WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.330 align:middle line:90% All right, one more poem. 00:00:02.330 --> 00:00:04.640 align:middle line:84% I'm going to take you to ancient Greece. 00:00:04.640 --> 00:00:08.900 align:middle line:84% Would you rather go to Mycenae or Delphi? 00:00:08.900 --> 00:00:09.800 align:middle line:90% Delphi. 00:00:09.800 --> 00:00:11.250 align:middle line:90% Everybody wants to go to Delphi. 00:00:11.250 --> 00:00:12.690 align:middle line:90% All right, let's go to Delphi. 00:00:12.690 --> 00:00:13.470 align:middle line:90% Mount Parnassus. 00:00:13.470 --> 00:00:14.400 align:middle line:90% Let's go to Delphi. 00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:19.500 align:middle line:84% So, Delphi, as you know, the women were the prophets. 00:00:19.500 --> 00:00:22.590 align:middle line:84% But of course, they were drugged on these toxic gases. 00:00:22.590 --> 00:00:24.480 align:middle line:84% So they spoke in nonsense language, 00:00:24.480 --> 00:00:28.530 align:middle line:84% and it took the priests to interpret what they were saying 00:00:28.530 --> 00:00:30.770 align:middle line:90% and whatever. 00:00:30.770 --> 00:00:33.330 align:middle line:84% Let's not romanticize the ancient wisdoms, 00:00:33.330 --> 00:00:34.860 align:middle line:90% but anyway, let's respect them. 00:00:34.860 --> 00:00:35.850 align:middle line:90% So this is Delphi. 00:00:35.850 --> 00:00:41.240 align:middle line:84% I went with my grandson Raymond, and he had done a semester 00:00:41.240 --> 00:00:46.370 align:middle line:84% abroad in Bhutan and so he had a sense of Buddhist practice 00:00:46.370 --> 00:00:48.330 align:middle line:84% that probably comes up at the end of the poem. 00:00:48.330 --> 00:00:49.940 align:middle line:90% You might want to know that. 00:00:49.940 --> 00:00:51.745 align:middle line:90% So here we are at Delphi. 00:00:51.745 --> 00:00:54.440 align:middle line:90% 00:00:54.440 --> 00:00:57.830 align:middle line:84% Our guide shared the story of a prophecy. 00:00:57.830 --> 00:01:01.550 align:middle line:84% The queen told her two sons: The brother 00:01:01.550 --> 00:01:05.540 align:middle line:84% who kisses his mother first will be king. 00:01:05.540 --> 00:01:10.340 align:middle line:84% One fell, the other stood and kissed her. 00:01:10.340 --> 00:01:12.240 align:middle line:90% She chose the fallen one. 00:01:12.240 --> 00:01:16.490 align:middle line:84% Why, the other protested, when I kissed you first? 00:01:16.490 --> 00:01:20.610 align:middle line:84% Yes, but your brother kissed Mother Earth. 00:01:20.610 --> 00:01:24.690 align:middle line:84% It's a good story to tell at Delphi, where it took a woman 00:01:24.690 --> 00:01:28.740 align:middle line:84% to inhale the vapors rising from a crack in the hide 00:01:28.740 --> 00:01:32.310 align:middle line:84% of ragged Mount Parnassus, and speak truth 00:01:32.310 --> 00:01:36.960 align:middle line:84% to priests, though her words were unintelligible. 00:01:36.960 --> 00:01:41.580 align:middle line:84% So they made up what they wanted to hear and called it prophecy. 00:01:41.580 --> 00:01:42.820 align:middle line:90% No matter. 00:01:42.820 --> 00:01:46.650 align:middle line:84% Walking among these ruins, rock, nuthatches 00:01:46.650 --> 00:01:50.220 align:middle line:84% singing loud all around, it's impossible 00:01:50.220 --> 00:01:54.550 align:middle line:84% not to feel the importance to the ones who prayed 00:01:54.550 --> 00:01:59.290 align:middle line:84% and the ones who paid for the privilege of asking questions 00:01:59.290 --> 00:02:04.800 align:middle line:84% there at the omphalos, where the surface opens to the depths. 00:02:04.800 --> 00:02:09.160 align:middle line:84% Goats first identified the spot, dancing drunk in the fumes. 00:02:09.160 --> 00:02:13.930 align:middle line:84% You can feel the weight of time layered like sedimentary rock. 00:02:13.930 --> 00:02:17.020 align:middle line:84% Gaian worship to Pythian serpent to Apollo, 00:02:17.020 --> 00:02:20.400 align:middle line:84% that god of order, harmony, and music, who 00:02:20.400 --> 00:02:23.220 align:middle line:84% had to spend eight years as a mortal 00:02:23.220 --> 00:02:27.610 align:middle line:84% to be cleansed after killing the Python who guarded the site, 00:02:27.610 --> 00:02:31.740 align:middle line:84% all buried under stone, the old beliefs. 00:02:31.740 --> 00:02:35.580 align:middle line:84% So lost that peasants built the village 00:02:35.580 --> 00:02:40.020 align:middle line:84% of Kastri out of the sanctuary's rubble. 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:44.400 align:middle line:84% Even its location unknown for centuries, 00:02:44.400 --> 00:02:48.010 align:middle line:84% the excavations only began in 1892. 00:02:48.010 --> 00:02:50.410 align:middle line:84% If not for the persistence of stories, 00:02:50.410 --> 00:02:54.870 align:middle line:84% the dig would never have begun, no pick or shovel, no fox 00:02:54.870 --> 00:02:58.980 align:middle line:84% hairbrush, no slow reveal, no astonishment at what 00:02:58.980 --> 00:03:01.930 align:middle line:90% the excavations exposed. 00:03:01.930 --> 00:03:05.280 align:middle line:90% Art as healing grace. 00:03:05.280 --> 00:03:08.040 align:middle line:84% Ray and I arrived at the Temple of Apollo 00:03:08.040 --> 00:03:12.660 align:middle line:84% from our separate walks in the ruins, sat on the stone wall. 00:03:12.660 --> 00:03:15.400 align:middle line:84% It was nothing we'd planned or discussed. 00:03:15.400 --> 00:03:19.660 align:middle line:84% I saw him rest his palms upturned on his knees, 00:03:19.660 --> 00:03:23.700 align:middle line:84% and I met his gesture with my own. 00:03:23.700 --> 00:03:27.600 align:middle line:84% We sat that way at a distance in quiet, 00:03:27.600 --> 00:03:33.210 align:middle line:84% palms raised, ready to receive the light that 00:03:33.210 --> 00:03:39.060 align:middle line:84% might fall into them from that elevated air. 00:03:39.060 --> 00:03:39.960 align:middle line:90% Thank you. 00:03:39.960 --> 00:03:43.310 align:middle line:90% [APPLAUSE] 00:03:43.310 --> 00:03:53.000 align:middle line:90%