Antiochian Village — almost heaven, almost Pittsburgh

  • I still feel a lit­tle guilty for hog­ging half of Anti­ochian Village’s com­puter force (note to self: next time, bring lap­top!), but things have qui­eted down a lit­tle. This is the last day of classes for the Sacred Music Insti­tute, and some peo­ple have already left. That’s good, because there’s noth­ing that spoils the mood of all this bur­geon­ing holi­ness like get­ting to the library in the five min­utes you found by skip­ping cof­fee only to find that the com­put­ers are already taken.

    That’s bad. Then it’s time for tiny lit­tle words of painful polite­ness: “Do you think you’ll be on for much longer?” Or, if you want to try for more nice­ness, “If you hap­pen to fin­ish up, I’ll be over here.” Or, if you’re going for a par­tic­u­lar brand of this-minute saint­hood, maybe you just pros­trate your­self and beg them to stay on the com­puter longer because your e-mail is unwor­thy.

    I was going with the sec­ond option, in no small part owing to the hard­ness of the floors here in the library. If I’m con­sid­er­ing a lengthy pros­tra­tion, I want to see deep-pile carpet.

    But then, Anti­ochian Vil­lage isn’t a deep-pile sort of place. Not that it’s hard liv­ing either; it’s sort of some­where in the middle.

    • The rooms are around the Motel 6 level of com­fort. Clean and all that, but you don’t exactly want to stay for­ever. And they don’t pro­vide sham­poo in the rooms, but they also don’t sell it in the book­store (moral for peo­ple in charge: be aware of the oppor­tu­ni­ties of cap­i­tal­ism), so I’ve been liv­ing off the kind­ness of roommates.
    • The food is good. Really good. Sim­ple enough fare — ham­burg­ers, lasagna, sand­wiches — but I have the impres­sion that they’re doing some­thing extreme like not using a lot of processed stuff. It’s fine.
    • This library is some­thing I’m going to have to blot out of my mem­ory once I leave, or else I’ll want to sell my house and camp out here for years. There are unusual and out-of-print books not just on Ortho­doxy per se, but all kinds of sup­port top­ics. I looked into a bunch on Jew­ish mys­ti­cism and across the room found a late 1800′s book of the ser­mons of D.L. Moody. That’s a kind of rich­ness that’s hard to define, but I feel like Belle when the Beast showed her all the BOOKS.

    This is my first time to Anti­ochian Vil­lage. When I first heard some­one say they were going to Anti­ochian Vil­lage, it sounded like a strange theme park. (“My par­ents went to Anti­ochian Vil­lage, and all I got was this lousy omophorion.”) It’s a con­fer­ence cen­ter, but it’s … I don’t know. It is pretty great. It has icons in every room. The chapel is just the right size. It’s really very beautiful.

    Oh, but don’t bother bring­ing your cell phone. The sig­nal is non-existent.

    Just as well, I suppose.


    Related posts:

    1. Blog-free zone till Tuesday
    2. Hey, blog­ging opportunities!
    3. Cra­dle and con­vert Orthodox

    July 15th, 2006 | Grace | 7 Comments |

7 Responses and Counting...

  • Fr. Raphael 07.15.2006

    I usu­ally was able to find some sig­nal wan­der­ing around the road by the trailers.

  • Grace

    I had heard that peo­ple had gone “up on a hill” and had some luck, so I duly trooped up over­look­ing the soc­cer field. I had no luck and at about that time, I thought I would look pretty pathetic going around the lovely spir­i­tual retreat with cell phone in hand say­ing, “Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now?”

  • Fr. Tim

    Grace:
    First a preface/defense to my reply: The Saw­chak clan hails from West­ern PA. Wel­come to the “Holy Land!” Did you real­ize that you were close to other sacred places such as Punx­atauney (home of The Ground­hog), Latrobe (home of Rolling Rock) and Black Lick (not home to any­thing spe­cial, but where I went to 1st grade–well, actu­ally the church was in Black Lick, school was in Homer City)? Bring me back some Jumbo (if you don’t find out what that is before you leave, I’ll clue you in later! Have a safe trip home where the heat index right now at 8:45am is near­ing 189.5 degrees!
    Fr. Tim

  • s-p

    ah, the Vil­lage. Did St. Stephen’s there. My daugh­ter is at camp right now.
    Cool place. I’m jealous!

  • Mimi

    Bwa­haa­ha­ha­hah­haa! That is gig­gle worthy.

    Enjoy!

  • Grace

    Fr. Tim:
    Sorry this com­ment didn’t get posted till now. You got lost in with a whole lot of com­ment spam.

    Well, shoot. I missed out on all the fun. Punx­atawney AND Latrobe?? For heaven’s’ sake, why wasn’t I told? A holy land indeed. (But I’ll have to wait till next time for some jumbo, I guess.)

  • This Side of Glory » Blog Archive » Off to chant and pray

    […] Just thought I’d men­tion that I’ll be off in Anti­ochian Vil­lage till next week at the Sacred Music Insti­tute. Ought to be fun — just like last year — but I’m not sure I’ll get blog oppor­tu­ni­ties, so I’ll see every­one when I get back. I’ll be the one who really knows how to do Tone 7! […]

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