Our last entry for the season in Greece we reflect on what it means to be a success and to offer peace in a world that might label us as criminal. We finish our pilgramage together -- feasting and carrying home with us the ways we've been changed by our excursion together.

What do you do with a church that sues each other, gets drunk at communion, and falls apart every other Tuesday? Paul stayed. He called them saints. And he wrote the Love Chapter right into the middle of their mess. This episode is for anyone who's ever wanted to quit their people. You're not alone.

This episode we are hiking up to the high cliffs of Meteora and waxing into poetic thought in view of the Parthenon in Athens.

Paul finally found a warm welcome in Berea. Then the troublemakers followed him. In this episode we walk the ancient stones of Veria (Berea), where the Bereans earned the title "noble" not by blind faith but by eager, daily examination of scripture. What do you do when the place that welcomes you becomes unsafe, not because the people changed, but because your enemies followed you home? With a flashback to Lydia's river, and our guide Yourgas telling us about his hometown, we explore the forgotten discipline of the strategic retreat. Sometimes peace means knowing when to run, so you can preach another day.

We spend a brief moment in Neapolis and then spend time in the ancient site of Phillipi as well as a trip to Lydia's Baptistry along the side of the river. From inside our cells, can we hear the bells of life going on outside? Are we people of the dark?

It's the first day on a new adventure in Greece. These travels take us through the Greek locations of Paul's first missionary journey, which was arguably a failure by the metric of his own era! We travel and are weary, eat good food, and find good music and Good News along the way!

At Campamento El Guacio—a Presbyterian camp turned hurricane refuge and farm (while still a summer camp)—we wake before dawn to hike among invasive iguanas (‘forest chickens’) to a handmade cross that watches over the valley. Here, reparations fund solar panels instead of steeples. From the parable of the drowned boy (whose reflection accuses a negligent world) to MLK’s anti-war awakening in Puerto Rico, this episode explores how land and faith intertwine in resistance. Sometimes holiness looks like an iguana—out of place, stubborn, and refusing to leave.

From a van "choir" singing spirituals to a Lutheran church feeding its gentrifying neighborhood, we explores how Puerto Rican congregations turn worship into radical acts of justice. At Iglesia Presbiteriana en Puerto Nuevo, Communion becomes a protest—served to HIV support groups and celebrated by a transgender seminarian’s proud parents. Meanwhile, the laughter at Iglesia Evangélica Luterana Bethel belies a fierce commitment: baptismal vows that demand more than Sunday piety. In this episode, sacraments are stripped of stained-glass pretenses to reveal what they’ve always been—a rebellion against exclusion, a rehearsal of the just world to come.

Today we journey to Puerto Rico’s sacred Taino sites and the revolutionary town of Lares, where mountains remember rebellion and lakes swallow colonial churches. Exploring petroglyphs of hurricane spirits, songs of liberation, and the colonization of joy, this episode asks: How do we find wholeness when the land itself holds both trauma and triumph? From ancient areítos to the Grito that never faded, discover peace in the dance between lament and celebration.

It's our first day in PR! Luggage was late, we were tired and yet still at the behest of the joy that the universe had planned for us. This episode is a short entry celebrating the Christmas season that was still alive and well in the towns near San Juan as we traveled to Campamento El Guacio where we stayed.