Cave of the Apocalypse in Patmos, Greece

Our next port, Patmos, houses another of The World's Must-See Places: St. John's Monastery.

This Greek Isle would be a wonderful place to visit even without the Grotto of the Apocalypse and the incredible castle-like edifice that doubles as a museum of ancient artifacts.

At the top of a long uphill walk, we found an artsy village which immediately brought to mind Oia in Santorini, but without the crowds.

I mentioned this to a Korean couple, saying I thought it was a mini-Santorini, and in fact it is probably what most  tourists hope to find when they visit that lovely island.

That couple apparently liked the phrase "mini-Santorini," because we heard them repeat the description to several other travelers to nods of agreement.

With only Azamara Journey in the small port, we didn't overwhelm this island that is less than half the size of Catalina.  

Most of the island's 3000 residents are huddled around the port, so the hilltop village by St. John's Monastery feels like an idealized Greek village lost in time.  

It's quite a contrast to Oia, which despite being considerably larger can be deluged by tourists on summer days when multiple large cruise ships call on beautiful Santorini.

I guess you would call it a typical Greek day when we started up the hill, with bright sunshine and an azure blue sky.

As we cleared the city, we found foliage highlighted by bright pastel flowers and open spaces with trees framing progressively more incredible views.

About halfway up the hill, we arrived at the Cave of the Apocalypse where St. John wrote the Book of Revelation, which is a long, rather odd apocalyptic vision that ends the Holy Bible.

There's a small religious complex built around it, including a soccer field where some young adults were playing a vigorous game while we were there.

No photos were allowed inside either this small church or other churches inside the Monastery of St. John which we reached at the top of the hill, but the art has that shiny gold motif found throughout Greek Orthodox churches.  We were able to listen in on a service being conducted in Greek. (Then again, it might have been Latin, because "It's all Greek to me.")

We left the Grotto of the Apocalypse just as tour buses arrived from our ship.

An entrepreneur who anticipated our needs had parked his snack wagon across from the Grotto, and the ice cold Coke Zero tasted great, making the remainder of the scenic trek up the hill of Hora more enjoyable.

At the top of the hill that abuts the charming village described previously, we found the massive fortress castle built under the direction of Christodoulos the Blessed.

This Christian soldier-priest had been granted permission to build a monastery here by Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos (not to be confused with King Isaac Komnenos of Cyprus).

Founded in 1088, the Monastery looks much more like an imposing fortified Medieval castle than a place of religious study from the outside, which undoubtedly was intentional in order to dissuade potential invaders.

Bell towers acted as warning alarms to villagers to seek refuge in the fortress in case of attack.

A beautiful chapel (once again, no photos inside) and museum reflect the religious basis of the Monastery.  The museum houses lots of interesting artifacts, including old religious manuscripts carefully completed by hand long before the invention of the printing press.

Every step along the way, we seemed to arrive a bit ahead of the tour groups, though I'm not even sure how that was possible since they passed us as we walked up the second half of the hill from the Grotto of the Apocalypse.




When tour groups did arrive in areas we occupied, they still weren't overly crowded.

We never felt rushed to move along and had ample time to see everything of interest to us in the Monastery.





We wandered back outside to enjoy the quaint hillside village, browsing the shops where lovely wares included religious pictures, jewelry, scarves and glassware.


Anyone who collects trinkets and souvenirs as proofs of their travels would find plenty of great choices.

Julie and I, however, were more interested in a drink with a view.

Eventually we meandered into a cliffside cafe where we enjoyed soft drinks at a table with possibly the best view from the hillside, as advertised on their sidewalk sign.

After walking down the hill, we again headed to our floating resort for a delicious lunch.

Yes, Patmos has lots of restaurants from which to choose, and with another long day in port (8 AM to 10 PM), we could have taken advantage of the opportunity to enjoy not only lunch but dinner feasting on local cuisine.

For us, however, knowing what a sure-fire wonderful meal we can get without additional charge is generally irresistible.

After lunch, we wandered back into the port town, walking along the harbor to a small beach.

On this day, however, we decided to skip swimming in the water and instead doubled back to an oceanfront hotel patio bar for ouzo with ice water.

Ouzo is an anise-based liquor that tastes like licorice and is great on a hot afternoon.

Our smiling waitress at Chris Hotel also gave us salty munchies to accompany our drinks.

Plus, free wifi!

The ostensible reason for the stop in Patmos has attracted Christian pilgrims for centuries: Patmos Island is mentioned by name in the Book of Revelation as the place where John received his apocalyptic vision.

While most of us have heard verses occasionally mixed into church services, I hadn't read Revelation until I was a junior in college and, while dealing emotionally with the suicide of a long-time friend, decided to go through the Bible from start to finish.

I would bring my Bible to Cal State Long Beach and read it between classes.  Combined with the fact I had recently cut my long hair and started meditating, this led my fellow students in a Manpower Management class to assume I must be far more religious than my close friends would believe.

When we had a group project, one of my fellow students let a mild epithet slip, and he immediately turned to me to say, "Oh, I'm sorry Wes."  It's funny how people's perception of us changes the way they treat us, a concept that seems to have been lost on many Americans who refuse to assimilate into the mainstream culture which has the greatest probability for leading to happy, successful lives.

With its surrealistic, disturbing imagery, Revelation seems hard to embrace, while the more accessible Gospel of According to John has remained quite moving for me.

According to John, after the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth on Friday, He was anointed in oil and laid to rest in the tomb donated by Joseph of Arimathea.

When Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter and John came to visit the tomb on Sunday, they found it empty.

Jesus miraculously appeared to them, not as a vision, but as a powerful, resurrected being.  I imagine Him glowing with a bright aura but His body being tangible, still showing the wounds of the cross.

According to St. John, Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”

The next day, at what I guess you could call a wake, the Disciples of Jesus got together behind closed doors, hiding out from persecution, to remember their beloved master.

John wrote that Jesus appeared to them. “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.” And with that He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”

To read John's narrative of the resurrection in its entirety, visit this hotlink: John, Chapter 20.

As you can imagine, having been commanded by the resurrected Jesus to spread the Gospel throughout the world, the Disciples were highly motivated.  As we learned in our Manpower Management class, however, the lure of a carrot can be reinforced with the threat of the stick, which the Roman government and Jewish leaders provided, with the very real threat of crucifixion at the top of the list.

So, the Disciples dispersed throughout the world to spread the Word.

As we'd heard on other Eastern Mediterranean cruises, the gospel writer St. John (not to be confused with St. John the Baptist) cared for the Virgin Mary (not to be confused with Mary Magdalene) in Ephesus.

John was the youngest of the Disciples and lived a long life.  He was banished to the Greek Isle of Patmos, where he wrote Revelation.

In the general time frame when I read the Book of Revelation at CSULB, a popular best-seller, The Late Great Planet Earth, had recently established a broad audience for the theory that we were living in the last days as prophesied by John in Patmos.

I remember discussions as to whether the United States was what John referred to as Babylon in Chapter 18 of Revelation, a theory I brought up a few years later with my teacher in one of my Religious Science classes at Chapman College.

"Why would you not think he was referring to the actual area of ancient Babylon?" asked my logical teacher, who in addition to being a religious scholar was a priest as I recall (he might have been a minister of some Christian religion other than Catholicism, so if my memory is imperfect, please don't be like a CNN reporter going after Ben Carson).

The Babylonian Empire at its zenith covered what we call the Middle East, with the exception of Turkey, and it would be the most rational interpretation for John.  Then again, as I said previously, I find Revelation rather strange.

As I learned more about the history of the world and also about human nature, however, I have come to the conclusion that history repeats itself.

In an earlier college class, Twentieth Century Sights and Sounds, a humanities class that I took at Golden West College, we would watch a movie every week as part of the curriculum.  One of the movies we watched in the Forum class was Ingmar Berman's The Seventh Seal.

While I don't remember too much about that movie, it did make a clear impression that at different points in history, human's look around and believe they see signs of an impending apocalypse.

As the Holy Lands tumbled like dominoes from Christian  rule into Muslim hands, and particularly after Caliph al-Hakim went on his destructive binge targeting everything holy to Christians and Jews, it must have felt like the end of time was at hand.

Again in the 13th and 14th centuries when the black plague swept through Europe in the wake of the Crusades, wiping out a third of the population, it probably felt like the end of days.

More recently, Adolph Hitler seemed to embody the antichrist as his evil Nazi regime marched into infamy.

However, life not only goes on but, as improbable as it seems to doomsayers, gradually improves for future generations, though the forefront of civilization may shift to a new geographic center.