Transportation for miracles
Hundreds of tourist coaches filled with hordes of the faithful headed once more last weekend for the Monastery of Agathos to see the relics (or rather the inexplicably unburied corpse) of the monk Vyssarion. Meanwhile, dozens more tourist buses, this time filled with schoolchildren, head for the gigantic new shopping mall where countless consumer products are on display. Naturally, the two phenomena have nothing in common. The former is a kind of religious pilgrimage where faith is invoked in the purchase of various artifacts that will bear witness to the fact that the possessor had «been there» – crucifixes, icons, bottles of holy water, all at steadily rising prices. In the latter case, the god being worshipped is Consumption, which also has to be honored with the purchase of objects, half of which are probably unnecessary, the rest absolutely unnecessary, but also allow the purchaser to say that he or she has «been there.» The buses did not leave from the same place, nor did they arrive at the same destination, or for the same purpose. Religious faith is not the same, after all, as consumer greed. Yet the engines that transported the faithful to their destinations were fueled by the same things – curiosity or the desire to see something different up close. There is also faith in the driver, which in both cases is television. TV proclaims its saints and miracles, urging the people to run and look. People have always been in need of divine signs, no matter what god they worship – in antiquity, the outcome of a battle was forecast by whether a bird flew high in the sky or low down. And all these signs are interpreted with the blessing – or even the enthusiastic encouragement – of the clergy, who thereby confirm their own authority and strengthen their power.
