Stories from Sisters - The Places We Remember

The Little Chapel by The Water

THE GULF OF GERA

August 2022

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By midday, the August heat had settled onto our skin, the kind of heat that makes everything move a little more slowly. It was 2022, and we were on Lesbos, driving towards another bay with no particular plan for the afternoon. We had taken our time over breakfast, already softened by the slowness of being on holiday, and were simply following the road. Then we noticed a narrow road disappearing between tall reeds.

Where does that go?

It was a small question, but curiosity got the better of us. We pulled the car over and followed a little path on foot, walking between the reeds until the landscape suddenly opened up.

There was water in front of us.

The Gulf of Gera stretched out beneath a wide blue sky.

Reeds grew from the shallow water along the shore, moving gently in the breeze. There was very little around us. No signs, no one calling us towards anything. Just the heat, the water, and the soft rustling of the reeds.

And then we saw the little chapel.

It stood at the edge of the water, small enough to almost disappear into the landscape. Inside, there was little more than a figure of Christ and a cross, while the worn walls and peeling paint carried the marks of many seasons. Nothing about it seemed polished or arranged for visitors; it felt as though time had simply been allowed to pass over it. Yet there were melted candles inside, a small sign that someone had been there before us. We had no idea who, or when they had come, but perhaps someone still came to pray, or perhaps the chapel belonged to a tradition that had quietly continued long after we had stopped noticing places like this.

We eventually learned that the little chapel was called Agios Therapontas Geras, although beyond its name, we still know very little about its story. Somehow, that felt fitting; perhaps not every place we encounter needs to reveal its history to us in order to leave an impression.

There was something about the simplicity of the place that stayed with us. A tiny room by the water, weathered by the years, with nothing to explain itself. No plaque telling us who had built it. No story written on a wall. Just the cross, the figure of Christ, and the traces left by people who had come before us.

On the way back, our mother stopped to gather a few dried flowers from the roadside. Another small thing from that afternoon that somehow came home with us.

Four years later, we still remember this little chapel.

Not because we know its story. We never did.

We remember the heat of that August afternoon, the path through the reeds, the stillness of the water and those old walls standing at its edge. We remember the melted candles, and the thought that someone had come there and found a reason to light one.

Perhaps that is what some places leave behind. Not a story we can tell, but an image, a feeling, a few details that remain long after the day itself has passed.

A road we almost didn't take.

A little chapel whose name we only learned much later.

A handful of dried flowers carried home by our mother.

And somehow, it remained with us.

Maybe you have a place like that too; somewhere you stumbled upon without looking for it, knew almost nothing about, and somehow never quite forgot.

Quite but leaving a mark. 

 With warmth,

Prickly Pears Sisters

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