A Tribute to Crete Food

According to “Google”, Cretan cheese pies are called Kalitsounia Kritis. Unlike their Greek counterparts, they are made with pastry rather than phyllo. Fortunately, everywhere I went, the words “cheese pie” were understood and generally produced what would be sufficient motivation for a return trip to the island.

Cheese pies and all the other wonderful things I ate, suffused my days on Crete with pleasure. Nothing particularly effete. Just simple, fresh, yummy concoctions that were a joy to savor.

Perhaps some of the allure was generated by the weird eating hours. While on the fall goddess tour (www.goddessariadne.org), we’d eat breakfast at 7 or 8 a.m. then wait until 1 or 2 or 3 p.m. for lunch, then 7 or 8 or 9 for dinner.

No. The allure was the food itself.
    Fresh, fresh salads.
    The best yogurt I have ever encountered (made with sheep’s milk, rich and creamy and needing no sweetener whatsoever).
     Wood-roasted almost any kind of meat imaginable. Fresh fish near the coast (and trout in the mountains). Lamb or pork or rabbit or goat or almost anything except beef everywhere else.
     The world’s finest olive oil, used liberally for almost everything.
     And great olives of course.
     Incredible eggplant concoctions with amazing tomatoes.
     Other delicacies, more typically Greek, like dolmades.
     And the wine was fine and the raki enabled me to at least attempt Greek dancing. (Zorba I am not.)

It’s been almost six months since I returned from Crete. All of my posts have had something to do with that trip. That’s probably enough (although I think I’ll do a couple more). Am I obsessed? No. Just stunned to discover evidence of a civilization that lived in peace for some two thousand years, honoring women and valuing generosity and compassion, while producing great art . . . and, surely, great food. Oopah!

Non-Dominational

It’s been more than four months since I returned from the ‘goddess tour of Crete’ (www.goddessariadne.org) led by feminist theologian/ scholar/ author Dr. Carol Christ. You’d think by now I’d be ‘over it’ – that I would find something else to write about. And I will – eventually – write about other things. But I don’t think I want to be ‘over’ what I learned in Crete. Ever.

By walking amid five-thousand-year old ruins, climbing carefully into caves sacred to the Minoan people, and holding rituals around sacred stones or springs or trees, I began to have a vision of a different kind of society: a non-dominational society.

[My computer does not like that word – which I just made up – probably because it’s a pretty patriarchal machine. Let’s use it anyway.]

Oddly, since when most people think about ancient Crete (if they do) they think about the bull-leaping depicted in Minoan art and reflected in tales woven by latter-day Greeks, I did not photograph any bull-leaping art except this one clay vessel of kids dangling off the head of some bovine form.

 [Ponder this: the mammal could be either a bull or cow and the kids could be male or female, or some combination.]

I digress.

From all that I read and all that I heard and felt while in Crete, the Minoans had a matrifocal/ matrilineal/matrilocal society. Mothers and mother values [love, generosity, and care] were honored. By both men and women.

As I imagine it, this ancient society had some gender-specific roles. In all probability, its sailors were male. It is possible that those who built the temples and cleared the land were male. Artists could, I think, have been either female or male. I’m guessing that most weavers and cooks were female. But the important thing is that nobody was dominant over others. Not males over females or females over males. Think about it. Mutual dignity and respect. Where everyone’s gifts and opinions were valued.

Shazaam.

I do not want to ‘get over’ Crete. I do want to do whatever I can to foment a non-dominational society – here and now.

A Moment in Crete

One of the factors that made the fall tour of Crete (www.goddessariadne.com) so powerful was the community that the participants became.

Often before walking a site, such as the ruins of Knossis, we would learn about its history and significance and approach it with the respect and in the manner which it deserved.

Still, one of the most powerful experiences I had, happened on the day I got lost, with one of the tour's leaders, Mika. The group was to gather at a Minoan tomb, Tholos, near Kamilari. Because of back problems, I walked so slowly that Mika and I lost sight of the others and wandered around for an hour before giving up and creating our own little ritual on the side of a dirt road, in the middle of nowhere important.

Sitting in a little patch of rocks, we set our goddess images on their mineral perches and poured our respective libations as we remembered aloud our female ancestors. I invoked my paternal grandmother, Edna Miriam Thacker McClure, her mother (my great grandmother) Nell Miriam Fowler Thacker, and the generations of prior Miriams recorded on a sampler that hangs in my guest room. The ritual prompted me to renew the honor in which I hold my own name (Miriam of course) and its heritage/ my heritage.

After the ceremony, we found our way back to the bus and eventually the others joined us and the tour continued with, as I recall, an incredible (and incredibly late) lunch at a seaside restaurant in Kamilari.

That private ceremony still reverberates in my memory. I have no pictures of that pile of rocks (my camera was temporarily jammed).

Sometimes photographs are redundant.

Blueprint for human dignity

Look closely at the ruins of the ancient Minoan town of Gournia. To me, they illustrate another aspect of our Cretan ancestors. These stones outline houses.

When you walk among them, you get a sense of the people. You feel invited to sit on porches, to share stories of your day.

To me, these ruins illustrate the egalitarian aspect of Minoan culture. All the houses were about the same size. (They were also two and three stories high and had a form of indoor plumbing. Not bad for three-plus millennia ago.)

Imagine, if you can, a society in which people – men and women, young and old – were more equal than they are today. A society in which dignity was part of being human. Minoan Crete was a place that honored all the components of the web of life.

What do we honor? To whom do we grant dignity?

At the summit of the hill on which this town was built there is a Kernos (sacred stone). Those of us on the goddess tour (www.goddessariadne.org) placed fruits there and, after readings, fed the fruits to one another.

Can you digest another culture? Can walking ancient paths, sitting on ancient steps, and honoring ancient sacred sites change the way you think about your own society, your own times?

Absolutely.

Hallelujah and Blessed Be

I Am Here, I Am Whole

There were 16 of us – two leaders and 14 women from various English-speaking countries – who participated in the Sept. 28 – Oct. 11 goddess tour of Crete (www.goddessariadne.org).

We gathered for the first time Friday evening, Sept. 28. The chairs were in a circle. Each of us was asked why we had chosen to participate and each of us was asked to say: I am here, I am whole, I am [and then our name]. It seemed somehow presumptuous, but we all did it.

During the course of the pilgrimage we often gathered in the evening, always in a circle. Each time, we took turns describing our perceptions of what had occurred that day, after we said: I am here, I am whole, I am [name].

Such a simple practice. But that practice, coupled with the morning blessing that we tried – with varying success – to repeat en route to whatever marvel was on our day’s agenda, wrapped us into community.

[The morning blessing was longer and only partially memorized – and, inevitably, by the time I found the written version, it was over. Still, it framed the day.]

Singing
The breath of my spirit will bless
the cells of my being sing
in gratitude, reawakening. . . .
Reciting
This earth is my sister
I love her daily grace her silent daring
and how loved I am
how we admire this strength in each other
all that we have lost, all that we have suffered all that we know:
we are stunned by this beauty and I do not forget:
what she is to me, what I am to her.
Singing
As this day dawns in beauty, We pledge ourselves to repair the web.

Circles are powerful. Often, when we gather looking into each others’ faces, we glimpse each others’ hearts. Ritual is powerful. Things repeated on a regular basis can work their way into our psyches.

Framed thus, our experience of the matrilineal Minoan culture deepened. I, for one, was able to perceive the divine feminine, to experience what it might be like to all that I could be as a woman, as a crone.

I am here, I am whole, I am Mim

Graphic Reminder

If I knew how to 'photo-shop' I might edit out the scaffolding, etc. surrounding this giant poster that was hung on plaza in Chania, Crete. But perhaps all the debris is appropriate. And, yes, I know I used this image in a previous post but I think you need to get used to it. I believe I will use it whenever I encounter something that denigrates women. I may have to use it a lot.

The other night I saw the documentary "The Invisible War" on PBS. I happened on it by chance and stayed with it, mesmerized by the enormity of the dilemmas faced by women (and men) in the U.S. military who have been raped by other members of the U.S. military. I had seen occasional headlines about this issue but I hadn't learned any of the personal stories. And the personal stories are horrific.

During the fall Goddess Tour of Crete (www.goddessariadne.org) led by feminist scholar and theologian Dr. Carol Christ, I was imbedded in a supportive female culture. Hampered by back problems, climbing over and into ancient Minoan ruins was daunting. But wherever we went, the other women on the tour held out their hands and offered whatever I needed. It was just the way we were. It was just the way we understood the ancient Minoan culture to be. In our evening circles, in our morning chants, in the ceremonies we performed in sacred centers, we reinforced these actions with words.

We honored each other.

The transition back into a culture where people do not honor each other, where rape goes unpunished, where violence dominates the headlines, can be (is) difficult and overwhelming.

I am beginning to emerge. Beginning to move back toward wholeness. In future posts, I will reveal how that might be possible. But every once in a while, you will see this photo again -- when once again, women (and/or men and/or children and/or other living things and/or our planet) are denigrated.

Because we need to acknowledge the wrongs or we will never get it right.

A Story in Three Images

I’m just making this up but when I was in Crete on a goddess tour (www.goddessariadne.org) led by feminist theologian and scholar Dr. Carol Christ, I saw three female images that could, perhaps, tell a story.

One, in the Archeological Museum in Heraklion, was a statuette of a Minoan priestess, vibrant and powerful.

Another, on a gigantic poster on a square in Chania, depicted another bare-breasted female who appeared deeply sad. Why?

On the way out of a small city where we had marveled at a museum's examples of ancient art, Dr. Christ pointed out this sign (I only had a few seconds to photograph) outside a grocery store.

The Goddess Ariadne, who probably migrated with Neolithic settlers from Anatolia some seven thousand years ago, was now transformed into the symbol for a grocery store chain.

I would be sad too.