May 21st, 2012
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
Evening Lamps Are Lit is a piece by our friend, Ana Hernandez, that can be found in the volume, Music By Heart. We sing it during the summer months as a Lamp Lighting Song. It’s great with shruti box and drum.
The words to the main melody are…
Evening lamps are lit
Firelight all around
Evening lamps are lit
Praise and thanksgiving sound
There’s also a rhythmic countermelody that goes together with the main melody. The words are:
Light of the World, of endless blessing
Sun of our night, lamp of our days
Light of the World, of endless blessing
We raise our hearts in light and praise
Here are some written parts for flute, violin, and viola.
May 21st, 2012
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
The Honduras Alleluia is a bright gathering song we generally sing in the summer months. It has a nice internal rhythm, and is best accompanied by guitar and drum.
May 21st, 2012
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
“Hallelujah, Praise the Lord” is a lively gathering piece from Nigeria that we sing during the summer months at St. Lydia’s. It sounds great accompanied by guitar and drum! As taught by Emmanuel Badejo.
May 20th, 2012
After lots of hard work this weekend by our many volunteers, I am proud to announce that the Enough for Everyone Garden now has four raised beds filled with soil and planted with tomatoes, eggplant, sweet basil and thai basil, chard, collards, kale, lettuces (four different kinds), arugula, oregano, thyme, peas, cucumbers, beets, turnips, four varieties of carrots, green pole beans and yellow wax beans, and radishes. And maybe some other things that I’m forgetting. It is very exciting, and we will be posting updates as things grow so keep checking back for more news and photos!
Eric and I are traveling to a wedding in Vermont this weekend, but we’ll be back on Sunday so our next volunteer hours will be this Monday, May 28 from 10 AM to 3 PM. What better way to spend the holiday than a pre-bbq dig in the dirt, right? We’ll be working on placing the retaining walls we built this weekend to make terraces for two more raised beds, and we’ll even out the ground for our sitting area (thanks to our neighbors Allen, Alex and Luke for donating two benches!). The plan is to make two more beds for the front of the lot, which we’ve learned is the sunniest spot in the garden. See below for photos of our progress and we hope to see you in a few weeks!
And finally, we are learning that when you come to volunteer, its a good idea to bring water, a sunhat, sunscreen and a pair of garden gloves. See you soon!
Carlo and Eric unload bags of soil and compost from the pickup truck we rented and drove to Home Depot.
The team goes off the grid to plant tomatoes and peppers.
Placing the fourth bed.
Kathleen and Emily looking fancy in front of our new bench.
Evan plants lettuce seeds.
The hole where our retaining walls will go in to create two terraces and a level sitting area. This is the “before” picture!
May 17th, 2012
Ingredients
– 1 Package Lentils
– 2 qt (approx) bottle of veggie juice
– 1-2 qts of water
– 4-5 large sweet potatoes in large chunks
– 4-5 large carrots chopped
– 1/2 package of frozen spinach
– 1/2 bunch of celery chopped
– 1 onion chopped
– 3-4 red bell peppers diced
– 1/2 jar of natural crunchy peanut butter
– Cumin, coriander, cinnamon and black pepper to taste (about 2 tsp of each)
Preparation
Combine lentils, liquid, carrots and sweet potatoes in a large pot and cook on med-high heat. Clarify onion and combine with mixture in pot. When the lentils, carrots, and sweet potato are starting to soften but are still a little firm, add celery and bell peppers. Just before removing from heat, stir in spinach and peanut butter until they soften and blend with soup.
-Prepared with our help by Richard on May 13
May 17th, 2012
by Wendell Berry
Like the water
of a deep stream,
love is always too much.
We did not make it.
Though we drink till we burst,
we cannot have it all,
or want it all.
In its abundance
it survives our thirst.
In the evening we come down to the shore
to drink our fill,
and sleep,
while it flows
through the regions of the dark.
It does not hold us,
except we keep returning to its rich waters
thirsty.
We enter,
willing to die,
into the commonwealth of its joy.
-Read at St. Lydia’s on May 13
May 17th, 2012
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
During the summer, we sing a different response during the Eucharistic Prayer. It’s brighter, in a light three, and written in a major key to reflect the season. Listen to the Summer Table Acclamation, written by Emily Scott.
For presiders, or those looking for more practice, here’s an example from Emily of the entire presider part: Summer Eucharistic Prayer.
May 17th, 2012
Squeezebox is a place for our Song Leaders, as well as congregants, to learn the songs we sing at St. Lydia’s.
We sing “Jesus, We Are Gathered,” a piece from Zimbabwe, as a gathering song at almost any time of the year! Click here to listen to Jesus, We Are Gathered
May 17th, 2012
This past week has been a very productive one at the St. Lydia’s Enough for Everyone Garden. We now have four beds constructed, with three of them filled with soil and compost. Yesterday we planted peas, green and yellow pole beans, red flageolet beans, eggplant, collards, kale, cucumbers and zucchini in the first bed.
This Saturday, we’ll be making a trip to home depot in the early morning to purchase the rest of our soil and compost and some materials for our retaining walls. At 10 AM, we’ll meet at the garden to unload soil, build retaining walls, fill more beds with soil and plant more seeds and seedlings! Email me at rachel@stlydias.org if you want to come help out, or just show up. Bring gloves, a sunhat and sunscreen, and get ready to make some garden magic. Everyone who has worked in the garden so far has reported feeling uplifted by the experience, with a mysterious buoyancy in mood and outlook resulting in direct relation to hours spent volunteering. There’s more where that came from and its ours for free so come on down on Saturday!
Here’s a revised layout of our plan:
Our soil came in the form of a large pile:
Able and ready!
Some treasures unearthed from the lots:
Jason raised the bar of our bed-building considerably:
Mark takes a well-deserved lean in the shade:
Ta-da!
The Garden Manager consults his plan:
Bean seeds!
May 16th, 2012
Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Dot Dot Dot,” on her blog, Sit and Eat. The text is the last few verses of the Gospel of John — John 21:20-25.
