The Carpenter From Antioch (Ο Ξυλουργός από την Αντιόχεια)

-From The Meletic Tales.

In the far quarter of Antioch, beyond the bustling colonnades and merchant squares, nestled amongst the fields of wild fig and olive, lived a carpenter named Damas. His house, like his life, was modest—a home of plain timber, swept floors and sturdy tools. By day, he shaped cedar into stools and tables, cradles and cupboards. Often, when commissioned by the Roman guard or temple magistrates, he also built crosses.

It was not something he spoke about. His hands, hardened by the rasp of plane and chisel, did not tremble when carving the timbers of death. Nor did he ask who the crosses were for. The city had grown uneasy in recent years. Some whispered of prophets. Others of rebels. There were Roman punishments, Jewish revolts, and rumours of a man crucified years ago who had risen, but Damas remained as silent as his wood. His dedication to his work was his diligence.

‘A carpenter does not ask what will be laid upon his work’, he once told a neighbour.

Still, some part of him recoiled, especially when children passed his yard and pointed at the long beams lying in the dust.

He found more peace building for the villagers—a woman with a broken stool, a young man seeking a marriage chest, an old weaver needing a new loom. These requests calmed him. Each board sanded smooth, each joint aligned—it was as though the world briefly made sense through symmetry and shape.

One morning, Damas received a request from a merchant: a broken cart wheel, and if he had time, a cupboard for dry herbs. He accepted and set out to gather timber from the ruins of an old quarter that had burnt decades ago and had long since been abandoned. There, amidst the scorched brick and ivy-cloaked stones, he found beams suitable for salvaging.

As he explored further, he came upon a half-buried portico. Columns leaned like weary elders. Roof tiles lay shattered. The air smelt of wild thyme and silence. Pushing aside a stone lintel, he entered what had once been a temple—but to whom, he could not tell. He had assumed it was a Pagan temple.

Inside, moss coated the floor. Vines hung like drapery, yet something in the far apse caught his eye—a faint glimmer on the wall behind the altar. He stepped closer.

It was a lone circle, carved directly into the stone. Not painted. Not gilded. Carved. At its centre, a burst of shallow rays, like light spreading outwards. Though faded and pitted with age, it shimmered faintly when the sun passed through a certain crack in the ceiling. He traced it with his fingers.

A circle. A light. It felt... known.

He stayed there longer than he had meant. By the time he returned home, the sun was already low and the day’s labour barely begun.

That night, he dreamt. In the dream, he stood in a great field beneath a sky that pulsed like breath. Before him rose not a temple but a vast light in the shape of a circle—not blazing, but soft, steady. It did not blind, but revealed. All around him, trees and stones and birds shimmered as if etched in clarity. A voice—or perhaps a thought—stirred within him.

‘To Ena, the One is not made. It is. As you are. As all is. Embrace the light'.

He awoke before dawn, breathless, heart quickened, palms damp with a heat that was not of Antioch. The dream receded like a tide, but the feeling lingered.

The next day, he returned to the ruined temple. He stood once more before the circle. This time, he did not touch it, but bowed his head.

Weeks passed. Damas worked by day, but each evening he would walk to the ruin, clear another patch of debris, lift another fallen stone. He told no one. It was not shame that held his tongue, but reverence—as though speaking of it too soon might strip it of actual meaning.

He did not yet call it worship. He simply returned.

At first, he brought tools to restore what he could. The roof was beyond repair, but the beams over the portico could be replaced. He sourced stone from old quarries, timber from unused lots. When a local potter asked why he seemed always dust-covered and tired, Damas merely said, ‘I have taken on a personal task’.

By now, he had begun to carve again—not crosses, not cupboards, but circles. Circles with light in their centres. He carved them into small discs of olivewood, into the underside of stools, into the handles of doors. Quietly. Without much notice.

One day, a woman who had lost her son came to him. She asked for a small wooden box to keep his few belongings—a belt, a reed whistle, a lock of hair. Damas made it with care, lining it with wool and sealing it with a circle engraved on the lid.

When she received it, she paused. ‘What is this mark?’

He hesitated. Then said, ‘It’s something I saw once. In a temple where the roof is open to the sky’.

She nodded slowly, and said, ‘It has a presence...I feel'.

In the evenings, he began to sit before the carved circle in the ruin, not working, just breathing. Thinking. Listening. He started to feel that the temple was not merely a place, but a mirror. What it reflected was not a god, but a truth—one not worshipped with incense or chant, but realised through awareness.

He remembered his dream often. ‘The One is not made. It is.’ It was the part of embracing the light that mostly remained in his thoughts.

He began to understand that the light in the circle was not fire. It was presence.

It was unity—of hand, thought, breath, beam, stone, awareness and existence.

He had heard of teachings from far lands of mystics from Egypt, of sages from Athens, of a man from Galilee who spoke in parables and was nailed to a cross, but he read little, and sought no priests. He trusted the whisper that had risen from the ruin.

And so, Damas changed. Not outwardly. He still repaired chairs, still shaped plough handles, but he spoke more with wisdom. He refused new orders for crosses.

‘My hands must now make only what restores,’ he told a Roman client, who laughed and found another man.

He gave away some of his work—stools to the elderly, spoons to orphans. When neighbours asked why, he said, ‘Because I can, and because they are good to be used'.

One afternoon, a boy from the village followed him unseen and watched as Damas cleared brush from the temple stones. The next day, the boy returned and asked to help.

Then another came, and another. Soon, they helped him rebuild.

They lifted beams, gathered clay, shaped small tiles. Damas spoke little of purpose. Only of attention, of stillness, of care. Sometimes, he quoted fragments from his dream.

‘Light does not demand. It reveals itself. It is To Ena, the One who emanates the greatest light known to us, which is life'.

When the work was nearly done, the stone circle was cleaned and polished. Around it, Damas placed no image, no idol, no flame. Only smooth walls and clean space. He invited no crowd, and yet, people came.

A shepherd sat in silence there for hours. A widow whispered prayers without names. A scribe who had lost faith found himself sketching the circle again and again on his parchment, wondering what it meant.

And Damas? He never called himself a teacher. Nor did he preach, but once, when asked if the place had a name, he replied: ‘It does not need a name, for it is the home of all who seek guidance'.

Word spread not by proclamation but by presence. No scrolls were sent, no proclamations nailed. It was carried softly—in footsteps, in memory, in stillness shared between friends. People came not for cures, not for commandments, but for what could not be spoken: a place where thought slowed, and time bent internally.

One late afternoon, as golden light filtered through the unroofed oculus, a Roman magistrate entered, his cloak embroidered with the sigils of law. His sandals echoed against the stone floor. He observed the circle for a long while, then turned to Damas.

‘Is this a temple to a god?’

‘No. Only a reminder of unity’, said Damas.

‘A cult, then?’

‘If it is, it has no followers. Only those people who listen’.

The magistrate smirked. ‘Then what binds it together?’

Damas gestured towards the circle.

‘That which is the symbol of the unity of To Ena, the One’, he replied.

'To Ena, the One? What power is this?'

'It is not of a power that we have here in earth, but it is more of an influence that empowers the soul and the self'.

'Then you worship the circle or this To Ena?'

'No. There is no worship here of To Ena; for the One is beyond any god'.

To the magistrate, this meant nothing, but he issued no orders. There was no threat here. Nothing to tax, nothing to forbid.

One evening, an elder from the city approached Damas. His name was Aisopos, a man known for weighing logic heavier than faith. He stood before the circle and said, ‘You have made something, although I cannot say what. It neither promises immortality or Elysium, yet it pulls men in like gravity’.

Damas merely nodded.

‘And you? What do you call yourself now?’

Damas looked down at his hands, then at the circle. ‘I am still a carpenter. Only now I help shape what cannot be touched', he said.

As the seasons passed, Rome's banners still flew. Tensions between sects, between old temples and new creeds, flared like torches in the wind. One day, soldiers arrived—not to burn the temple, but to ask questions.

‘We hear you host gatherings here’, the centurion said, as his men watched the humble structure with suspicion.

‘No gatherings. No priests. No offerings,’ Damas answered calmly. ‘Only space’.

The centurion stepped inside and looked at the circle. ‘This is not Jupiter’s mark. Nor Mithras. Nor the cross’.

‘No. It is older than symbols'. Damas replied.

The soldier frowned. ‘Is it in remembrance of a god?’

‘No. it is more the remembrance of unity’, said Damas.

To the centurion’s surprise, no rebellion grew from the temple. No inscribed texts. No sedition. Only people sitting together in stillness. The soldiers left, unsettled but uncertain of what they had witnessed.

A boy came one spring, no older than twelve, limping from a wound not fully healed. He had lost his mother to a riot, and his father to grief. His name was Dion.

He stood before Damas and said, ‘I don’t know where else to go’.

Damas gave him no sermon, no promise of sanctuary. Only bread and a place to sit. Over the weeks, the boy stayed, watched, listened—not to words, but to wind, silence, and the subtle shift in light across the stone.

‘What does it mean?’ Dion finally asked one evening, pointing to the circle.

‘What do you see?’ Damas asked in return.

‘I see the sun, and also an eye’.

Damas smiled. ‘Then you have begun to understand. Look closely, and you will see beyond the light'.

The boy grew. His limp faded, but his gaze remained steady. By the time he reached manhood, he no longer asked what the circle meant. He became one of its faithful guardians.

The years moved as clouds do—sometimes thick with storms, sometimes drifting like feathers. People continued to visit. Some stayed, others left changed. One man entered in grief and returned to his trade with a calmer soul. A young woman burdened by guilt sat in silence for three days before rising with new clarity. A Roman courier once wept beside the stone and said nothing, but left behind a medallion from his father.

The temple gained no name on records. No doctrine was ever written, and yet its presence was felt beyond Antioch, passed from voice to voice like a whisper that could not be caged.

One summer, Damas grew frail. He still swept the floors, even though his hands trembled. He still welcomed strangers, although his words became few.

Dion, now a man with lines at the edges of his eyes, sat beside him under the olive tree.

‘You knew this would grow,’ Dion said. ‘Didn’t you?’

Damas looked out at the temple, now softened by years and footsteps. ‘I didn’t build it to grow. I built it to hold space. Like the circle—no edge, no centre. Only flow’.

'What will happen, when the temple has crumbled?'

‘It will not, if you remember it. Because the stones are remembered. Like you will one day remember’, he said.

‘When you are gone?’

Damas laid a hand over Dion’s. ‘Then it will not be mine; for it never was’.

He closed his eyes. On one morning, the first frost of winter laced the grasses outside. Damas, slower than usual, made his way to the temple. He stood before the circle, then sat cross-legged before it and placed a small disc of cedar wood on the ground. Upon it: the same circle, carved carefully, almost reverently.

He said nothing that day. He sat for hours. Then, peacefully, Damas passed.

It was Lysa—the young woman who had once come with questions—who found him. She did not cry. Instead, she knelt beside him, placed her hand on his shoulder, and whispered: ‘You have returned to the Logos and To Ena'.

The villagers buried Damas beneath the olive trees just beyond the sanctuary walls. No headstone. Only a smooth white rock with a single circle engraved upon it.

No incense was burned. No chants sung. They placed him not in the temple, but in the quiet grove where wild thyme still grew.

Dion tended the temple, not as a leader but as a keeper. He called himself nothing. Others simply referred to him as the Listener.

The city changed. Christianity grew stronger. The gods of old faded, yet amidst the fervour, the temple of the circle remained as a reminder of the Meletic philosophy. Some called it heretical. Others mystical, but no one could quite define it. That, perhaps, was its power.

Lysa did not try to replace him. She tended to the temple gently—brushing leaves from the steps, lighting a lamp only when the wind rose. When asked whether she would lead now, she smiled.

‘There is no leading here. Only arriving. The greatest guidance that Damas left behind was his wisdom'.

One day, she noticed something new. People began leaving little circles in the space: sketched on clay, sewn into cloth, even drawn in dust. They did not claim them. They did not explain. They simply left them, as if to say: I, too, have seen it.

In time, a quiet tradition formed: those persons who visited the temple left behind a single token—a reflection of their own connection with the One. A shepherd left a smooth stone. A child, a broken reed. A philosopher, a scroll with no writing.

The temple became a sanctuary not of worship, but of remembrance.

Lysa began to write, not as scripture, but as observation. She wrote: 'This is not a faith. It is a deep recognition. Like water realising it is part of the sea'.

She understood that it was called Meleticism. In later centuries, those people who studied her notes called her one of the studious Meletic scribes. She wrote not from authority, but from presence. And still the circle shone.

One evening, many years later, an old traveller approached the temple. He had walked from the southern deserts, carrying no scrolls, no message, only dust and silence. When he stepped into the temple, he dropped to his knees and wept—not out of sorrow, but relief.

He touched the wall gently. ‘I saw this once. In a dream, before I had words', he whispered.

Lysa, now grey-haired and soft-spoken, welcomed him with bread and figs.

They spoke little. For neither needed to say much to know the other had arrived from the same silence.

He never called himself a teacher. Nor did he preach, but once, when asked if the place had a name, he replied: ‘It is called home’.

Word spread through Antioch, not in proclamations but in quiet retellings—of a circle of light, of a carpenter who restored a temple without doctrine or gods, of a place where people could simply be.

Long after Damas’s body had returned to the earth, a philosopher from Ephesus arrived, curious about tales of a nameless sanctuary in Antioch. He had studied Platon, revered Heracleitos, and debated the Christian apologists, but something in him remained unsettled.

He entered the temple one afternoon. The circle still shone faintly on the floor, polished by generations of touch. Dion, now grey-haired, sat in the corner, eyes closed.

The philosopher bowed his head in respect. After a long silence, he asked softly, ‘Was this temple ever dedicated to a god?’

‘No,’ Dion replied, opening his eyes. ‘It is a reminder of the presence of To Ena, the One.’

‘Then what is its teaching?’

Dion looked at the circle. ‘That all things flow naturally from the One, and all things return to it in the end’.

The philosopher stepped closer. ‘And that one?’

‘To Ena,’ Dion said. ‘Not a name, not a person. A truth. Felt. Not held’.

The philosopher sat down and stayed until dusk. He took no notes, made no declarations, but as he left, he turned and said: ‘In Athens, they argue with words. Here, you answer with awareness'.

Dion nodded. ‘Awareness is what remains when all names fall away’.

In centuries to come, the temple would suffer earthquakes and repairs. Empires would rise and fall. The cross would one day be carved on many walls, and Damas’s name would be forgotten by most, but the circle remained.

It would not be the centre of power, nor the focus of pilgrimage, but it would endure. Quietly. Like the truth it mirrored—To Ena, the One, always present, always whole.

Sometimes, when a carpenter sets down his tools, or a widow finds peace without a reason, or a child draws a circle in the sand without knowing why—there, too, is the whisper of Antioch.

And Damas. And the light. And unity found in the quiet voices or thoughtful gestures, when the villagers would still pause before the circle, not to worship; instead, to remember Damas for not what he had achieved solely, but for who he was truly as a man. They knew that he had not only rebuilt a temple, but had awakened the souls of people to To Ena, the One.

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