Notes from the Offering exhibition at Athens, Zoumboulakis Gallery / November 1997
from the notes on the offerings
It’s not with wheat and grain, it’s with flour that we pay for the poem.
Christos Bravos
…Remember, without you I don’t exist
without us you are a minority (ALL TOGETHER)
without you bare bones
and don’t you listen to this and the underworld
you are our land and we are exiles.
Michalis Ganas
… in the white, clean cloth with which they wrapped the offering they put a folded bit of paper on which were written the names of the deceased and the living members of the family, so they would be remembered after mass, for health and for rest. All together; a simple line dividing them, the living with the living on the one side and the deceased with the deceased on the other. When I was a child I had a clear handwriting; I sometimes was prompted to write them in my best calligraphy, paying attention so that the names were clearly arranged and spelt to avoid the priest from making some mistake that would misplace the prayer.
I was always deeply impressed by so much solicitousness, even on the part of the less pious, in the preparation and the presentation of the offerings. So much care required by the material offerings to the invisible. Just how much attention, discipline and order, so one could rise in some kind of freedom of the spirit. And again but for a moment, slightly and briefly, barely touching it, if ever one was meant to, or was one?
Christos T. Bokoros
Ye seek Me, not because ye saw the miracles but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled. Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life…
John vi. 6.26, 27
… Man shall not live by bread alone.
Matthew 4:4
…in the old days, the preparation of the offerings was something difficult. The best wheat was chosen. The most austere and fastidious bakers, that is, rubbing the ripe wheat with their hands, so that it wouldn’t be trodden on by the hooves of the threshing animals, it wouldn’t be soiled in the threshing ground. It as washed, dried and then kept in a separate place. When their wheat was over, they ate cornmeal, but would never touch the wheat intended for the offerings of the year. It was taken to the mill separately from the other wheat; they ground it and sieved it with the silk sieve and it was with it that the women would bake the offerings. With special sourdough which they would bring from the bread of the Holy Cross on 14th September, never with yeast. And in a special trough made of chipped plane, kept apart and irreproachably clean. Everything separately and clean. The baking tray, the cloths, special ones for the offerings. And when the time came for kneading the preparations were careful. Abstention from relations for the married ones, their hair washed, their clothes changed and a prayer said before kneading. And prayers during kneading. the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, the mercy on me o God, the literate ones, the have mercy Lord and save us o Christ, help us Our Lady, the illiterate ones. No laughing, no chatting. And the hair tightly bound in a special scarf lest any hair should fall, and a white, clean apron, and the sign of the cross before starting and on the flour and on the raisins. And great care so the dough would be firm and allow for the right stamping [with a wooden stamp from the Holy Mountain (blessed they call it in the mountains), so that the letters IΣ XΣ NIKA (Iησούς Xριστός Nικά – Jesus Christ our Conqueror), MΘ (Mήτηρ Θεού – Mother of God) would print clearly, together with the nine armies of the angels] the offerings coming through round and perfect. Would you like any more details? There are so many, undeniable testimonies of the reverence of those blessed women. Let me just mention one, the lion’s part at that. They kneaded the dough thoroughly, not with their fists as in normal kneading, out of respect, and with their fingers closed, so as not to disrespect the dough. And the offerings embalmed more out of the devotion and Orthodoxy than from the baking. Which was also carried by heating the oven or the tray lids in a special way and not with old wood or old papers or whatever had lost its use, but rather with branches and wood from the neighbouring grove. It was truly as if they wore a stole…
“Guidelines for Orthodox Prayer”
archimandrite Dositheos, abbot of the Holy Monastery of Tatarnas
