February 22nd, 2013
Burke Gerstenschlager, one our Table Leaders at St. Lydia’s, preached this sermon on Luke 12:13-34 at Dinner Church on February 17. Burke is a book editor in religion and philosophy.
February 3rd, 2013
We will be back underground this Ash Wednesday, Feburary 13 from 5:30 PM-7:30 PM to distribute ashes to commuters. We’ll meet in the same passage near the 4th Avenue/Pacific street entrance, between the R/N and 2/3, 4/5 lines. Charlotte will be playing the fiddle, and Emily and interested Lydians will be dispensing ashes to anyone who asks for them. All are welcome to come and join in this yearly ritual marking the beginning of lent.
December 3rd, 2012
This Sunday, December 9, we will be celebrating at St. Lydia’s! All sorts of folks will be coming (including you!) to celebrate St. Lydia’s, bless our ministry, and install Emily as our pastor. You are invited.
The service will begin at 7:00. As usual, we will eat dinner! All are welcome.
October 28th, 2012
The Zen Center where we meet, at 505 Carroll street is warm, dry, and has electricity. Dinner Church will take place as usual on Sunday, November 4. Come hungry. You will be fed.
August 2nd, 2012
Dear Lydians,
Here’s “Day Is Done,” a bit of a St. Lydia’s tradition. It was our closing hymn for a number of weeks in a row when we were first starting out as a congregation. Now we sing it toward the end of the Summer, as we will this August. Not to be confused with the charming version by Peter, Paul and Mary, of course. Or Nick Drake. Or REM. Everybody wants to sing about the day being done, apparently.
Jake couldn’t find any existing recordings of this hymn that would be useful for the purposes of learning the harmony parts, so he created a version using sampled strings. (It sounds a bit syrupy as a result, but the sense of the harmonies come through.) Listen to the links below to learn the harmony lines, with piano illustrating the given part and the rest of the choir (represented by the strings) panned to the right.
We’ll sing the first verse in unison before breaking into parts on the second verse, so the recordings of the alto, tenor and bass parts begin with a piano lead in from the final phrase of the first verse: “Watch our sleeping, guard our waking. Be always near.” This will help you make the transition into the harmony parts. (The audio for the soprano part starts at the beginning of the hymn.)
In 2020, we updated the verse two lyrics, so make sure to use this updated version of the sheet music.
Enjoy!
Day is Done — Soprano
Day is Done — Alto
Day is Done — Tenor
Day is Done — Bass
July 30th, 2012
The St. Lydia’s Enough for Everyone Garden, at 346 Bergen Street in Brooklyn, is an experiment in radical generosity, where growing and eating fresh, healthy food becomes a possibility for everyone. This is our first and pilot year, and we invite you to participate! We are building the garden together, so if you are interested in volunteering or just learning more about our garden or A Small Green Patch, the larger Greenthumb Community Garden we are one part of, email us at rachel@stlydias.org.
This Sunday from 1 PM to dusk will be the garden-wide Fall Harvest Party. There will be mural painting for kids, treats, and music for people of all ages. Come on down!
We aim to have open volunteer hours every weekend; if you are interested in hosting, please check out this sign-up sheet to find a time that works for you and email rachel@stlydias.org.
July 26th, 2012
We had a wonderful Garden blessing and popsicle party on Saturday the 21st–thanks to everyone who came out! Check out this album of photos. We also installed the sculpture And There Was Evening, And There Was Morning, made of eleven wooden ladders joined together, in the new bed along the wall. On Monday we planted decorative gourds, pumpkins, and assorted flowers at the base of the ladders, in hope that they will grow and vine up the rungs of the ladders by the fall. We also have a new bed along the west fence planted with many varieties of sunflower, and have transplanted the four donated pots of morning glories along the fence in the front. And there are Nasturtium seeds newly planted in the tops of the burlap sacks, so hopefully we will have some more flowers soon to keep Emily’s gorgeous Zinnias company.
This Saturday Eric will host open hours from 11 AM-2 PM. He’ll be harvesting beets and carrots and planting Kale, and possibly starting work on a new bed for the
We are looking for volunteers to host open hours at the garden during August and September, so please email me at rachel@stlydias.org if you are interested in spending a couple of hours maintaining the space and welcoming visitors. We are looking for volunteers for the following days, but are open to having open hours anytime, so email me if you are interested, even if none of these times work for you!
Sunday mornings/afternoons in general (anytime between 9 AM-6 PM, you can decide how many hours you want to do, it can be two hours, three, four…whatever works for you)
And these dates specifically:
August 4
August 5
August 18
August 19
September 22
September 23
Email me at rachel@stlydias.org if you are interested in hosting hours, or participating in the garden in any other capacity!
July 17th, 2012
Join us this Saturday as we gather to bless the Enough for Everyone Garden and A Small Green Patch and celebrate all the ways in which the land is blessing us. The garden is located at 346 Bergen Street, between 3rd and 4th Avenues in Brooklyn. We’ll have a short liturgy with music and prayer starting at 4 PM (and the answer is yes, there really will be a trombone!). At 4:30, we’ll have some light refreshments and continue the celebration with some mingling and merriment. Feel free to come for just the party, or just the blessing, or for both! We’ll be hosting volunteer hours from 12-3 to water the plants, spiff up the space and finish installing the ladder-sculpture-gourd-trellis that will sit in our newly formed bed along the wall. Hope to see you there! You can also check out more recent photos of the Garden on our picasa page.
June 21st, 2012
Join us in the St. Lydia’s Enough for Everyone Garden this coming Saturday from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm! The garden is located on Bergen Street between 3rd and 4th Avenues on the South side of the street.
We’ll be excavating dirt from in front of our new fancy retaining wall, watering our freshly planted plants, tending to our growing beans, tomatoes, and peas, seeding a bed of lettuce, and maybe even building a bench!
As always, don’t forget your water, sunhat, work gloves, and sunscreen!
Here are some pictures from last week’s opening party!
The beds holding lots of flowers for making dyes in the Textiles Arts Center's plot
A daddy and daughter check out the water containers
Marigolds in the Community Garden
then I looked up at the sky
