Day 4: Ruins and Islands

Evia island—pebbles and sand; lounge chairs, palmed umbrellas; pink polka dotted towels, wet sandals, ice cream, orange bottles of sunscreen; bodies, burning red and brown, drinking up the sun with pleasure. Greek children splashing about in turquoise water stretching out to distant arched hills that zig and zag to acropolitic tips—a soft blue Zeus doming over all of us.

That’s how the day ended—a warm soft peace on an ancient island, Apollo in the sky, with a noumenal breeze breathing through my clothes, quieting my spirit, giving me rest.

That’s how the day ended, in peace. But it began with strife. It began with the goddess of revenge.

I woke up at 5:00am—too early, half awake with thoughts swimming through a dark hazy subconsciousness. Unclear and agitated, I stayed in bed wrapped up in blue sheets, head plopped on a squishy pillow. I tried to remain snug for the off chance my body would take me back to the dream world for a few hours more.

My body didn’t want me to sleep; it wanted me to think about my story, where I was, where I’d been, what I could hope to get out of being here, and all the things I shouldn’t dare hope to have. So I listened. I stayed present. To my body, and the story it wanted to tell me at 5:00am while in Athens, Greece. 

Presence—it’s the most difficult thing to have, and I imagine it’s difficult because it’s so simple. It’s too simple. Complicated is always easier than simple. So presence is hard. It’s difficult. We want to complicate it. Yet it’s something we counselors must master to give our clients a chance to heal—and so I figured I should be present to myself, so I can heal, even if I’d rather be dreaming instead.

“Good morning SEU. Breakfast is in 30 minutes. Good morning SEU.” Dr Lawson paced up and down the hall of our Greek Bible college dorms in his untied sneakers and khaki shorts, announcing the day. It broke my reflective trance. 

I got up, dressed, and headed out to the breakfast hall. We ate cereal, bread, cheese, peaches, and Greek yogurt for breakfast. Not much of a morning person, I kept to myself. But I came alive when we loaded the buses and headed to Rhamnous, discussing therapy, religion, and spirituality with my classmates. 

On the way there, we drove on the road of Marathonos. Our host from the Bible college explained to us how the Persians attacked Greece in 490 B.C, and, as legend has it, a fully armored Athenian warrior ran from the coast all the way back to the  city to warn the Greeks of the impending attack. The warrior gave his final breath from exhaustion, but he saved his country as the Greeks pushed back the Persians against overwhelming odds. To this day, people all over the world come to celebrate the victory by running the original marathon. It was a dazzling fact to know we were riding along that piece of world changing history, And, fortunately, for us, were driving the marathon instead of running it.

We arrived at Rhamnous in the morning. It reminded me of the rolling vineyard hills back in Oregon where I’m from. Old twisty olive trees several hundred years old curling their branches to the sky. We walked through the trees up a hill to the temple of Nemesis—the goddess of revenge.

Nemesis was a god to fear.

In Greek mythology, a tale tells of a young nymph by the name of Echo, who had a feverish crush on a beautiful young lad by the name of Narcissus. No one who saw his face could resist falling in passion for him.

Echo’s love for him compelled her to confess her passion, only, she couldn’t speak.  She had been cursed by Hera who suspected all women to be mistresses of her cheating husband Zeus. Shy and bashful, and due to the curse, Echo could only speak back to others what was spoken to her. She could only ‘echo’ back to them. 

One day, the beautiful lad overheard her in the bushes and called out “come here!” To which she was able to respond “come here!” He approached. Exactly what she hoped for! but when she appeared to him, Narcissus recoiled and shamed her with disgust, rejecting her outright. Echo’s trauma flushed into her face and she ran to hide in a cave where her rosy cheeks and shame would never be seen by anyone.

Narcissus continued to shame the passions of hopeful girls until he caught the attention of Nemesis, the goddess of revenge, who had had enough of the pompous man’s disregard. Seeing the carnage of his selfishness, Nemesis lured Narcissus to a pond where he would happen upon his own reflection. Stunned, he instantly fell in love with his image, as nobody could resist his beauty, not even himself. He stared at the pond, unable to break away from his reflection, longing for an ephemeral self he could never attain. Weeping, crying, in crippling pain and selfish need, unable to break free, he stared and stared. And starved and thirsted for himself—withering away in an unyielding transfixion that held until his final exhale released him. The goddess had dished out her revenge.

Nemesis was a terrifying god—her vengeance could be capricious, or meticulously calculated. I suppose it depended on the quality of the sacrifice, or the nature of the offense. Nemesis was so deeply feared that when the Romans eventually defeated the Greeks in 146 B.C, they destroyed her temple and quickly chopped her marble statue to pieces in hopes of undermining her pernicious power. 

As I stood before the ruined temple of Nemesis, I pondered her influence over the Greeks. They built a massive temple for her, carved a marble statue, and made sacrifices to her. I reflected upon the archetype of her nature, a nature that exists in all of us. We’ve all been hurt deeply. Whether through rejection, shame, or trauma, Nemesis symbolizes the retribution for our pain. She is the mythic form of the agonizing need to justify our pain to others and find catharsis through our suffering. Standing before her temple, I wanted to pay respect to how she represents the shadow self in our very human condition, and so I did.

Leaving the temple, I walked down the stone littered path on the hill that led to the ruins of the ancient peoples who lived in Rhamnous.

Rhamnous was quiet. So quiet you could hear it. There was something in the air. You could feel the presence of a former civilization in that deep quiet. The forest was almost screaming out, “we were here!” 

Attempting to practice presence, I made myself available to that voice of history echoing through the ruins, and I sat in the shade to meditate on it. 

No Greek ghosts or nymphs appeared to impart ancient wisdom. Just spiders, beetles, and other bugs crawling on my jeans. But still, it was ominous and quiet—the air carried a silence so heavy, it felt like death. Not oppressive. Not even sad. Just heavy. These people weren’t here anymore. The city of ruins was a shadow cast by the light of a people long gone. 

We die.

But presence lingers on, it holds us. It stops our wandering attention. It makes us see with our bodies—those weighted, clumsy things we lug around. Our bodies—which carry our deep secrets, our twisted traumas, our sinking griefs. Presence is the gate that allows our bodies to release the spirits chained down inside us. But in our pain, our isolation, we often seek out a Nemesis to right our wrongs, and through many traumas, the archetype of Nemesis is awakened—and we seek revenge. We repay evil with evil—so that our pain can be known.

But it can be known—our pain. It can be felt, seen, heard, respected, honored, valued, esteemed—without resentment or revenge, without using pain to communicate pain, without turning to Nemesis. And it can be done through presence—a focused, patient, enduring presence that radiates the Love we need to heal.

And in that space, like shy forest nymphs, our wounded inner children can crawl out from the shadow caves of the unconscious, peeking through our bodies to witness, to hope, to express, and taste the light of presence, which shines forth an undying Love that promises to redeem the pain of all who come to it. And there, in that stable Love, our inner children can begin to breathe. Their exhales releasing all suffering to the wind.

~ Justin Nelson