Today we took in the National Museum of Archeology and the Areopagus.
My favorite from the museum - a grave stele (marker) from the late 4th c. BC. A young woman sits on a stool, one hand rests gracefully on a cushion. The other reaches out, offering a bird. She was likely a poetess, by the books and scrolls beneath her seat. The folds and sheerness of her garments are rendered in the Boeotian stone such that I could hear the fabric rustle as I gazed at her. From 2500 years ago, her life reaches out to mine. From cold stone a sculptor's story touches me. For an instant, there is not time, there is no gap. There is only the urge to say, in the deepest way possible, "I am". "I have been".
Today, as a testament to life and in response to the Divine force which gives it, I say, "I am".
And, on top of the city, on ground once dedicated to the god's of Ancient Greece, stand marble temples and monuments made by a people who used every skill they knew to craft a culture to say "I am".
We ventured to the acropolis at the end of the day, as the heat softened and the light glistened, and in that soft, glistening light, the white marble, reaching to the sky in pillars and arches, turned the color of honey. It glowed with beauty, a beauty possible because of the light falling on it, enveloping it, dripping down and around it. The whole hill.
And here, on the very hill we walked, the apostle Paul once walked. And in a quiet corner where he may have sat, we sat, and read the words he spoke to these people who made their marble gods....and he said....it is not in the marble. It is a living, vibrant Light that illuminates us. Reach higher, deeper, truer than stone to find the one "I am" that makes each of us full of the urge to be, and to have that moment when we know that we are.
And so, today I looked back on a poet who was. I experienced beauty that helped me know I am, and from where and when I am, I pray that your soul would feel,it too - the Light that wraps you and makes you!