Crystals I

Introduction-3

Father Constantine decided to investigate the case of his four fellow citizens a bit more closely, because if his tentative conclusions were correct, he must have underestimated the first three in his mind, something unacceptable for a priest, and overestimated the fourth one. This had already caused him concern and discomfort. If that hypothesis was true, then he might have similarly misjudged other members of his society during the course of his life that far. That thought caused him feelings of guilt, consternation and dejection. He felt that the issue ought to be dealt with a little later, and if he indeed had made such errors of judgement, apologize to his fellow men and ask forgiveness from his god.

He embarked on a very subtle and tactful investigation of the lives of the four people. He asked their friends and relatives who knew them best in the most subtle, and polite manner he could muster and with particular tactfulness, trying to leave no room for gossip or misunderstandings. He knew that what he was doing was wrong and unacceptable but the priest was aflame with the desire to understand the workings of the rod. The more he investigated into those people’s lives, the more his lips whispered absolutions and chants of forgiveness, feeling terrible that he was prying into the personal life of some members of his flock, even so subtly and tactfully.

The new conclusions that emerged were in agreement with the behaviour of the White Rod. He had then been mistaken in his personal judgment. He had misjudged some of his fellow men, indeed very negatively. One of them in particular, whom he considered a loudmouth and brusque in manners, was proven, on the basis of the information he collected, that he was quite the opposite. He was a sensitive, good and honest man who could not stand injustice and hypocrisy so, whenever he came across it, he was tormented inside so much that he reacted loudly against it. He expressed all his inner pain by shouting out loud, since he found no other way to externalize it. And the truth was that in his case, the rod had reacted more positively than in anybody else, thus confirming his conclusions up to that point.

As regards the person whom he had overestimated by considering him just, honest and good but against whom the rod had reacted negatively, was proven to have been a self-interested, unassertive, crafty and groveling type, which was in agreement with the reaction of the White Rod. He then remembered ancient wisdom that warned about our appreciation of reality because what ‘is’ is not always what ‘appears to be’. But Fr Constantine thought that ‘becoming’ is a great supplication for humankind and an imperceptible smile cracked his lips that denoted redemptive bliss. It is ‘becoming’ that leads what ‘appears to be’ to ‘is’.

But he had neglected all that, drawn so much as he was into his daily routine of service, although he had once studied all that quite extensively. He remembered that in the beginning of his clergy career, he had made up his mind to follow these letters with zeal. A true priest, he thought, had to be able to function like the Sun. The sun is able to look at the filth, the latrines and decomposition, while remaining immaculate and clean. He could only live amidst the filth and still remain unmarred. Besides, that was precisely its value. If you live among the righteous, in a beautiful and ideal world, where ‘the limits of man’ are never tested, what is the merit of it all and how is one to understand it? Here lies the merit of the mortals! ‘Merit’ through a continuous ‘becoming’ leads to ‘meritocracy’ and by default, to societal prosperity.

A humble flower can therefore grow amidst rubbish but you can easily tell it apart and it remains beautiful and pure. How important is this? The greater the slime and the filth, the more important the humble flower becomes. That is what all true priests of every religion should do, thought Fr Constantine. Nothing is greater than the truth. One should not get carried away by appearances. He should seek the truth under the smiles, between the lines and behind actions, so as to preclude misjudging others. He should be able to tell pureness and beauty amidst the filth and rubbish. And foremost, he should never forget that to drink water from the source, one must first bend down. He should bend down respectfully but also gratefully, being deeply moved. Isn’t that what the baby lamb does when it kneels to suckle? Where had his humility gone? How did he miss so important elements that should every priest of every religion be surrounded by?

All those processes reminded him a lot that he had forgotten during his lifetime. He felt soothed at this thought, since he had now been given another chance to redeem and self-correct himself. But he still wanted to make a final confirmation, although he had already reached his final conclusions about the White Rod. He wanted to be absolutely certain, and avoid any rush conclusions that carried the possibility of error that is always associated with rush decisions.

So, on Thursday that the four fellow citizens from Drama showed up for their confessional, he listened to them carefully while asking them certain particularly apt questions, observing the behavior of the White Rod carefully. The rod reacted positively to the first three men and negatively to the man whom the priest had discovered that he was not as righteous as he had originally thought. Every time that the priest realized that his fellow citizen – whom he had overestimated – was lying, he reminded him quietly and calmly that confession was secret and that he should be afraid of nothing, save when he was lying. It was, he explained, a relationship between the faithful and god with the priest as intermediary, and that was why truth should always be told. It is indeed secret and private. Besides, who can fool God? So, gradually, he guided his fellow citizen to have a change of mind and heart and start telling the truth. The person’s face became red with embarrassment when he modified his heart-felt confession, and as a result, the rod started to react positively. The priest was then certain about all his conclusions regarding the White Rod. It reacted positively to the surrounding positive energy and negatively to the surrounding negative energy. That was absolutely certain, based on the evidence at hand. And it would seem that that was indeed the case. An object, apparently made by ‘some’ benevolent force or ‘something’ good in order to face evil that there was too much of on planet earth.

Certainly, Fr Constantine had no idea whether the rod was the work of god or of something else, but what he did know was that, as a priest, he should be more impartial and avoid rush judgement. He started feeling guilty about himself and the erroneous and rush conclusions he drew about his fellow human beings. He got a lesson from that, and from then on, no matter how wrong a person seemed to be, he treated him in goodwill. He visited his metropolitan in the Diocese, asking for forgiveness and for absolution of his sins he was prepared to confess, of which the greatest was his facile judgement of the members of his flock and other fellow human beings in general. He used to see everyone after that point under a light of goodwill. He developed into one of the best priests that ever existed. At the same time, he made good use of the properties of the rod, and when the members of his flock lied during the Sacrament of Confession, he tactfully suggested to them that god could understand who was lying and who was telling the truth and explained to them the value of truth and its merits. The confessants had started to ‘feel’ that in a curious way, their priest could understand the lies they were telling him and thus, they gradually stopped lying, all of them becoming better persons. Fr Constantine delivered fiery sermons on the faith in the one and only god. ‘Know the truth and the truth shall set you free’, he used to preach to the faithful of his parish. ‘Explore the scriptures and seek the hidden meanings and messages behind the words’ he preached every Sunday at the Church of St Barbara.

So, the priest of the Church of St Barbara, at the City of the 10th century AD Drama, concluded that the White Rod was an object that reacted positively to ‘good’ and negatively to ‘evil’. Legend has it that the rod was found when they were digging the foundations for the first byzantine church dedicated to St Barbara during the 8th century AD on the remains of an ancient Greek temple that was conjectured to have been dedicated to Dionysus. It was then that the name ‘White Rod’ was given to the object that remained till the 14th century, to be lost along with the object itself and the church in the water. When it was discovered during the 8th century, it had been placed in a paramount position in the church on the left of the Royal Door in a wooden case, specially-made for the White Rod.

Sitting outside the church in an afternoon, the priest kept thinking about the White Rod and everything that went on in connection with himself. He realized how easily could man slip into arrogance and deviate from the road of humility, as his religion taught. He thought how difficult entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven should be, and that for sure, it must be quite low, so that only those who were bent could cross it. He observed how noisy the creek nearby the church was while the lake forming just in front of the church was calm and quiet. So, he decided that from that point onwards, he would ask the faithful to follow him, but that he would always let them pass first.

When, years afterwards, the venerable priest died in an advanced age, hosts of faithful followed him to his last resting place. Nothing like that had ever happened again. The sorrow and lamentation of the faithful was great, despite his last admonitions and requests not to lament his departure, since for him, death was a transcendence to a better and more beautiful world. It was a departure to meet his god, based on his faith and religion that he so humbly and modestly served all these years. Confirming that ‘he who humbles himself will be exalted’, he crossed over into eternity and was sanctified in the consciousness of the faithful of his parish. His two daughters that loved him so much, Calliope and Maria, took the White Rod to his grave every anniversary of his name day for a memorial service. Every time they did, the White Rod reacted positively, glowing intensely.

Three and a half centuries later, the barbarians appeared before the gates of the city. With the fall the city of Drama to the Ottomans, the church was submerged by an unknown cause. Thus, along with the church, the White Rod also disappeared. For many years no one had ever heard anything about it and it was forgotten, buried into the sediment of history.

Legend had it that it was the White Rod itself that had sunk the church into the lake. Others claimed that it sort of self-submerged or that the faithful did it to protect it from being converted into a mosque. Others believed that during the eve of the Ottomans’ onslaught against the city, many saw the specter of Fr Constantine exiting the sanctum of the church right in front of the Royal Gates, foretelling of the fall of the city and asking the faithful to destroy the church. Once he finished his message, standing in front of the Royal Gates admonishing them in a trembling voice, he disappeared. Others were saying that all that happened to protect the White Rod from falling into the hands of the Ottoman Turks. But the most probable thing was that, to a greater or lesser extent, all the above reasons contributed to the loss of the rod.

The White Rod was affected by and clearly promoted ‘the good and righteous’ and could not ‘stand’ the ‘evil and wrongdoing’. It was certain that at that point, it would not want to fall into the hands of those who were actually committing ‘evil and wrongdoing’. In any case, along with the church, the White Rod had also disappeared and was forgotten and for five centuries remained in oblivion. After the liberation of Drama, on July 1st 1913, the church was re-built next to the waters that covered the older church, but there was no talk at all about the White Rod. Until we arrived in 1979, where the young couple in love, Anna and Adonis, were taking their afternoon stroll and suddenly found themselves in front of a strange sight.

From all the folklore referred to above, only a few details survived in the stories of a few romantic dreamer priests of the modern church. But very few believed that the White Rod ever existed. It had become part of legend in the society of Drama, like a ‘fairytale’ grandmothers used to tell their grandchildren. No one knew what was true or false.