A friend lent me a series of interviews that Bill Moyers did with Joseph Campbell called The Power of Myth. Campbell presents one compelling image after another to frame living and life as a play between the eternal and three-dimensional reality. I watch a bit of the interviews just before I go to bed. I leave the world of dirt and sweat and enter a larger frame of myths and religion.  

Campbell commented that we all want to experience life fully. This week, I realized that an experience I had almost thirty years ago informs my work at the farm. I went on a tour of Greece led by Frederic Lionel, a leader of the French Resistance during World War II. In the war, he encountered the Western esoteric tradition and subsequently studied it intensively. I met him through my mentors, Vince and Jane Sweeney. I was drawn to his presence: what was striking was that he had no fear in his voice—none.  

Frederic led a tour of the sacred places in Greece that following spring. I signed up to go while I worked in the Mayor’s Office in Baltimore recruiting people to work for our agency. I worked two jobs, ate beans and noodles for a year to afford to go.

I joined a group of Americans, Germans, French, a Brit and a Swiss woman touring the Aegean on a small yacht. We visited various ancient sites: Corinth, Delphi, Olympia, Epidaurus and the Parthenon in Athens. Every day, Frederic led a meditation, gave a lecture and held a round table, where he answered our questions.  He led us more deeply into the myths that informed the ancient Greek culture.

The Germans had an intensity that I found magnetic. Because of the two years of German I had studied in college, I understood them a little. They were studying “Breath Therapy.” Herta Grun, the group’s leader, walked slowly and purposely with a cane. Her crystal clear blue eyes took in the world around her.  

We arrived at Delphi just before the full moon in May. The Germans spent the afternoon with an air of suspense and purpose. They were determined to meditate at the temple of Athena as the full moon rose. They scouted the paths to the temple; they looked for fences, gates and guards that might prevent access to the site.  

That evening, our tour bus pulled up to a path and we disembarked. We walked quietly down the path in the dark and sat in silence in a circle at the ruins of the temple of Pallas Athena—a rounded temple with three columns standing. The temple stood on a hillside overlooking the sea; cypress trees lifted to the sky like living columns.  

We meditated as the full moon rose.  I found myself opening to a world beyond fear, a place of full, rich silence. I felt so present; so full; so open.  I now realize that I have been looking to create that space again, a space where time stops and the world opens…….