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Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church
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Mia Gilman |
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Title: Mia Peterson Gilman Oral History Creator: Stephanie Leiderman Interviewer: Stephanie Leiderman
Subject Gilman, Mia Description: Mia Gilman and her husband converted to Greek Orthodoxy in 1971, and have been attending the Greek Church in Asheville from then to the present. She discusses her relationship to the Orthodoxy, including in raising her children. Mrs. Gilman is also a member of the Iconographer’s Guild of Western North Carolina, and she discusses her involvement with creating religious icons. Publisher: D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville, NC, 28804 Date: May 2008 Type: Sound ; Text Format: 2 cassette tapes, 1 CD, 10 page transcript Identifier: http://toto.lib.unca.edu/findingaids/oralhistory/gilman_mia.html Source: Oral History Collection, D. H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville Language: English Relation: Part of a series of interviews in the Greek and Russian Orthodox communities. Coverage: The interview covers from 1943 to present; Asheville, NC Rights: Any display, publication, or public use must credit the D.H. Ramsey Library Special Collections, University of North Carolina at Asheville. Copyright retained by the authors of certain items in the collection, or their descendents, as stipulated by United States copyright law. Acquisition: Donor number: 342; Date of acquisition: May 2008 Processed By: Stephanie Leiderman Interview Date: May 2008 Interview Location: Mia Gilman’s home in Cullowhee, NC Biography: Mia Gilman was born in Evanston, IL. She attended Indiana, University where she met her husband. The two moved to Cullowhee, and in 1970 began attending the Greek Orthodox Church in Asheville. They were officially converted to the Orthodoxy in 1971. List of Names:
[1/40] Chris Moutos Side 1: This is an interview with Mia Peterson Gilman, and Stephanie Leiderman doing the interview. I’d like to start by asking you where you were born and what year? I was born in 1943 in Evanston Illinois, right outside Chicago. And can you tell me something about what your childhood was like? I was an only child. And my father was a banker and my mother was a housewife. And I lived in an ordinary two story redbrick home. And um, that’s it. I went to Evanston High School, which was at the time the best in the nation. And I enjoyed Spanish. What was your religious life like, growing up? I was Methodist. I went to the Methodist Church because my girlfriend went to the Methodist Wesleyan Church and when I got married, my husband was an Episcopalian, so I became an Episcopalian at that point. So, after you finished high school, where did you go next? I went to Indiana University, in Bloomington. When and where did you meet your husband? He was…he finished his PhD in Indiana, in the Mathematics department. And I was in Mathematics. He helped me with my homework. Once you were married, how did religion change as a daily part of your life? Well, it was always an important part of our lives. But when we moved to Cullowhee, we didn’t seem to be getting out of it what we wanted to get out of it. And since my husband was a very far-sighted, both in politics and religion, um, to see what would happen with the passage of time, and he was very well read, he said that we should become Orthodox. And what was your feeling about that at the time? Well, we were very upset with what was going on with our religious life, so we chose the only Orthodox Church, which was in Asheville. And it was the Greek Orthodox Church. And um, we went there, we started going there. But it was at those times, and prior to that, it was very upsetting to go into some place that’s really foreign, because everybody’s different from you. Every week when we turned the corner on Cumberland Avenue, we just kind of shuddered. Because, not that the people weren’t nice, we were just afraid of going someplace where people were different, so different from us. Around what time was this? That was 1970. And how long were you involved there, at the Greek Orthodox Church? From then until now, 2008. How would you say that it’s changed, between then and now? Um, at that time, there were basically two waves of immigrations to Asheville that came. There was one early in the century, and that I think involved a lot of people that came from maybe Turkey, or spin-offs of things that happened in Smyrna with the atrocities. So that was early in the century. And then, around 1950 there was a second wave of immigration which lasted probably until 1976. So when we were first in the church, there were new people coming in all the time. And sometimes those people would move off to some other place. Um, so when you had the new immigrants were very strong in their religion, because they took it from what they had had in Greece, which was uh,…which was a combination between the Greek government and the Orthodox Church. It’s not separation of Church and State. So those people who were very strong religiously were all around so it was easy to become Orthodox. You just followed everything they did. Did you feel welcomed there at that time? Yes, but as I say, we were very afraid. When I had grown up in Chicago there were various waves of immigrants whom you…I don’t know, they were just “other.” So to put yourself in a totally isolated position where few people really spoke English was just scary. So I basically ran to the car after church every Sunday for almost a whole year. Was it just familiarity that made that easier, eventually? Well, no. We became Orthodox. We were Chrismated. We all had Godparents who were extremely wonderful. And those that are still alive, namely Chris Moutos, have just given us a great gift. Uh, just by being kind to us, having us over, making us feel a part. By just being wonderful people. When you describe being Chrismated, can you tell me more about what that means? Um, there are two parts of being baptized. One, you get immersed in water, and then the second part is Chrismation, where you have holy oil put on your head, and it also brings down the grace of the Holy Spirit. So, usually in this country Orthodox, people who are converts are Chrismated instead of going through the whole baptism process. And did this happen in 1970? It was in ’71. On Pentecost. You and your husband together? Uh huh, and four of our children. I would like to ask you about that, about the role that the Orthodoxy had in your children’s lives, and in your raising your children. Well, um, when the boys got to be four or five, they went into the altar and they became altar boys. And they took it seriously. They’re still taking it seriously. Uh, I don’t have any pictures of them in their alter robes, but they spent a good number of years all the way until they went to college as alter boys. And, um, they also...I mean, the girls, we were just always at church. And during Lent there are special services called the Akathist, where there are prayers to the Virgin Mary. And at the end, a child, I mean a young lady, sings a song to the Virgin Mary. And um, it’s quite a long song, called the Akathist Hymn. And all my children vied with each other, maybe in different years, to learn the hymn and to sing it. And so actually, that’s helped us many times in…When we went to Jerusalem, we went to the Monastery of St. Gerasimos in the desert. And we meant a monk, Father Callistos who uh, was talking to us. And he realized, and of course we weren’t very fluent in Greek at that time. So, he talked to my seven year-old son, who could only sing the Akathist Hymn, and he was so impressed. He gave him a cross. And we remember him and he remembers us, I’m sure, so. But at this point, one of my daughters is an editor for Holy Cross Books—that’s the seminary. She married, she got her Masters after Duke. She was a philosophy major at Duke, then she got her Masters at Holy Cross, and um, anyway. She edits some of their books, as well as some from St. Vladimir’s. And she’s married to a man who finished Holy Cross and might be a priest when he decides. My other daughter, Georgia, is a missionary in Albania. And um, she’s gonna stay over there, probably for life, helping to convert Muslims and people who were under the Communists back to Orthodoxy. And then all my other children are very, very strong in their respective churches. What was their religious education like growing up, before they moved on as adults? Well, we had Sunday school and I often was the teacher. And uh, but we also learned things at home because my husband was well read. Of course, as a convert you read more than the usual person who thinks he’s got it down. So they heard all the regular bible stories plus other ones from my, I would say, vast religious library. And in studying religion on your own, what has been most important about the Greek Orthodoxy? What has stood out? You’ve said that you’ve done a lot of reading, and that you taught your children a lot about it. So, when you first started to learn about it, or up until now, what’s been the most influential about Greek Orthodoxy for you? Well, I think that different people learn different ways. It’s your basic way that you yourself are built. You know, some people see things visually, some people see things more in an intellectual way, and I myself like stories of the lives of the saints, because you see how they lived and hopefully you can imitate them, even in minor ways. And um, be better. Do you have a favorite story? My son Peter went to University of Thessaloniki one year and he translated a book of the stories of the saints. Um, one deals with, in a monastery where they ran out of bread. And they were in dire straights. And they prayed hard, and basically a man came with camels laden, and food. But there are many. The stories all seem somehow, well, they all come out in the end that the Lord helps those who pray hard. Let’s see. There’s another story in that same collection where an old monk went to the opening of the Hagia Sofia in Constantinople, and it of course opened in about the year 600. And it had snowed even, a little bit. And it was very cold and he didn’t have anything. But he passed a poor baker, and he went on to the church and came back dressed in his robes, and he gave him his actual clothes so that he didn’t have anything on underneath the robes. And um, then he went into the church where the Patriarch and everybody and the emperor, and the emperor and everything. And, long about the end, people began to murmur that his robes were so bright and shiny and uh, then somebody brought it to the attention to of the Patriarch. How come your robes aren’t as bright and shining as that poor monk, who does he think he is? And so of course after a lot of squabbling, at the end the Patriarch went to him and said, “How come your robes are so bright, who do you think you are?” And uh, it turned out because he was so generous and kind with his clothes and gave them to the baker, that G-d made them shiny, luminous. Which is what the halo—it’s an actual fact that someone who is holy is light, his clothes are light. I’ll show you icons. Well, it’s my understanding you’re involved with the Iconographer’s Guild. Is that correct? It’s a rather recent addition to Western North Carolina. We’ve all taken courses, pretty much, from a Russian woman from Boston, Xenia Prokovsky. Um, though of course she paints in Russian style. I’ve in addition taken a course from Professor George Kordes of the University of Athens. Which is, he uses a different color palate. I’ve copied, I’ve done icons according to the way he does it, too. So it’s fun, but everybody…the way you do the icons comes out, the final product, besides being…is also a product of your own soul. So somebody can be technically correct, but there’s no, sometimes, no heart in it if they’re not religious. I could show you from artists, icons that people commission from say our church, even, that just are cold. When you’re creating an icon, what are you thinking about? Um, ideally you should be praying all the time. We should, actually, be praying all the time anyway. We say the Jesus prayer, which is “Jesus Christ, son of G-d, have mercy on me a sinner.” And that’s why we have a prayer rope, that we say it on the prayer rope. And when we get to the bead we say the Lord’s Prayer. And I guess putting it in maybe layman’s terms, it makes some sort of aura around you that protects you. But I think that’s crudely put from an Orthodox point of view. When you look at a an icon, what is your response? What’s your feeling about them? What are they trying to communicate to you? Um, just a second, let me. I think before I mentioned earlier about the lives of the saints? That that’s what I liked best. And I think that, looking at an icon is another way, a non-legible way—I mean, words—to see what the saints are like, so that you can copy them. And especially you know, Greeks don’t stand so much, but say the Russians or other maybe more canonical churches stand for a long time so when you’re standing for four hours, looking at the icons of Christ and His mother and the saints, it comes back. I mean, you look at them and you actually see, read into them feelings. Like this one of the Virgin and Jesus. You can see how kind she is, and just a loving kindness. And you can see it vaguely, just for a second. Because we’re just sitting here for a second. But you know, you just feel that maybe you’re not on the right path, that maybe you should be kind like that. It comes, anyway, so. And I have this other one here of the Annunciation, where the angel came to Mary and she was very humble in accepting that she would have baby Jesus. Anyway, it’s just, this one is a very kind, sweet, loving…you just want to be like her. And here I have one that I’m working on. This is only the first, really small, light. So, it’s gonna be essentially that. And so... Can you describe it? It’s just actually the head of the Virgin. It’s a detail from the Monastery at Vatopedi in Mt. Athos. I’m gonna give it as a baptismal gift to a child. Usually I think it’s better to have a full icon than this, but this is what I had to work with. This is one of my favorite iconographers, Manuel Panselinos. And um, you can see this is from the Resurrection, or Pascah. And you can just see by the looks on Christ, the looks on Adam and Eve here, anyway, that he’s pulling up from Hell. It just fills you with, you want to be like them. In fact, I just came back from Ravenna. I went to see all the mosaics. And at the top were, I’m not sure which, I think it was Santa Apollinare. And it had all the saints lined up in white robes, uh, and it was sort of like you want to be like them. That you wish that you too could be like them and you would go through anything so that you could be where they are. And not that they’re pointed out that they’re so good, but just to be near Christ. So when you see an icon that touches you, you’re feeling is a closeness and a desire to emulate? Well that’s not the purpose of icons. The purpose is, I guess what people say is they’re a window into the other world. Because we say we have two worlds, the world here and the parallel world of the spiritual. And um, it’s just as close as you can get to see into that other world. Well let me ask you, because you’ve been in the Greek Orthodox community in Asheville for a long time now, and I think you may have discussed this a little bit, but how would you say it’s changed from your first involvement to today? Um, at that point there were many immigrants there, and they were very pious people. And yet, you couldn’t communicate with them so much because they spoke Greek, and in fact a dialect. Or maybe not a dialect, but a very heavy accent, because that’s where they came from. So um, now, practically everybody speaks English. But, as I said before, it was a very strong direction from what they had had in the Old Country of Greece, with the religion. So you would see customs that are falling away now, unless they’re contrived by some convert. Like, once they were giving a sort of a Sunday school lecture inside the church. And there was a woman who lived across the street from the church, who was actually a very holy woman. And um, the door flew open, or came open, and she just came like in her bedroom slippers, very quietly, and she sensed all the icons with her personal sensor and just walked out. And just, um, this inner religiosity. Whereas now, it’s the grandchildren of the people, of the actual immigrants, or even the great grandchildren. And they’ve had a very poor Sunday School upbringing, a lot of them, or they didn’t care when they went to Sunday School. So they don’t have that same piety. And of course we, being converts, are there really solely for the religion. Whereas, other things came along like parties and fun. And the Greeks are wonderful, hospitable party-givers and fun people. But yet, what we care about is religion. How would you like to see the community change in the next five, ten years? What would you like to see? Um, I’m ambivalent because I think that it’s gotta change more towards English. On the other hand, the music is written for the Greek and flows better in the Greek. And the English they’re using is more like newspaper English, so I personally like the Greek. But I think that for new kids, little children coming up who’ve lost the contact with the Greek, or converts, like spouses who come in and really don’t have a clue what’s going on, I guess it should be in English. You said that you taught Sunday School? Would you like to speak more about what that was like? What did you teach? Oh, I’d teach, I mean, since I like icons and they’re very didactic, I had a big set of icons and we’d go over what was happening in each. They were a lot of feast days and things. But it also put the kids into the framework that we have a calendar that everyday is something, some saint’s day or feast day. And it was, uh, I guess it got them into the set framework of the church. What is your involvement like today? Well, I’m president of the Ladies’ Society. And I, we have various lunches throughout the year, or festivals, and in the meantime we go over and cook. So, I cook, you know. I cook and in fact sometimes I mess up. And I’m always looking over my shoulder at the lady next to me, because they’re very good and very fast. And, uh, I also, as I say, I’m an iconographer. Though that doesn’t have anything to do in church, I can’t help them. They need huge icons, that are very expensive. What type of foods do you cook? Oh, we cook spanakopita, that’s spinach pie. And baklava and pasticho—that’s a kind of non-tomato lasagna. And lots of pastries. That’s a, it also works well if you know how to do these because if a baptism comes up of your own, or a wedding or something, then you can just whip ‘em out, so. Are most of the other women that work with for these events of Greek heritage themselves? Yes. Because they’re good at doing it. Do you have a favorite tradition that you associate with Greek Orthodoxy? Well, our favorite one is Pascha. The whole week before—well, the whole seven, six weeks before, we fast. And actually, the fasting which really goes on through the whole year but more particularly right before Pascha, it keeps our whole family together. You know I can always call up one of my kids, and say “Oh, hey, you don’t have to eat this week!” It’s a kind of a binding, something that binds us to the church. But anyway, the final week before Pascha, we have church every evening. In the middle of the week, we have holy oil that the priest puts on us. Then the next night is reading the, the priest reads the entire gospels to do with the crucifixion. And uh, then, the Friday you have a crucifixion service. Then the Saturday is when Jesus is down in Hell, and there’s a service where they throw flowers all over. But then best of all is, on the night of Pascha, when you’re in the dark church, and the priest comes out with a lit candle and says “Christ is risen” and passes the light around. And that’s reminiscent of the church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem where the Patriarch goes into the place where the tomb of Christ was and he goes in there with just scant clothing as he’s searched by some Muslim guards. And he goes in there and prays with a candle and um, and then all of a sudden the candle is lit. And he brings it out. It’s called Holy Fire. Everybody takes the fire, and in fact you can put your hand in it. And it goes around even on the floor. It’s not just recent, it’s forever that this has been going on. And you can go over there now. Though people are kind of wild; the Arabs are kind of wild now that run around with the fire. And so they transport—you know, I think that it lasts like that for say, two hours. Anyway. I mean for us, the day is, our fasting is over, the unhappiness of not eating McDonald’s or anything is over. In our fast we can’t eat anything dairy or fish or olive oil or meat, of course. And um, later that day we eat lamb. But at the middle of the night when the service, the Divine Liturgy is over, it in itself is over---and that in itself is beautiful, because it has beautiful hymns of Saint John Chrysostom, um but. We eat a soup called margaritza and crack red eggs. And whose egg doesn’t crack wins. What do they win? You just feel you’re better than everybody else (laughs). Was this something your children were always involved in also? Mm hmm. Everybody likes margaritza, I mean, everybody who’s in the church. It’s just um, for so long you don’t eat. And then you know, Christ is risen and you have meat again and happiness and uh, later in the day we go over to my husband’s Godfather’s house and we have just a huge meal with nice people. And we’ve had that every single year that we’ve been in the church. And it’s just wonderful. Are there any other traditions of the church that your are particularly fond of? Um, there are various services that I like a lot. In the beginning of August, my saint is actually the Virgin Mary, so there’s a service, a feast day in the middle of August where she died. And before that there are a number of services every night where you pray, and its very beautiful hymns. Each season has its own happiness, so to speak. But um, I like this Paraklises service that they have in August. Is there anything else that you’d like to add, about your involvement with Greek Orthodoxy or how it’s affected your life? Well, I think that number one, when I became Orthodox in Pentecost 1971, there was a lady, you know everybody shakes your hand, and there was a lady, the spouse of a Greek who had been there. And her name was Mrs. Memides, and she said, “Oh congratulations,” she says, “I became Orthodox so many years, tens of years before. And it was the best thing I ever did.” And I can truly say that that’s the same for us. And I think that this is really kind of a lopsided interview because my husband was a professor, and very well read and very pious too, and your kind of missing out on him. Let me see. He chanted a lot. His Godfather was a master chanter and um, my husband chanted some. (playing a recording of Mr. Gilman’s chanting) I can also show you different pictures. When was that recorded? Um, he had Parkinson’s. so, he had Parkinson’s for about seven years or something, so it was maybe four years before he died. And what year was that? Maybe about 2002 or so. When did he pass away? Two years ago. Just a second. I’m trying to find…here. That’s a picture of him at Pascha…. (SIDE TWO)
They took Greek school. And it was a two-day a week, afternoon school. And um, very simple Greek that, like “here’s an apple” and things like that. And they had workbooks and they took it seriously and they gave little poems like two times a year that they had memorized. And we had a workbook, a personal workbook of little poems that they could say. Uh, and they’d stand up there and everybody would take pictures and it’d be cute and they’d wear little Greek costumes. And they sometimes danced. And uh, in fact for Western Carolina University, here, they’d be at the international fair, sometimes on their own in their little costumes. Even though, we weren’t Greek. Up on stage, one poem like you’d say when you were two years old. (recites poem in Greek) That was a welcoming poem that they would say wearing their little Greek costume. So we had a whole folder, including the Greek national anthem and things that they would say from the time they were very small. What were their costumes like? Um, the girls' was a long skirt and a white blouse with a vest over it. And it was highly embroidered. And then they would have a, say, a red hat with a black long pom pom. The boys also had a white shirt and embroidered vest, and um, a short white, heavily pleated skirt. And um, like white tights and shoes with pom poms on them. And that was reminiscent of the Greek soldiers who fought the Turks. Was the embroidery done by hand? Yes, on the children whose relatives went to Greece and got them. On my children, only a little bit was done by hand (laughs). Is there more that you wanted to say? I was just going to show you a couple of pictures that um… you can just look at it. This is just us at one Easter at the church. It’s just, every year was the same. There’s a service on Easter in the middle of the day where you say the gospel in different languages, and we were very proud because among us we could speak several languages. You know, some of my children were Russian majors at Duke, and whatever. This was the year I think that Peter said it in Chinese. I usually read it in Bulgarian and my husband in German and Italian. And anyway, that’s right following that service. Let’s see. Here’s another picture. This doesn’t seem like much. This is my Godmother. She didn’t speak English, but she was just this dear, wonderful person and she must have been like four feet two. She was very small. Her name was Bessie (Moutos), and she was the sister of my husband’s Godfather, Chris (Moutos). Here’s one of our priests that we had here. The Godparents were when you first became involved in the church? They were all along, they followed you all along. In fact, I’ve had two Godchildren and even though my one Goddaughter is far away and all grown-up, I still send her presents and I still pray for her every night and everything. And anyway, this is just they had this wonderful party every Christmas and every Easter, and it was just, that’s reminiscent. Let me see…and here’s another book. I really don’t have…it’s kind of like going over your whole life, and you can only just hit on a few things you think of at just this minute. Well, that’s wonderful. Thank you so much for your time, then. Well I think one of the problems the church has: the professor who did American religious history stated that, your Protestant Churches were very much class-oriented, that each class gravitated to say, a certain church or denomination. They were very cohesive. And our church, especially at the beginning when we came in, was very cohesive because it was all Greeks and a lot of them had come from the same place, village even. And um, so, they got along together really well. Now, because of the religious nature of it, lots of people have come into Orthodoxy since that beginning, and a lot of people who come in as spouses, or come in as converts in their own right, they want to know the language, the religion. But these people, coming from various different backgrounds, really far-flung backgrounds don’t necessarily, aren’t necessarily that same cohesive group. It’s kind of, um, I mean, we get along ok. But that very tight knit bond is missing and, you know, the groups that say, in a Protestant group, where everybody comes from the same maybe community or maybe social background, maybe they would have a better chance to get along better. So…I mean that’s not to say that we don’t get along, but it’s a, it has to do with cohesion—natural cohesion. Ok. Ok. END |