A hole in the rock wall that might shape our future

While visiting the island of Samos from the island of Chios in mid-October 2020, due to my time constraint I made only a day trip to the island of Patmos by ferry where I stayed only for 5 hours between 10:30 and 15:30. 

The ferry departs from the port of Pythagorio, a WHS city, in Samos, so it is rather easy to combine visits to these two WHSs. The ferry ride, through some other islands, was about 2 hours. 

I had to plan the time allocation carefully, especially because both the Monastery of Saint John the Theologian and the Cave of Apocalypse take an afternoon break between 13:30 and 16:00.  So I had only 3 hours between 10:30 and 13:30 to visit the two.  I took a taxi immediately after the ferry arrived at Skala, the main city of the island of Patmos, to the town of Chora where the Monastery is located. 

The monastery is on top of the hill that is Chora and dominates the area. As I walked up from where the taxi dropped me off, I also saw several souvenir shops / stalls. The whole scene somewhat reminded me of Mon San Michel in France. 

But the monastery created in the 11th century looks more like a castle / fortress than a religious compound. It probably signifies its special place in Christianity. The general public are allowed into only two interiors in the monastery, the main church and the museum, both of which are quite small, considering how large the whole imposing edifice is.

They were doing some sort of maintenance of the church that morning, so I went to the museum first. The 2-story museum certainly holds significant documents, icons and costumes, including the edict to create the monastery by the Byzantine emperor at that time. 

While still waiting for the church to open up, I walked around in the exterior area within the edifice, taking several stairs up and down and peeking into living quarters where some monks seemed to live. 

The church was even smaller than the museum and looked more like a single chapel, darkly lit, but richly decorated. 

There was a restaurant open in Chora with crowds and with a nice view of the Aegean where I thought about having lunch.  But then I found a bus to take for 2 km down to the Cave of Apocalypse, so I decided to forgo lunch there and took the bus instead to cut the time for walking for 2 km. 

When I got off the bus, a cigarette-puffing, bearded Orthodox monk / guard led me to the cave church. This is supposed to be where St. John the Theologian inhabited and had the apocalyptic vision described in the Book of Revelation written by him.  What appeared to be the iconostasis of the church had some colorful paintings, but the church is better known for the "pillow," a little hole on the rock wall where St. John rested his head when he slept (photo). It looked quite uncomfortable, and I thought if he had spent all day in the claustrophobic cave and slept with the pillow at night, it couldn't have been too difficult to have such a wild vision. He would have craved "light" for sure. 

The Book is the basis for the belief of many US Republicans today, including a friend of mine, that the US Democrats are trying to allow immigrants from around the world into the USA, who go back and forth between the USA and their home countries, and then to establish one world government with their help, which is the beginning of the end of this world, as they interpret the Book. It is seriously interesting if the whole vision was caused by this pillow. 

I walked down to Skala and still had 2 more hours until my return ferry departs, so I had lunch at one of the many restaurants that were open at the port area.  I really liked the whole ambience in this small island and even had enough time to find and talk to the owner of a decent apartment near the port where I might come back to live for a few months in the near future.