Egeria News

Have you ever sat at a table full of new acquaintances in a parish coffee hour as a visitor and been told "Oh-- if only we'd known you were going to visit -- you wouldn't have needed a hotel!". Well, I have -- several times. I've also had wonderful people from all over the world scrawl out their contact information on a scrap of paper and plead with me -- seriously! -- to stay with them if I ever come to their village/city/country, so that they could show me all the beautiful and holy sites near their home, and introduce me to their friends and family, and feed me until I explode.

This is not because I am so terrific -- people just really, truly love to meet and host their Orthodox brothers and sisters, even if they don't know them very well, because on a deeper level we are all one body. Egeria is a great way to facilitate people being able to meet and exchange fellowship this way. If you don't believe me, just for a lark I am going to list the actual places I have stayed and been hosted purely on Orthodox connections -- not including monasteries. Here goes!

Eugene, Oregon (1993)
Glastonbury, England (1994)
Aberdeen, Scotland (1998)
Birmingham, England (1998)
Athens, Greece (1999)
Thessaloniki, Greece (1999)
Chania, Crete (1999)
New York, NY (1999)
Montreal, Quebec (1999-2000 New Years!)
Stromness, Orkney, Scotland (2000)
Edinburgh , Scotland (2000)
Edmonton, Canada (2001)
Wappingers Falls, NY (2001)
Everson, WA (2004)
Friday Harbour , WA (2004)
Calgary, Alberta (2005)
Chicago, IL (2006)
Big Island, Hawaii (2008)

That last one is happening this October! :-) Anyway, I have probably missed some, and of course I have been many more places -- these are just the times and places that we didn't pay for accommodation! There are many more places too -- even other countries -- where we have standing invitations to visit. Most Orthodox people do seem to have such standing invitations, and one thing Egeria can help do is to -- in a sense -- pool all of these possibilities into one place! Imagine a one stop shop for Orthodox hospitality or home exchange around the world, so that no matter how far we go in our travels and adventures, there is a friendly light in a window when we get there.

Another Kind of Membership

In addition to regular home swap or hospitality exchange, Egeria will provide a third option for members who do not expect to need travel acommodation , but have extra room and a willingness to provide hospitality.

The Philoxenia Membership (or so we're calling it at present) will be offered at a reduced rate, and will allow hospitable people throughout the Orthodox world to offer bed-and-breakfast accomodation in exchange for a donation to be made to their parish or to another charity.

This is a great twist to the Egeria concept, because it will add value for the regular members -- a lot more potential places to stay! For the Philoxenia members, it's a great way to meet Orthodox from far away places even if it's hard for the hosting member to travel, and it enables members to use their extra space as a fundraiser for a cause their home parish. Of course, the exact terms of the arrangement, as with all Egeria member swaps, will be up to the guest/host pair to decide.

I would like to write more tonight, but my family have had a rough week, with four out of five of us ill from some kind of stomach bug. Also, Egeria is a little behind schedule due to the design awesomeness we are attempting -- we really want the site to be something special, so it will not be ready to launch in September 2008 as originally predicted. Hang in there! It will come to fruition in the near future, and it will really be a great resource for all of us! Thanks for reading. . .

Work from home -- in another country! And: clergy exchanges

This is just a section of something I'm working on that doesn't have much to do with Egeria. It's just further evidence of my bird obsession. I'm not even really into birds much outside of an artistic context, but I gravitate to them when I'm designing something. Something about the way they carve up the space is very pleasing, in a similar way to flowers. This is obviously cut paper. The real thing is about five or six feet high (why don't I know!?)and will be crisscrossed with ribbons of calligraphy. Yes, I am an Arts and Crafts fiend too.

Anyway, I had another thought about Orthodox home exchange. Well, this applies to home exchange generally, really. Increasingly, people are able to work from home and send stuff in/conference call to work. So here's the thing. What about going to another country for, say, three months, working from your 'home from home', and absorbing another culture and language in your off hours? Ordinarily you couldn't consider such a thing because the hotel bill would pretty much kill you dead, but with home exchange there is no hotel bill. If you are able to be away, and your host is able to be away, for that long, then Bob's your uncle.

Another thing is that I was listening to a wonderful series of podcasts from Ancient Faith Radio by my new e-friend Susan and her husband Fr Gabriel called Musing on Mission. It chronicles, quite literally, their mission plant (in New Mexico) pretty much from day 1. There is a lot to relate to for me in this, since that is what my husband and I did exactly six years ago this month (this being Aug 2008), but since I am ramping up this Egeria business one thing really popped out for me in one of the podcasts. Fr Gabriel mentioned the pressure and anxiety for the mission priest (I am paraphrasing) knowing that if he has to be away there is no one to keep things going, that there is a gap while people have no teaching and no services.
Well, that is one thing that Egeria can address! Clergy who need to get away can exchange with other clergy who need the same, and experience the freshness of a different parish, maybe even a radically different type of parish! It would be an opportunity for the folks in a mission to hear another voice, yet one in solidarity with their regular mission priest. It is reassuring for new converts in an isolated area to have someone come from far away and say roughly the same things their priest says -- thus showing that he is not some kook/renegade/potential cult leader, and that he really is plugged in, and they through him, into the conciliar and universal, one holy catholic and apostolic Church. This can especially be valuable where people have little or no opportunity to travel themselves.

So thinking about that leads me to another idea for the site. We can set it up so that a priest will be able to put a 'clergy exchange' symbol to indicate that you would be interested in swapping with another clergy family or individual for the chance to experience and help out another parish and walk a mile in another priest's shoes. This can even work for priests' holidays -- it solves the problem of how to find a substitute, and since the travellers need to be somewhere for Liturgy anyway (riiiiiight? we don't take holidays from God, riiiiiight?) he might as well be filling in for a brother priest. Am I making sense? Right, since I'm not sure, I'm going to sign off and get some shut eye. . .soon.

The work continues. . .

Here's how it's looking so far; at least we're on to a cool idea. The site will look like a travel journal, and when you go to a new 'page' it will look like -- a new page! Yeah, I know!

That page on the right may be recognizable to residents (past and present) of Edinburgh as a fairly strange and vaguely incompetent drawing of George IV bridge. I think I did that on my lunch break working at the Royal Museum of Scotland. On the left in the picture-- not that you can see it -- is the Elephant Cafe, where somebody or other wrote Harry Potter. I probably saw her a few times; it was during the same couple of years, and I went there for coffee all the time. It's also where I learned the cool trick of deciding who goes first in Scrabble based not on a letter drawn but on who can make the longest word to kick off the game. Not from JK, of course; just some random person --or was it!

The lettering is not great -- I know -- I just dashed it off quickly to see how the hand drawn thing would look. It will be laid out better, I promise. The gauzy, abstract background is a piece of cheesecloth I scanned, over top of a piece of a twinkly cardigan of mine. Too much information? Yeah, I thought so.

Well, I have to go and keep working on the site. It's all systems go now! We're trying to get it all up and running this fall. Watch this space!

Bridget and the Bells and Do I Have to Clean My House

Yes, here she is, about to be in mortal peril -- or at least in danger of being somewhat mashed. It all ended happily, though. Oh, in case you are wondering, yes, those are sawed off gas cylinder bells. They are all the rage on the BC coast, doncha know, and they sound pretty decent.

Well, I am very pleased to have gotten some great feedback about Egeria from several friends and aquaintences recently (Calgary, Port Townsend, Atlanta, -- you know who you are!) It seems the idea will be a hit, and the technical part of the website is nearly done. We just have to finish designing it and then go through the testing to make sure it all works well. We are postponing our holidays till October, partly so that we can have the site up as soon as possible. So with that, it's time for another installment of:

Egeria FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions)!

I'm fairly tuckered out right now (husband away on Group of 12 trip, me with three kids, aaaaah!) so I will just tackle a short one.

Do I have to clean my house? How perfect does it have to be?

Okay, this for some reason is a bit of an anxiety for some people. I personally like to clean my house quite thoroughly before I go away anyway, because it's much nicer to come home to than otherwise. Also we often have housesitters, and we make sure everything is clean for them, or as clean as we can manage will three little kids! If you've ever house-sat for me, you won't bust me, right? The house is always super clean, right? Ha ha.

Naturally, people imagine that to exchange homes you have to make it absolutely sparkle. I would certainly err on that side rather than on the side of *ick*. You want your guest to have a pleasant experience, and you expect the same when you are at their place. So here is how it breaks down:

Option A) Elbow Grease. Clean that house top to bottom by the sweat of your brow. And, er, the grease of your elbows. Side benefits: it's character building, it costs nothing, and you will come home to a house that is unusually shiny even after your guest has been there. I mean, you might even finally clean your oven and that grim area between the fridge and the other thing.

Option B) Hire Someone. Yes, for some of us, this is unthinkable, but you need to consider some factors: How busy are you? What is your time worth? How important is it to present your house well? If it is important, and your time is worth more to you than whatever a cleaner makes per hour, then it might make sense to get help. You will still come out way ahead not paying hotel costs.

Option C) Negotiate. Now, this is a bit risky, and I would suggest it only if you and your exchanging partners have kids and therefore 'understand' one another -- but you could have an "I won't kill myself cleaning if you don't" type of arrangement. You should still have the place clean and tidy, but maybe the oven can wait.

Our Church Camp Chapel at Seven Springs, Vancouver Island

Well, this doesn't have much to do with Egeria, (or does it!) but I thought our camp chapel was beautiful. I didn't get a night shot this year -- with those fairy lights shining, mingling with stars and sparks from the campfire -- but I'm sure someone has some . . .My youngest daughter Bridget (now 13 months) was baptized here in the summer of 2007 by our dear friend and fellow Victoria priest, Fr Kosta Kaltsides. According to the laws of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, that makes Bridget Greek. Ha ha. Well, her middle name is Antigone, so that works out.

I have a photo of her nearly getting offed my those bells in the left corner. I was so focussed on getting a nice picture of her with the bells (than which she is not larger, and between two of which she was) that I didn't notice that they had begun to swing more and more, and those things are heavy. I suddenly realized what was happening, dropped the camera and nabbed her at the last second. Oops.

Okay, here's an amazing passage from Egeria's Travels. Straightforward -- she apparently was not much of a stylist-- but what she says is just amazing.

. . .in Capernaum the house of the prince of the apostles has been made into a church, with its original walls still standing. It is where the Lord healed the paralytic. There is also the synagogue where the Lord cured a man possessed by the devil. The way in is up many stairs, and it is made of dressed stone.

Not far away from there are some stone steps where the Lord stood.

And in the same place by the sea is a grassy field with plenty of hay and many palm trees. By them are seven springs, each flowing strongly. And this is the field where the Lord fed the people with the five loaves and the two fishes. In fact the stone on which the Lord placed the bread has now been made into an altar.

The footnote, citing Prof. Schneider, says that this stone is 'probably the one presently under the altar in the fifth-century Church of the Multiplying '. It also notes that six of the seven springs exist today but are now dry.

That bird again, and What is Hospitality Exchange?

Right, more behind the scenes stuff. I love pictures of desk chaos, and this is one of my favourites. I bought this book on the Fayum portraits at the Art Institute of Chicago a couple of years ago when I was in town for a liturgical music conference (PSALM -- the Pan Orthodox Society for the Advancement of Litugical Music -- yep, it's a mouthful). The Art Institute was terrific, and I had the absolute bliss of arriving there alone on a very quiet day, accountable to no one but God for over five hours. Aaaaaaaah. Anyway, you can spot that Egeria bird (falcon? parakeet?) both in the portrait and in my fumbling beginnings of a design. I love the thing Kandinsky says, something like "Glory to the palette for the delight it brings, more beautiful a work indeed than many a work of art".

I would like to take this opportunity to mention, mercenary that I am, that I paid no money to stay in Chicago because I was staying with friends. Hmmm -- remind you of anything? Orthodox home exchange, for example? Enjoying the company of old (or perhaps brand new) friends, glasses of wine, exchanging news, tucking into a hearty meal, prepared with love and plenty of feta?

Which leads me quite nicely to a discussion of hospitality exchange, another feature of our soon-to-be home exchange club. There are a couple of ways this can work. One, straightforward hospitality exchange, where you want to go to say, Paris. You log in to Egeria and ask members in Paris if you can come and stay with them. They say sure, bonjour and bienvenue. Then in exchange they get to come and stay with you sometime. Or their friend does, or student-age kid, or whatever. That's hospitality exchange. The other type is sometimes called B&B, which is very much like it sounds. You can offer B&B to other members not in exchange for hospitality from them, but simply for a donation, or just to be a swell person. Most likely you will charge, since you have after all paid for your membership. But it's a nice way to share your community, country, neighbourhood and parish with other Orthodox who want or need to travel to where you are.

So when you become a member of Egeria you will have many choices: simultaneous home exchange, hospitality exchange, B&B, or nonsimultaneous exchange, which simply means that you and your exchanging partner have somewhere else to be -- a second home, vacation home, other plans, etc while your home is used by a member. We are considering whether to include holiday rentals, which is a little more full-on commercial, probably more than we are entirely happy with. We don't want the site overwhelmed with posts that just charge for accommodation, since that is pretty much the opposite of the spirit of home exchange, which is about trading, sharing and building community. On the other hand, maybe you want to be able to see what is out there and available to rent in your dream location? Share your thoughts and comments!