of the world around you.