This Time Last Year

This time last year, we were still managing to attend Greek Language School at the Athens Centre in downtown Athens, before a general lockdown was announced and everything went online.  One morning, on the way to the school, crossing a park from the metro station, I encountered Samuel Beckett. Not in the flesh I might add. But the words of the poet were inscribed in a public park in Athens. And I’m thinking, an Irish poet in this land of Sophocles and Euripides and what not? 

So, when you come up out of Metro Evangelismos and you make your way downtown, you cross Rizari Park, a small patch of green in the urban grey of the city, and here, the feet of countless pedestrians have beaten out a “desire line” through the grass, that is to say, a natural footway has formed diagonally across the green instead of the prescribed pathways constructed in stone. Here, an art installation has been recently designed over the "desire line". Paving slabs have been laid out on the grass with these words of Samuel Beckett inscribed in both English and in Greek.

“..if you do not love me I shall not be loved

if I do not love you I shall not love..”

For me, it speaks powerfully to commuters who pass by each day, of the need to express love and compassion to those who are passing through and arriving into the city. But also, and especially in Greece, this land which has received and welcomed many more from other distant lands than most countries in Europe, it speaks of those who have also beaten out their own "desire lines", direct pathways to escape from the chaos and horror of where they have been and seek out peace and security in some new and unknown place. My prayer on that morning walk in November last, on behalf of my adopted city, was that we may be among those who love the stranger, the alien, and who build bridges and not barriers.

Based as we are for now in Northern Ireland, and hearing about one hotel in Belfast currently housing 280 asylum seekers, and a larger number of others also expected to arrive between now and Christmas, I guess that prayer is renewed. May we also as a nation be among those who will show love and compassion where people have only encountered rejection and hate.

“..if you do not love me I shall not be loved

if I do not love you I shall not love..”