JUNE 2023. CELEBRATION OF STEGI!

June harvester month! Month of reward and abundance. In October, father sowed the wheat. I used to observe it when I was out of school and I was pouring into the fields with my parents. Anxious anticipation to see the seed of the wheat to emerge, the germ. It won’t make it, I was telling father. Don’t worry, he was muttering. God has provided. Have patience. The first clouds of autumn were appearing in the sky. I was running in the field again. The seeds gave birth or they fell into… lethargy. The parents’ estate was huge. Then a green meadow the whole field! A few days ago there was nothing. Only the seeds invisible in the soil. Now the seeds have given birth. What magic to watch the sprouts grow gradually. – Will the rains, mother, the wind, allow the plants to grow…? – Nature provides, my child. You will see, the green sprouts will become wheat ears. All winter I watched them with joy. It was like I was growing up with them. That’s how you are, my child, said the mother. You grow up, but not only in the body. You learn letters, you observe what is happening around you, you participate where it suits you and thus your mind and heart grow.- What does it mean that the mind and heart grow, mother? – It’s like seeing farther and farther and participating in whatever distant your mind looks at and then you can understand why people are sad and angry, why there are wars and there is injustice in the world and you keep wanting to “grow” more. – And how will I achieve this mother? – You will find this on your own, my child. I listened and rejoiced, and at the same time so many questions arose in my little mind.

And the ears of wheat ripened. Mother and father harvested all June. They made bunches of wheat ears. The bunches bales and we carried the bales to the haystack in father’s truck. There would come a huge machine that processed the bales and we would get the wheat. When I didn’t have school, I ran to find the parents who had left in the morning for the “harvest”. There in the heat I was helping with the bales. I watched in awe as parents with a scythe harvested acres of wheat. The sweat was pouring from their faces and they tirelessly carried on with joy. “These ears of wheat will become your bread, my child!” I vaguely remember before the machines, the threshing floor. Father had a horse at the time. In the threshing floor the sheaves were scattered. The horse dragged the volosyro, which in turn crushed the ears of wheat and the wheat was revealed. What a joy as I watched the wheat like gold being revealed!!! What gratitude that my father would take me up on the volosyro, round and round with the horse! And indeed the wheat went to the flour mill and we got the flour. Mother would knead the fresh bread and she would fill the sack with rusks to eat until the next kneading.

When I became an adolescent, I began to seriously look for a way to “grow up”. I understood that mother did not mean that I should only learn letters in order for my mind and my heart to grow. It was also something else that I had to find it on my own. And the quest, after many years, led me to the beauty of Virtue.

I acknowledged Virtue in the ancient Greek philosophical texts, especially Aristotle’s. In his works “NICOMACHEAN ETHICS”, “EUDEMIAN ETHICS”, “THE GREAT ETHICS”, it is demonstrated that “…the eudaimonic life, the virtuous life”.

Also human can learn to be happy and this is achieved through the constant practice of Virtue. The Welfare that Alexander owed to his teacher made him Great. “Live well, live by virtues”. “Eudaemonia is life according to virtue”. Ethics, and the way to conquer it through VIRTUE as a condition that leads us to eudaemonia, are praised. He distinguishes between true and false WELFARE and he defines eudaemonia as the supreme Good and the ultimate goal of human actions. Welfare, he tells us, is not the acquisition of many goods but the good disposition of the soul, that is, the EY of the soul. The distinction is necessary in our days because many times influenced by the patterns of consumerist modern society, we tend to believe that only the acquisition of material goods will give us welfare. This is what Aristotle makes clear to us and what emerges more generally from Greek Philosophical thought, that the goal for man is not the acquisition of an external welfare and the immeasurable desire for material goods, but of an internal welfare. This inner EY of the SOUL (in Greek EYPSYCHIA) is the true WELFARE (in Greek EYZOIA). So the purpose of life is not only to LIVE. But to work for the LIVING WELL (in Greek EYZIN) as the highest Good. The Virtues are those that lead us to Welfare (Eyzoia).

At VIRTUES we work and educate ourselves in THEORY and PRACTICE and step by step we adopt the way of Virtue as a way of life. We are working on the prospect of the Virtues adorning our everyday life from our simplest experience to the most complex. From being in touch with ourselves, with nature, with our children and partners and others, to demanding to get answers to our existential philosophical but human questions. From escaping from the microcosm of our entrenched and stereotyped perception that makes us rude and abusive of whatever higher is trying-working to flourish around us till to recognizing the capability of the VIRTUE-ESSENCE that we are.

The simplified interpretation about VIRTUE that Plato gives to Cratylus:

“VIRTUE is the unhindered journey of the soul, good movement of the soul without obstacles. EY poria (~ Prosperity) !!!” My beloved mother, VIRTUE is for the “growth” of the mind and heart. You encouraged me for her quest because, without being educated, you were great!

Throughout the whole educational year we worked diligently and consistently. The results are obvious! In this month of reaping, we have reaped the fruits of the seeds of Virtue we have sown!

We celebrated!!

“Of the three, after all, models of life (way of life), one is of the practical, the other is of the theoretical and the third of the hedonistic, the latter way of life, being immoral and enslaved to pleasures, suits animals and modest men, the theoretical, if it neglects practical life, is useless, and the practical finally, if it has no contact with philosophy, is unaesthetic and erroneous.“

Plutarch, On the Education of children 7C – 8B. (Free Translation)

Note. This article touches infinitesimally on major fields of knowledge. Aiming the skepticism.

WITH VIRTUE
TERZAKI MARIA