3-D Devotion
Going through the Herkyna gorge south of Livadia, a town in Boeotia, Greece, one passes the Fountain of Memory and the Fountain of Forgetfulness, the ancient Mnemosyne and Lethe of which Pausanias speaks. For me the water of Mnemosyne has done its work because I remember well first having seen from down the façade of a small church in a cave in the rock face and then having climbed up a steep path to arrive at this ‘chapel of Jerusalem of the Grotto’.
Inside the chapel I saw the cut-out picture of Christ on the cross flanked by two of his dear ones, and a few more cut-outs around it of Maria and the infant Jesus and other holy figures. But it was the large portrait of Maria, partly visible behind these cut-out pictures, that attracted my attention. It gave the simple, layered image an unexpected emotional depth. A mother having to witness the terrible suffering of her dear son on the cross. The son feeling the pain his ordeal must inflict on his dear mother. The space between the two layers filled with the eternal human experience of love, pain and grief.
Photos of the week: Agia Ierousalim, Livadia, Greece 2013
καιρός remembered 
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