day 2: demre, or kale.
when i got back from demre, birthplace of saint nicolas the miracle-worker, mehmet said to me, "now you are a pilgrim."
i surprised myself by answering top of my head, "dude: we are all pilgrims."
the church of saint nicholas at demre dates back to the 4th century BC. it has been wrecked, ruined, ransacked, and rebuilt. it is small and architecturally mismatched. my guidebook said it was a plain disappointment compared the the magnificent mosques of turkey.
but i did not think so at all. it was understated.
it was about faith. the church is a dim, cold little building, now mostly dug out from underground. the floor tiles are crooked. there are chunks missing from the walls, and columns that go to nowhere. it gives the impression of greyness, not colour, and stone, not precious metals. but it made me say wow: in particular the serenity of the faded colours, paint directly on grey stone and crumbling plaster.
i said to myself: unless this place was severely more impressive in the past, you must have had to have faith to come and worship here. it was humble.
faith is strange. faith can be used to keep the bottom on the bottom while the top stay on top. but you can also think of faith as being just one part of a triad -- faith, doubt and determination.
they keep the saint's earthly remains in this church. is that faith? everything in nature indicates that when you die you become food for the worms and the millipedes, and the trees that grow over you and the birds that live in them. here was this dusty grey box filled with sand and bones, with a stinking ashtray next to it.
some of the stone walls were painted, the colours faded now. to see the sad faces of the saints: is _that faith? islam does not allow icons.
there was an inscription in Russian: oh measure of faith and image of humility, oh teacher of abstinence, reveal to thy flock that which is the truth of all things. is _that faith? there is a saying here that to enjoy sweets, not to abstain from them, is a true sign of faith. meanwhile the sculptor was unfamiliar with the russian alphabet, the carving rife with spelling mistakes and malformed letters.
the walls were made with long thin red bricks and mortar spread between. there was almost more mortar than brick. the plaster was falling away although every now and then you'd see the scratched-in outline of what looked like a greek cross, and that hinted that once maybe the whole wall was painted. but mostly the decorations were simple.
outside in the courtyard, stone carvings, broken, collected, piled up:
and this carved stone in greek:
most interesting to me were the tile mosaics in the floors:
and this unexpected pigmented motif:
all told: morbid, dusty, dim, cold. in that way it was just like churches today, just more ancient. and i don't know why anyone would risk persecution to go there and believe. except, i suppose, faith -- and that itself was impressive. the sarcophagus was not. i am not sure i'd ever want to venerate some relic, although, that said, these days i'm finding it hard to leave some things behind.
