"Are There Any Questions?" An offer that comes at the end of college lectures and long meetings. Said when an audience is not only overdosed
with information, but when there is no time left anyhow. At times like that you sure do have questions. Like "Can we leave now?" and "What the
hell was this meeting for?" and "Where can I get a drink?"
The gesture is supposed to indicate openness on the part of the speaker, I suppose, but if in fact you do ask a question, both the speaker and
audience will give you drop-dead looks. And some fool -- some earnest idiot -- always asks. And the speaker always answers. By repeating most of what
he has already said.
But if there is a little time left and there is a little silence in response to the invitation, I usually ask the most important question of all:
"What is the meaning of life?"
You never know, somebody may have the answer, and I'd really hate to miss it because I was too socially inhibited to ask. But when I ask, it's
usually taken as a kind of absurdist move -- people laugh and nod and gather up their stuff and the meeting is dismissed on that ridiculous note.
Once, and only once, I asked that question and got a serious answer. One that is with me still.
First, I must tell you where this happened, because the place has a power of its own. In Greece again.
Near the village of Gonia on a rocky bay of the island of Crete, sits a Greek Orthodox monastery. Alongside it, on land donated by the monastery, is
an institute dedicated to human understanding and peace, and especially to rapprochement between Germans and Cretans. An improbable task, given the
bitter residue of wartime.
This site is important, because it overlooks the small airstrip at Maleme where Nazi paratroopers invaded Crete and were attacked by peasants wielding
kitchen knives and hay scythes. The retribution was terrible. The populations of whole villages were lined up and shot for assaulting Hitler's finest
troops. High above the institute is a cemetery with a single cross marking the mass grave of Cretan partisans. And across the bay on yet another hill
is the regimented burial ground of the Nazi paratroopers. The memorials are so placed that all might see and never forget. Hate was the only weapon
the Cretans had at the end, and it was a weapon many vowed never to give up. Never ever.
Against this heavy curtain of history, in this place where the stone of hatred is hard and thick, the existence of an institute devoted to healing the
wounds of war is a fragile paradox. How has it come to be here? The answer is a man. Alexander Papaderos.
A doctor of philosophy, teacher, politician, resident of Athens but a son of this soil. At war's end he came to believe that the Germans and the
Cretans had much to give one another -- much to learn from one another. That they had an example to set. For if they could forgive each other and
construct a creative relationship, then any people could.
To make a lovely story short, Papaderos succeeded. The institute became a reality -- a conference ground on the site of horror -- and it was in fact a
source of producive interaction between the two countries. Books have been written on the dreams that were realized by what people gave to people in
this place.
By the time I came to the institute for a summer session, Alexander Papaderos had become a living legend. One look at him and you saw his strength and
intensity -- energy, physical power, courage, intelligence, passion, and vivacity radiated from this person. And to speak to him, to shake his hand,
to be in a room with him when he spoke, was to experience his extraordinary electric humanity. Few men live up to their reputations when you get
close. Alexander Papaderos was an exception.
At the last session on the last morning of a two-week seminar on Greek culture, led by intellectuals and experts in their fields who
