60 Minutes made me homesick - let me explain
in my religious wanderings, and still unending inchoate search for meaning, I spent 14 years as an Orthodox Christian - my wife still is, and we were married in the Orthodox Church, St. Mark Orthodox Church in Bethesda Maryland.
But for a decade, beginning in 1981, my spiritual home was on a rocky peninsula in Northern Greece, on Mount Athos. I took a trip there that year, and for some reason when I asked the Abbot of one of the Monasteries to serve as my spiritual father, he agreed, which surprised even many of the monks.
I made two subsequent trips, in 1983, but then not again until 1989. I simply could not afford it.
Yet Geronda, as we called Father Aimilianos, remained my spiritual advisor. On the trip in 1983 I wrestled with whether I should become a monk. He told me I could be a good monk, but my life was a preparation for
