By the time you read this, it will have been exactly a week (give and take a few hours, depending on when you usually read the Salisbury Sunday Post) since I attended the Greek Festival of Winston-Salem’s Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church and Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony (“Resurrection”) performed by the Winston-Salem Symphony  and Winston-Salem Symphony Chorale.

My daughter Rachel works with the Winston-Salem Symphony and had invited me, my son Jeremy,and daughter-in-law Rose to the concert, suggesting a stop-in at the Greek Festival beforehand.

Reaching Winston-Salem proper, we encountered signs pointing the way to the Greek Festival. It would not be exaggerating to say of that day in Winston-Salem: “All roads  (so denoted) led to Greece.” It could also be said: “Rome arrived (figuratively) on the world stage via the road from Greece.”

Not wishing to dwell on Greek Festival food, I’ll get that out of the way by saying:”It was wonderful!” Now, on to other things.

The Greek dancers, instrumentalists, and singers did a marvelous job! I finally got to hear a bouzouki instrumentalist play “Never on Sunday” in person (before, only in the 1960 movie of the same name).

The Greek traditional dress, though traditional, was a refreshing change! I sometimes fear that our “traditional dress” is worn by “The people of Walmart!”

Rachel advised me to wear my Greek fisherman’s cap, and I excitedly agreed! (I like hats, and have an extensive hat collection, of which I’ll have to write someday). Wearing that style hat, I was ready to look like a Greek fisherman, Tevye from “Fiddler on the Roof,” but alarmingly, Lenin! But while there, I saw only two other men wearing that variety of cap (gosh, I wonder if the Tyrolean “feathered” hat is still worn at Germany’s Oktoberfest?).

The classrooms of the Greek Church’s School temporarily became fashionable shops selling beautiful jewelry, artwork, books, along with  boxed delicacies from Greece, Ukraine, Croatia, etc. Of course, nothing was sold in the Sanctuary itself (since First Century selling in a Holy Place ended badly).

Icons of Christ’s life and the Saints towered on either side of the Sanctuary aisle. I remarked to Jeremy and Rose (after having first remarked to myself): “Byzantium!”

I heard one man say to another:”This is the true Christian religion!” Surrounded by towering Icons, and gazing at the Altar within the “Grotto” created by its Altar Screen, I kept my life-long Protestantism at bay; since in that place, argument was the furthest thing from my mind.

One object struck me in particular. It was an ornate dark wood enclosure resembling a scale replica of a roofed catafalque. A bit of signage for Greek Festival visitors pointed out that every year from Good Friday till Easter morning, a carved, shrouded figure of Christ is placed within that ‘tomb,” then removed on Easter morning in semblance of Christ’s Resurrection.

Leaving the Greek Festival, we drove to the Stevens Center for the Winston-Salem Symphony and Symphony Chorus’ performance of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony (“Resurrection”).

The “old-theater”( Carolina Theater) ornateness of the Stevens Center reminded me of the ornateness of the church we had just seen, but in a “secular” way.

When time came for the Mahler portion of the concert, the stage’s size seemed almost inadequate to the task, on the verge of “hemorrhaging” instrumentalists and vocalists (but such is the case with Gustav Mahler’s symphonic-choral extravaganzas).

During the choral portion of the symphony, the English translation of the German was projected on a special area far above the stage. How appropriate to be gazing Heavenwards (although, a roof-obscured Heaven) during a musical composition going by the moniker “Resurrection!”

Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony reached a glorious ending crescendo, music as “tall” as those great Orthodox Icons I had upwardly stared at just a few hours before.

Finally, I thought of the “catafalque-tomb” replica, except for three days of the year, empty.