Almanac Travel: Three Candles in Santorini

The Holy Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist is in Fira on Santorini. It’s a still, bewitching hour on a Thursday. Our final night on this striking island before we fly to Sicily. We’ve stolen up and across along the bumpy, twisting alleys from our apartment to this church. Sunset is imminent.

It’s been decades since I regularly visited St Roses in Kapunda. We’re not going to mass. Claire leads me in. We’re just going to take a moment or two to think and talk.

Claire gathers and lights three candles. They glow with deep warmth and with faith. A candle for her dad, one for her mum, one for her sister, Fran. The candles offer much beyond light.

Despite my Catholic childhood, at first, I feel like an intruder. Church was only for set times, otherwise the door was shut. Claire leans over and whispers, ‘In Turkey I was told that Muslims have no ceremony or mass when in a mosque. They simply pray.’ In the darkening pews, I nod. She continues. ‘There’s no assistance from a priest or religious person. It’s a singular, private time.’ Claire’s always teaching me things like this.

I wonder if that’s what we’re doing now? Using this time for reflection, for gratitude, for remembrance. If churches can be for spirituality and not only formal religion, then I think so. I’ve not sat quietly in a church like this before, and it’s peaceful. I wonder if I could cultivate a new, informal relationship with the Catholic church. This might be the gift Greece gives me.

We then stroll around to the Three Bells of Fira. We peer down on the Mediterranean, way below on the bluish, deepening Caldera. The cloudy skies mean there’s few people here on what feels like the brink of the world. On clear summer evenings in a month or two, it’ll be heaving like a music festival. Again, we speak little. There is no need.

Up and down alleys and laneways on the cliff’s edge, we then arrive at Volkan on the Rocks. It screens the Abba-inspired film Mamma Mia six nights a week. The resort has an open-air theatre, and the audience is at their tables with headphones on. It could be fun, in this location that’s neither day nor night, but both land and sea. We walk on.

A moored cruise ship hovers below, a colossal modern wonder, all steel and sleek lines. From it dance music erupts up and into the Greek heavens. We imagine those on the decks, clutching drinks, milling about. Then, a smaller wooden vessel, a ketch, glides into view, pop melodies also bellowing up from the silent sea. It slides beneath us to the cliff and disappears into the velvety night.

I think back to our time in the church, just as dusk approached. In amongst the endless, squealing wheels of travel, the stillness of our church visit now feels as an instructive lingering, a wonder of rapt quiet.