INTRODUCTION A few years ago a friend of mine, whom I know to be an intelligent and compassionate woman, listened carefully as I told her about a Greek Orthodox pilgrimage I had witnessed on the tiny Cycladic island of Tinos in the Aegean Sea. Each year on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption, which marks the spiritual and bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven, the Greek Orthodox faithful travel great distances to Tinos to venerate an icon of the Virgin housed in a church atop a small hill at the end of an avenue of marble paving stones. The icon, which was discovered in the early nineteenth century amid the rubble left by an earthquake, is said to have worked miraculous cures and to have granted many pilgrims their individual wishes. The pilgrims arrive by ferry. The moment the gangplank touches the dock, they rush forward, fall to the ground, and begin making their way to the church on hands and knees. Some slither the half-mile on their bellies, poling themselves forward with their elbows in the manner of besieged soldiers creeping through underbrush. Some lie across the street and, like horizontal dervishes, roll themselves slowly up the gradual incline across stones baked torrid by the August sun. As they proceed they pray for miracles and for mercy. Some weep, others call out the name of the Virgin. Many carry on their backs offerings of wax candles the length of their bodies. In the terrible heat the candles droop and sweat. Elderly white-haired widows in black dresses inch their way silently up the hill, humbling themselves in hope of the Virgins attention, their frail backs forming saddles for the punishing sun. (Many women in need of divine intervention in some grave family matter - an illness, a wayward or disobedient child, a financial bind, an unfaithful husband - vow to return to Tinos every year if the Virgin will grant the desired outcome.) By the time they reach the church after several hours of crawling, their hands and knees are galled into raw and bloody emblems of their belief. Once before the icon they prostrate themselves in a rapture of spiritual desire. My friend, who had listened patiently to my story, suddenly shook her head and said with disdain, "How pathetic!" Her remark struck me with a disorienting slap of surprise. It was uncharacteristically dismissive, and it was far enough from my own response to the Tinos pilgrims that I suffered a moment of self-doubt. Had I been wrong in my view of them? Were they in fact pathetic? It was true that standing at the edge of that Tinos street I had been astonished by what I saw, had even looked with skepticism upon some of the more ostentatious displays of piety, and when a military parade of admirals and ensigns came quick-marching up the street in honor of the Virgin I had found the procession pompous and incongruous. But at the end of that day (the flow of pilgrims ran long into the night), after watching untold numbers of elderly women craw Excerpted from The Singular Pilgrim: Travels on Sacred Ground by Rosemary Mahoney All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
