August 27th, 2013
St. Lydia’s is seeking a seminarian to serve as Coordinator at our Sunday evening services. The Coordinator’s role is to keep the gears moving smoothly for our Sunday night worship services. Coordinators receive a food order at 5:00 pm, open the doors at 5:30, welcome and orient lay leaders (cooks, deacons, and song leaders) as they arrive, and assist in welcoming and involving congregants and newcomers, then assist in “closing up shop” at the end of the evening. Responsibilities are limited to Sunday evening.
We are looking for a seminarian, seminary graduate, or equivalent, to fill this role. Strong candidates will be consistent, detail-oriented, and have an inviting presence and a gift for hospitality. The Coordinator should be able to be present at most Sunday services throughout the academic year. Availabltiy through the summer is preferable but not required. The coordinator receives a $60 stipend per Sunday.
Interested candidates should contact Emily Scott, pastor, at emily@stlydias.org by Wednesday, September 4. Please include a brief paragraph about yourself. Include experience that you think would be relevant to the position.
August 26th, 2013
Here’s the script for the Fall, 2013 season at St. Lydia’s, for Deacons, Song Leaders, and Shruti Box players to use and enjoy!
August 26th, 2013
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
Song Leaders! This Autumn we’ll integrate some brand new repertoire into our singing at St. Lydia’s. Here are all the songs you need for September, October, and November!
Gathering Songs
“Come, All You People”
“Honduras Alleluia”
“Caribbean Hallelujah”
Lamp Lighting Songs
“Christ is Our Guiding Light”
“Lead Me, Guide Me”
“Walk With Me”
Table Acclamation
Ordinary Time Table Acclamation
Prayer Song
Song Leader’s choice! Click here for options.
Final Hymn
September: Come Thou Fount
October: I Come With Joy (link to come)
November: God Whose Giving Knows No Ending
August 26th, 2013
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
“Walk With Me” is a bluegrass style song by North Carolina’s Kickin Grass Band, introduced to our congregation by Beth. To hear the original, click here. For a recording that will help you learn the adaptation of the piece we’ll sing at St. Lydia’s, click here .
The words to the congregational refrain are :
Hallelujah, Hallelujah with me Amen.
Hallelujah, Hallelujah with me Amen.
There is one verse for the song leader to sing; a simplified version of what the Kickin’ Grass Band does. At the end of the song, the song leader can sing the verse over the congregational refrain, layering the two.
Come walk with me, I know the path is hard now.
Burdens will be lifted when you walk with me.
Come sit with me, tell me all your troubles.
Talk away your worry and your misery.
August 20th, 2013
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
“Lead Me, Guide Me,” is a mellow piece in three composed by Doris Akers, a well known composer and gospel singer of the 1900’s. We’ll be singing it during the Candle Lighting, as we move to the tables.
You can listen to a teaching recording, to learn how best to to lead the song at St. Lydia’s. But be sure to listen to the original recording of Doris Akers singing it too, in three part harmony with herself! It’s a great way to pick up some harmony lines for the piece.
August 20th, 2013
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
We’ll sing this lively piece from the Caribbean, arranged by John L. Bell, as a gathering song during the Summer or Fall months at St. Lydia’s. It has fun four part harmonies if you’d like to learn them!
Click here to listen to Caribbean Hallelujah.
If you’re a guitarist, the piece sounds great with accompaniment. Here are the chords, with the asterisks representing bar lines:
G*G*G*C
C G/B*Am*Am*D
G*G*G D/F#*Em
Am*D*G*G
July 26th, 2013
Because he, because she,
in so far as
she (in so far as he) exists
is on the way
to battle.
Not what is your name,
but what
the battle?
2
“Each one of us has come
here and changed” —
is the battle. Born
a loved one,
borne a loved one.
3
My father fought in this war, thus I can speak of it.
My mother fought in this, thus I can speak.
My friends, my lovers have fought, have worn
(like the tree) their several directions at once. And I,
in so far as I
can say “I”
have fought to be related to these —
we strive and strain
but also try to ripen the entity
of the Other.
4
We kiss on lips, where the tenses attach.
We enter the conundrum
of another’s becoming.
We look for someone who can raise us
up again to feet, or near to standing.
We tend in our terrors to forget (we
do not store them) felicities.
I try each day to stay near beings,
mornings when I am most
mild. And may I nothing harm,
in case it is them.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on July 21 and 22, 2013
July 22nd, 2013
Dear Lydians,
The church is made of people; it’s made of all of you. The church is made of people, but the people, it turns out, often need a place. A place to gather to sing and pray and worship. A place to devote themselves to those “marks of the church” we read about in Acts 2:42, “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.”
It is time for us to find a home for our church: a place where we can gather each week to be the church together. Where we can teach and learn and be together, where we can break bread and pray, and through doing these things, bring healing and justice, day by day, to the world.
The Room at the Table Campaign
Over the last few months our congregation, our Leadership Table, and I have been putting a plan in place to find and move to a storefront location where our community can take up full time residency. It will be a place for us to break bread and pray together: to gather for Dinner Church, holding services three or four times a week for groups of about 35 each. It will be a place for us to teach and learn and be together as the Bible Study and Theology Group and Movie Club continue to grow and new ideas emerge from the congregation. And it will be a place of healing and justice, as we continue to listen to the neighborhood and city around us, asking God what we are called to do to build relationships with our neighbors.
A Invitation for Everyone
In order to achieve this goal, I’m inviting our congregation and our supporters to work together to raise $100,000 over the next year as a part of a campaign we’re calling the “Room at the Table Campaign.” My hope is that our congregation will raise $10,000 of that $100,000 goal. Over the next weeks and months, I invite you to spend some time with God contemplating what financial commitment you might offer to this campaign over the next two years, over and above your current pledge. Then fill out this giving sheet (which will also be available at worship) and put in in the offering plate. The congregant campaign will take place through September, at which point we’ll begin to invite donors to contribute.
I’ll start us off by sharing my own offering (pastors should never ask people to do what they themselves are not at least learning to do!). Over the next two years, I will be contributing $1,000 of my income toward the Room at the Table Campaign, over and above my regular pledge.
Your Giving Makes Movement
$100,000 can seem like an overwhelming number, and your offering might seem to be a small piece of that big goal. But I have found that generosity begets generosity, and your offering can encourage the giving of a donor. Throughout this campaign, various interest groups at St. Lydia’s (Bible Study, Movie Club, Theology Circle, etc) will pool their offerings, then make a video to send to a prospective donor. The message communicated will be, “We’re giving, and we’d like to invite you to give too!” In this way, we model generosity and invite others into the blessing of generous acts. Jason and Mabel will be visiting with the various interest groups through August and September to tell you more and to assist you in the process.
A Gift from a Generous Donor To Encourage Us
I am overjoyed to announce that this campaign has caught the attention of a set of very generous donors: a dedicated couple who are moved by the vision St. Lydia’s is holding out, and have decided to give $30,000 to this campaign. The couple will give their gift when we have successfully raised $50,000 so we have something to work toward! I couldn’t be more grateful for the generosity of this couple, and the incredible faith they’ve put in this project. Their gift will not only offer needed resources that we need to take on this project and will encourage the generosity of others.
Money is Crazy!
Money can flow like water, creating dynamic movement and change in the world. It can build like bricks, giving us tangible things like food and shelter that we need. It can imprison like bars, disconnecting us from our relationships with others and our relationship with God. Jesus talks a lot about money in the Gospels. He talks a lot about how money gets in the way of us seeing clearly. Giving a portion of our money to God can be experienced as a blessing — a practice that releases us from ties to the world and allows us to live in more buoyant, unbounded ways.
Living in New York, however, it can feel like we are releasing money all the time! We seem to hemorrhage money at every turn, with half or more of our income going to rent, and prices of everything inflating as we speak. What does it mean to give or be generous when we might be struggling with student debt or credit card debt, or simply trying to live within our means?
Questions around finances and giving are real and good, and so I’d like to offer another invitation: to participate in a workshop on financial health from a spiritual perspective this Fall. If you’re interested, please fill out this short survey so I can plan the details of the class.
In Closing
Look what we’re building together! Look at all the people who are being invited into creating this ministry, this time around with real bricks and mortar, so that the people of the church might have a place to be church. As we embark on this project, let’s keep those marks of the church as the foundation of all that we’re building together, devoting ourselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
Love,
Emily
PS: if you’re one of those Lydians who participates from afar, you too are invited to share in this moment in our communal life! Be in touch with Emily about making a gift to the Room at the over two years. Or, you can make a gifts by clicking “donate,” and clicking “leave a message” and writing “Room at the Table.”
July 19th, 2013
by Jalal al-Din Rumi
What was said to the rose that made it open
was said to me here in my chest.
What was told the Cypress that made it strong
and straight, what was
whispered the jasmine so it is what it is, whatever made
sugarcane sweet, whatever
was said to the inhabitants of the town of Chigil in
Turkestan that makes them
so handsome, whatever lets the pomegranate flower blush
like a human face, that is
being said to me now. I blush. Whatever put eloquence in
language, that’s happening here.
The great warehouse doors open; I fill with gratitude,
chewing a piece of sugarcane,
in love with the one to whom every that belongs!
-Read at St. Lydia’s on July 14 and 15, 2013
July 12th, 2013
serves 4 to 6
8 ounces spaghetti
1/2 cup pesto
8 ounces spinach
2 cups edamame (shelled and shucked, the peas, not entire pods)
juice from 2 lemons (plus fresh lemon wedges for serving)
3/4 cup almonds, crushed and lightly toasted
Heat a large pot of water to boiling, cook pasta until al dente. Remove from water, strain and rinse with cold water. In a large bowl, stir pasta, pesto and spinach until combined (some spinach will wilt, some will stay firm — this is a nice contrast of textures). Finally, stir in the edamame and squirt the lemon all over the finished dish. Reserve a few lemon slices for people to add more if they like. On a low heat, toast crushed almonds until just fragrant. Garnish pasta with the toasted almonds.
–Prepared with our help by Katherine and Jane on July 7 and 8, 2013 at St. Lydia’s
