Areopagus

When I was in the musical, everyone thought I meant the country.

When I was in the country, everyone thought I meant the musical.

So when I say I was in Greece (homonym of Grease), let me clarify.

I mean Athens, Greece. Country, not musical.

I was 19. Fresh-faced. So midwestern. Raised on a steady diet of niceness and church devotionals. In a word: Earnest as the day is long.

The kind of face that aggressive street vendors marked. The kind of face that strangers approach in an airport, asking in traveler’s English if I can help them find their gate. Because this girl?

This girls’s face got the “least likely to murder you or steal your wallet” award.

But, still capable. Still knowledgeable, even if full of guile. Even if 19, cornfed, and turned out on the world for the very first time. Folks still knew I could probably get them to their gate. And I knew, even though I had no right to, that I could figure out this whole travel thing just fine.

It was a three week, three credit tour of the land of myth and mysticism and (as the thinking went in the mid 200s) - it was a $5000 trip, and what was another 5k on top of student loans already?

And so it was that the earnest, fresh-faced, corn fed girl was turned loose on Athens. Though our tours were guided, our off hours were our own. The faculty members in charge left us under our own power during off hours. Now, bear in mind, I’d never used public transport on my own. Never navigated a city on my own. And this was the era of T-9 texting, so…no GPS walking directions or transit maps.

I had no right to feel as comfortable as I did. And yet:

I learned my first city bus schedule and route. In Greek.
I saw my first mountains. In Greece.
I vomited after coming down the mountains in a series of switchbacks. But in Greece.
I found out I still didn’t like the taste of olives. Even in Greece.

I drank complimentary champagne on a New Year’s Eve Luftansa flight…no, scratch that. I was too busy being compulsively good to accept that blessing when it was handed to me.

We skipped islands in the Aegean, read the Iliad in a 3,000 year old theatre. Toured enough ancient sites to elicit “rock shock,” wherein every age and ruin blended into the last.

I felt all of my nineteen years and so wonderfully metropolitan. But my favorite site was the closest to our home base: The Areopagus, translated as Mars Hill. Not because it was a biblical site, but because the views were breathtaking. So I made up my newly independent, seasoned-traveler mind and decided to go back on our last night in Athens. It was a free night and, after all, I could navigate the bus system - in Greek. Who cares that I was an extremely young American tourist on her own in an unfamiliar setting? I was earnest. It would be fine.

Plus, I made my trip roommate, Jess, go with me. So we were TWO extremely young American tourists on a cross-city trek. What could go wrong? Aside from, like, murder. We both definitely knew this was how every Lifetime move special began. So we made a plan: stick close, don’t talk to anybody else, and back on the bus by 11pm.

We hopped off at the appropriate stop and began the hike up, up, up to the hill. And because this was an ancient city, it’s not as though the path was direct. Rather than a simple path following roads, trails or sidewalks, the foot path skipped between narrow stone roads and then wound behind into pedestrian-only alleyways. In effect, Jess and I went traipsing through the back patios of many Athenian households. And because this was a mid-week January evening, it’s not as though there were many other tourists winding their way up or down.

So we really were just…two girls, picking our way through residents’ potted orange and lemon trees in their back yard, muttering near-silent midwestern “sorry!”s as we passed. Occasionally I would mutter a half hearted “Kali kronia!,” happy new year if the moment seemed right.

In retrospect, that moment was never right.

At one point on our way to the top, Jess and I pulled over to double check the map when a young guy with a backpack passed us. After a few steps, he turned around and called to us. We shot each other a look as if to say “remember the plan! Don’t get murdered!” But then he said, in an accent that matched ours, “Excuse me, I don’t want to bother you but I couldn’t help but hear your voices as I was walking past: Are you from the Midwest? Cause I am, too!”

Well! A fellow midwesterner! Surely this was safe! decided the nineteen year old girls on their own in the dark. But thankfully, it was. He said his name was David, he was a grad student at University of Illinois, and he was here interviewing pilgrims who came to visit Mars Hill. It was just a ways up, he said. Would we like him to walk us up that way?

Forgetting the no-talking-no-dying plan, Jess and I said yes. As we walked along, David shared more about his thesis project. He was interviewing tourists who came to Mars Hill due to its biblical connections, and he was especially interested in the meaning that evangelical Christians gave to the site.

”So,” he said eventually. “Would you guys consider yourselves evangelicals? I mean, you go to an evangelical school, right?”

By this point, we had reached our destination and were standing on the Areopagus, overlooking the city. Jess stepped a few feet away and was snapping pictures of the skyline. Secretly, I was glad she wasn’t too near because I wasn’t sure if she’d be offended by my answer.

I said that, if I was honest, I didn’t like the term “evangelical” for myself anymore. Because I no longer considered my faith something to earn, sell, or share with others.

“I think my faith is mostly about remembering things that I used to know  - that maybe all of us used to know - but that I had forgot somewhere along the way. Faith, for me, is about remembering and reminding myself that we are all God’s beloved children, it is good for us to care for each other, and that we know how to do so if we slow down and ask.”

“Faith as an act of remembering. Huh,” David said. “I have to admit, that isn’t one I’ve heard much from the people who come here.” David thanked us for taking the time to talk.

Jess and I turned to leave, making our way down the steep steps, carefully holding the steel rail that guided us back to street level. We walked for a few minutes before my spidey senses began tingling. I turned to Jess and said “keep walking - I’m gonna run back up there real fast. There’s one more thing I want to say to him.”

For those keeping track, we had now violated all the terms of our don’t end up on Lifetime plan.

I ran back up to the top of the hill, looking for David, but he was nowhere in sight. I climbed back up the steps and still - nowhere. And you would think, after my enlightened and metropolitan answer, that I would take this as a beautiful sign. But that, my friends, is not what happened.

Instead, I was seized with panic.

Because what if David was an angel, and I had FAILED the test?

I jogged quickly down to the spot on the path where Jess was waiting. "Did you get to say what you wanted to?” No, I said. Huh. Weird that he was gone so soon, she said. Yep, I said.

We walked back to the bus and rode home in an uncomfortable silence. I slept, wondering if maybe I had lost something important amidst all the things I’d gained.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to make sense of that night. Of the answer I didn’t know I had until someone asked the right question. Of the fear and panic and questioning that followed.

In the intervening years, some things haven’t changed. I still have the face that people trust when they’re in need of a soft place to land, or directions to the right terminal. But some things have changed. If I had that encounter again, I don’t think I’d need to check back on David, or to interpret his absence as a miracle.

Because I know now that folks who ask the right questions at the right time as nothing short of angels. And I still believe faith is a matter of remembering our way home.