March 26th, 2012
(It’s ‘mock’ because it uses sun-dried tomatoes instead of meat, and it’s ‘mock’ because the eggs are cooked.)
[You can substitute blanched sugar-snap peas for the roasted asparagus, or another vegetable, or leave it out. And you can use any pasta. Traditional carbonara uses spaghetti but penne works better with added vegetables.]
If you time it right and manage to do each of the three processes — heat the water and boil the pasta; roast the asparagus; and sauté and combine the sauce — simultaneously, the whole thing can be done in 20 minutes.]
To serve 2-4:
• 3/4lb to 1lb penne, rigatoni, or any pasta
• asparagus, medium-thick stalks
• olive oil
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• 2 egg yolks, lightly beaten
• 1/2 cup grated Pecorino Romano
• 1 shallot, minced
• 1-2 oz. sun-dried tomatoes (or to taste), julienned
• 1/2 – 1 clove garlic, minced, to taste
• fresh basil, chiffonade
• salt and pepper
Set pasta water to boil. Preheat over to 375. (If needed, soak sun-dried tomatoes in warm water to soften.)
Trim and diagonal-cut asparagus. Toss in olive oil and a little salt and pepper. Spread on roasting pan and put in oven until softened some but not overcooked (10-20 min).
When pasta water boils, salt it and add the pasta.
Meanwhile, heat plenty of olive oil in a large high-sided skillet, add shallots and garlic and cook, stirring, over a gentle flame so they soften without browning. After about 5 minutes, stir in the sun-dried tomatoes and continue cooking.
In a large bowl, lightly beat egg yolks, then stir in cream, then cheese.
When pasta is just coming to al dente, add a splash of the pasta water to the sauté pan to loosen anything stuck to the bottom. Turn the heat up a little, stir in the egg, cream and cheese mixture and cook, stirring frequently, until it is heated through to just below the simmer point so eggs are cooked (probably 2-4 minutes). (Taste for salt and adjust. Sun-dried tomatoes may add enough saltiness without adding any more.)
Add asparagus to pan with sauce, then stir in the pasta to coat and mix. Stir in basil, plate, and add some grated pepper.
–Prepared with our help by Phil on March 25
March 26th, 2012
by Mark Doty
For his birthday, I gave Stanley a hyacinth bean,
an annual, so he wouldn’t have to wait for the flowers.
He said, Mark, I have just the place for it!
as if he’d spent ninety-eight years
anticipating the arrival of this particular vine.
I thought poetry a brace against time,
the hours held up for study in a voice’s cool saline,
but his allegiance is not to permanent forms.
His garden’s all furious change,
budding and rot and then the coming up again;
why prefer any single part of the round?
I don’t know that he’d change a word of it;
I think he could be forever pleased
to participate in motion. Something opens.
He writes it down. Heaven steadies
and concentrates near the lavender. He’s already there.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on March 25
March 26th, 2012
Mark Genszler is a congregant at St. Lydia’s and a student at General Theological Seminary. He offered this sermon at Dinner Church on March 25, 2012.
So, I’ve been thinking about farewells, and absence, and all the things we say and desire when we take leave of those we love. Pithy statements? A quick kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane? Ramble on for several chapters-worth of the Gospel of John in what are called the ‘farewell discourses’, from some of which we’ve read tonight?
In 1998, I left for an adventure in the Peace Corps. At the airport, back when it was still easy for friends and non-passengers to accompany you to the actual gate, were my mother and father, older brother Andrew, and dear friend Amy. I was full of emotion. I had no words; I had too many words. Maybe I had been reading the Gospel of John, because I turned at the gate, looked at my mother and – indicating my friend Amy – said, “Woman, here is your daughter,” and then turned to Amy, and said, “here is your mother…” We all burst into laughter. And I went off to Central Asia to see who I was on the other side of the world, and to inquire if God lived there, too…
It is good that I leave you, or the spirit can not come. So says Jesus several times and in several ways as he says farewell. At the beginning of tonight’s passage he explains once again to the disciples that he is going away but will come to them again. It is good that I leave you! I didn’t turn to my mother and friends and tell them that at the airport in 1998, but it’s true for us even as of Jesus. Yet, we are still present to each other, somehow. In 1998, as I left, my brother gave me a card he had made, with a picture of the two of us with our younger brother, and he had written: “Somehow, we are truly in many places if we remember them well and often. This also allows us to truly be with each other, wherever we are in the world. I am looking forward to many stories… until we meet again.”
So, I have also been thinking about absence, and hunger.
As becomes clear if we read the whole, wonderfully repetitive set of the Farewell Discourses — with all their mixture of beautiful, memorable images and seemingly opaque talk about leaving and coming again – and those poor disciples! Muttering, not understanding! Jesus says: oh, I hear you. Are you confused? What did I mean that ‘in a little while you would see me again?’ Jesus actually is not looking ahead with clairvoyance to the resurrection (“in a little while”), nor to some eschatological revelation of the son in glory at the end of time. For John, Jesus already is fully among the beloved community as the Word of God revealed. No: Jesus is speaking of the way in which the Spirit of God will come to them, comes to them already… but will come more fully among and within them in his absence.
…Read the rest of Mark’s sermon here.
March 21st, 2012
by Louise Bogan
Now that I have your face by heart, I look
Less at its features than its darkening frame
Where quince and melon, yellow as young flame,
Lie with quilled dahlias and the shepherd’s crook.
Beyond, a garden. There, in insolent ease
The lead and marble figures watch the show
Of yet another summer loath to go
Although the scythes hang in the apple trees.
Now that I have your face by heart, I look.
Now that I have your voice by heart, I read
In the black chords upon a dulling page
Music that is not meant for music’s cage,
Whose emblems mix with words that shake and bleed.
The staves are shuttled over with a stark
Unprinted silence. In a double dream
I must spell out the storm, the running stream.
The beat’s too swift. The notes shift in the dark.
Now that I have your voice by heart, I read.
Now that I have your heart by heart, I see
The wharves with their great ships and architraves;
The rigging and the cargo and the slaves
On a strange beach under a broken sky.
O not departure, but a voyage done!
The bales stand on the stone; the anchor weeps
Its red rust downward, and the long vine creeps
Beside the salt herb, in the lengthening sun.
Now that I have your heart by heart, I see.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on March 18
March 15th, 2012
Read Emily’s latest sermon, “I’ve Got To Go,” on her blog, “Sit and Eat.” The sermon is a part of our exploration of the Gospel of John, and the text is John 14:1-7
March 15th, 2012
serves 4-6
olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 loaf crusty Italian bread, cut into 1-inch cubes
salt and pepper
2-3 tomatoes, chopped
1 english cucumber, halved lengthwise and cut into 1/4-inch-thick half-moons
1/2 red onion, thinly sliced
1 cup pitted mixed olives, chopped
1 pound fresh mozzarella, cubed
1 bunch fresh basil, stems discarded and leaves torn
white balsamic vinegar (regular balsamic or red-wine vinegar may be substituted)
1. Preheat oven to 300°. In a small pan, heat about 1/2 cup olive oil
to over medium-low. Add garlic and allow to cook in oil for a few
minutes, then remove from heat (garlic should infuse the oil but not
brown).
2. On two rimmed baking sheets, toss bread cubes with oil, salt, and
pepper. Spread in an even layer and bake, tossing occasionally, until
lightly brown on edges and mostly dried out.
3. In a large bowl, combine tomatoes, cucumber, onion, olives,
mozzarella, and basil. Toss with vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper
to taste (you’ll probably use about 1/4 cup each of vinegar and olive
oil). Just before serving, toss with croutons.
NOTE: The croutons can be prepared in advance and stored in an
airtight container, up to 3 days.
–Prepared with our help by Heather on March 11, 2012
March 15th, 2012
by Lisa Olstein
It has been so wet stones glaze in moss;
everything blooms coldly.
I expect you. I thought one night it was you
at the base of the drive, you at the foot of the stairs,
you in a shiver of light, but each time
leaves in wind revealed themselves,
the retreating shadow of a fox, daybreak.
We expect you, cat and I, bluebirds and I, the stove.
In May we dreamed of wreaths burning on bonfires
over which young men and women leapt.
June efforts quietly.
I’ve planted vegetables along each garden wall
so even if spring continues to disappoint
we can say at least the lettuce loved the rain.
I have new gloves and a new hoe.
I practice eulogies. He was a hawk
with white feathered legs. She had the quiet ribs
of a salamander crossing the old pony post road.
Yours is the name the leaves chatter
at the edge of the unrabbited woods.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on March 11
March 13th, 2012
Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Not a Hint of Should,” on her blog, Sit and Eat. The text is John 12:1-9, the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with oil. This sermon was preached as part of our exploration of the Gospel of John.
March 11th, 2012
Rachel Pollak is the Community Coordinator at St. Lydia’s. This is an excerpt from her weekly update to the community.
Dear Lydians,
I’m sure some of you saw this poem in our city’s favorite self-titled magazine this week. But for those of you who didn’t, I feel moved to share it with you.
* * * * *
Testimony
by Stephen Dunn
The Lord woke me in the middle of the night,
and there stood Jesus with a huge tray,
and the tray was heaped with cookies,
and He said, Stephen, have a cookie,and that’s when I knew for sure the Lord
is the real deal, the Man of all men,
because at that very moment
I was thinking of cookies, Vanilla Wafers
to be exact, and there were two
Vanilla Wafers in among the chocolate
chips and the lemon ices, and one
had a big S on it, and I knew it was for me,
and Jesus took it off the tray and put it
in my mouth, as if He were giving me
communication, or whatever they call it.
Then He said, Have another,
and I tell you I thought a long time before I
refused, because I knew it was a test
to see if I was a Christian, which means
a man like Christ, not a big ole hog.
* * * * *
This poem is obviously hilarious, but disturbing. Jesus wants him to have one cookie, but not two. What is the difference? Also, it seems really mean of Jesus to have this huge tray of cookies and trying to serve them to Stephen if He doesn’t really want Stephen to have them. This poem implies a version of Christian faith that I don’t find appealing or very interesting. If the ways in which we are being tested are so simple that they amount to little more than a bit on a morning show giving tips on how to “enjoy the holidays without going overboard,” than we should just save ourselves the trouble and read magazines all day. But I found myself wondering if there was something more there. The poem hinges around the misnomer, “giving me communication.” Maybe what the dreaming Stephen in the poem craves is knowledge–about the nature of Jesus, about our nature as children of God, about how to make choices in our daily lives that celebrate those entwined natures.
Having given up dessert for lent this year (that includes cookies, and also candy, cake, chocolate and dried fruit but not fresh fruit or sugar in my coffee or any sugar I would consume as part of regular meals), I’ve been thinking a lot about temptation. The thing is, my default emotional setting in life is the feeling best described by the statement, “I want a cookie.” And I’m pretty fit and get regular exercise and the rest of my diet is really healthy, so usually if I want a cookie I go ahead and have one. But I had come to realize that I was consuming sugar more often than is actually good for me, and that it was creating highs and lows in my mood and energy level that I thought I could do without. And I had a suspician that there might be something else to the slightly empty, desiring feeling I was experiencing so regularly, something else my body or mind or soul was trying to say between the lines of “I want a cookie.” So I decided to try going a whole forty days without it. Last year I gave it up during the week for Lent, and just had dessert on the weekends, which was a challenge but seemed like enough and made me feel pretty good. But the thing is, if I have dessert every seven days, then the craving is always there, and I had heard from friends that if they stopped eating it altogether for a while, they stopped wanting it.
So here I am. I found this article helpful; it is mostly about how companies use advertising at key moments in people’s lives to try to change their buying habits, but there was an interesting story the author tells that I’ve been thinking about. He says that he used to get up from his desk at work every day at three in the afternoon, and go to the cafeteria and buy a cookie. But after examining the feelings he was having that motivated this daily cookie indulgence, he realized that what he was really craving was the conversations he always ended up having when he went down to the cafeteria. So he still gets up from his desk at three PM now, but instead of buying a cookie, he walks around the newsroom looking for someone to gossip with for ten minutes, and then goes back to his desk satisfied and without the extra calories.
I’ve been trying to figure out what motivates my desire for dessert. For the first week, when I felt the craving, I still ate something, but replaced sweets with another treat, like cheese or dried fruit (hence dried fruit ending up on my no-list). Lately I seem to have stopped doing that, but I think I’ve been overeating slightly at mealtimes, feeling more full than I want to be after. But I have been enjoying my meals more, and taking more care to plan and prepare them. But it feels like I’m still missing something. I have an idea that I might be craving a little celebration, something to make the day feel special. Does that mean my days don’t feel engaging or rewarding enough? I’ve got a pretty great job (!), and since I do different things on different days of the week (Lydia’s on Monday and Thursday, babysitting on Tuesday and Friday, studio on Wednesday), I don’t think I’m bored. Or maybe its the extra burst of energy; I often feel it when I have to do something mentally or emotionally taxing, so maybe its something like, “I can’t do what’s in front of my without a little extra help.” Am I just thirsty? I definitely don’t skip meals, and I eat plenty of protein and drink a lot of water, so I don’t really think its low blood sugar or dehydration. Maybe there’s something to that word, “help…”
I’m not sure yet, but I’m glad to have this time to think about it. How’s lent going for you? Whether you’ve taken on a particular spiritual discipline or are just living out the discipline of waiting for daylight savings and warmer temperatures (though if today is any indication, you won’t have to wait long!), I’d love to hear your stories.
March 8th, 2012
by David Biespiel
After it came in like a dark bird
Out of the snow, barely whistling
The notes father, mother, child,
It was hard to say what made us happiest.Seeing the branches where it had learned
To stir the air? The air that opened
Without fear? Just the branches
And us in a room of wild things?
Like a shapeless flame, it flew
A dozen times around the room.
And, in a wink, a dozen more.
Into the wall, the window, the door.
You said the world turns to parts.
You said the parts are cunning spheres.
You said you always love the face of sin.
You said it’s here, the lips and eyes and skin.
Outside the snow deepened
With heaves of discontent.
Inside, the tremor of our life
Flew in and in and in.
