August 12th, 2011
from the Four Quartets by T. S. Eliot
V.
What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea’s throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments. So, while the light fails
On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded chapel
History is now and England.
With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
Calling
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, unremembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on August 7
August 12th, 2011
by Denise Levertov
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water
to solace the dryness at our hearts.
I have seen
the fountain springing out of the rock wall
and you drinking there. And I too
before your eyes
found footholds and climbed
to drink the cool water.
The woman of that place, shading her eyes,
frowned as she watched—but not because
she grudged the water,
only because she was waiting
to see we drank our fill and were
refreshed.
Don’t say, don’t say there is no water.
That fountain is there among its scalloped
green and gray stones,
it is still there and always there
with its quiet song and strange power
to spring in us,
up and out through the rock.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on July 31
August 4th, 2011
Crystal Hall is a congregant at St. Lydia’s, and a Master of Divinity candidate at Union Theological Seminary with a concentration in biblical studies. She is also a candidate for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), and is a Fellow with the Poverty Initiative at Union Theological Seminary. At the Poverty Initiative, Crystal is the coordinator of the Homeless Union History Project of the Poverty Scholars Program. Crystal shared this sermon on Psalm 9 with us at dinner church on July 31.
To tell a story is to remember it. In telling a story, you remember its parts: the beginning, middle and end, and how they’re each connected. St. Lydia’s story’s has many beginnings. It was first conceived as an idea. That idea was birthed into reality in Advent 2008. St. Lydia’s first began meeting in a Financial District apartment. After taking those first steps, St. Lydia’s began gathering here at Trinity Lower East Side.
This church has a definite sense of place in its story. It’s difficult to forget, especially when we worship outside, that this church is across the street from Tompkins Square Park.
The first time I set foot in Tompkins Square Park, I felt that I was walking on sacred ground. As if I should take my shoes off. This may seem odd, as many of New York City’s public parks have a decidedly secular quality about them. It was already dark at 6:30 on a February Sunday. That night I decided to leave my shoes on. I noticed the rats rummaging through the garbage cans, the smell of that enormous dog park, and the lights glaring from the brick pavilion. I also noticed that I felt as though I was paying my respects. This surprised me. I felt the kind of reverence I feel when I visit the grave of a family member. Standing beside a grave is, for me, a moment to remember. It is a reminder of where I’ve come from.
Walking through the park that first night evoked my sacred memory. Before I even knew it, the story of this place was becoming part of my story. Just the month before I had read excepts from Ron Casanova’s autobiography Each One, Teach One. Cas’ story didn’t begin in this park. But he wound up here, homeless, in the summer of 1989. He writes of his experience that summer:
Our community grew, and we soon gave it the name ‘Tent City.’…It started as a place where people came because they needed a place to stay…Tent City was open to anyone and everyone who rejected the city’s so-called solutions to homelessness. We had a slogan: ‘No Housing, No Peace.’ Now that did not mean that we wanted a violent confrontation with the authorities. That meant we were not going to allow ourselves to be quietly put out of sight and mind in jails or dangerous shelters.
Cas and many others were thrust into a struggle for survival in the summer of 1989. The police and the Parks Department conducted over a dozen raids on the 300 to 350 people sleeping in Tompkins Square Park on any given night.
Read the rest of Crystal’s sermon here.
July 30th, 2011
Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Fashioned before they came to be” on her blog, Sit and Eat.
July 29th, 2011
From Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
3
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the
beginning and the end,
But I do not talk of the beginning or the end.
There was never any more inception than there is now,
Nor any more youth or age than there is now,
And will never be any more perfection than there is now,
Nor any more heaven or hell than there is now.
Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail, learn’d and unlearn’d feel that it is so.
Sure as the most certain sure, plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand.
Clear and sweet is my soul, and clear and sweet is all that is not my soul.
Lack one lacks both, and the unseen is proved by the seen,
Till that becomes unseen and receives proof in its turn.
Showing the best and dividing it from the worst age vexes age,
Knowing the perfect fitness and equanimity of things, while they
discuss I am silent, and go bathe and admire myself.
Welcome is every organ and attribute of me, and of any man hearty and clean,
Not an inch nor a particle of an inch is vile, and none shall be
less familiar than the rest.
I am satisfied – I see, dance, laugh, sing;
As the hugging and loving bed-fellow sleeps at my side through the night, and withdraws at the peep of the day with stealthy tread,
Leaving me baskets cover’d with white towels swelling the house with their plenty,
Shall I postpone my acceptation and realization and scream at my eyes,
That they turn from gazing after and down the road,
And forthwith cipher and show me to a cent,
Exactly the value of one and exactly the value of two, and which is ahead?
–Read at St. Lydia’s on July 17
July 29th, 2011
Juliana Mecera is a congregant at St. Lydia’s and a graduate of St. Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary and Union Theological Seminary. She shared this sermon on Psalm 104 with us at dinner church on July 17.
Psalm 104 begins the evening service—or Vespers—in the church I was raised in. So, I grew up hearing this psalm in church every Saturday night. Sometimes I chanted it for the entire congregation. Sometimes I sang it as part of the choir. I love the feeling of the words on my tongue. I love the even rhythm of the verses, but it’s not just the rhythm of this psalm that is steady—the words themselves are about stability and order.
The psalm is all about nature and the way the earth works that we both take for granted and really, truly depend on. We need water to cool & hydrate us on these hot days. We need plants to eat for strength. We need the trees to give us a bit of shade. And Psalm 104 praises God for creating and giving us all these things that work together in a way that we can depend on. Through the earth, God provides a kind of foundation or stable ground for us. And, As human beings, this order grants us comfort.
So, as a middle-school and high-school student, when I’d come to church panicked about the slew of projects that would soon be due at school, I took comfort in these words that told me that God would provide. I loved the words, “These all look to you to give them their food in due season.” It was beautiful to me that my anxiety could be curbed by being reminded of God’s care for the earth. I was part of God’s creation—and I trusted that as part of that, I got cared for, too.
But sometimes, those things that make up our foundation in life are taken away from us. We do not always have plenty. More often than not this world seems far from orderly or stable at all.
Read the rest of Juliana’s sermon here.
July 29th, 2011
Jennifer Goodnow is a congregant at St. Lydia’s. She shared this sermon on Psalm 19 with us at dinner church on July 10.
I keep a copy of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer by my bedside. Over the years I’ve marked it with post-it notes so I can easily find my favorite prayers and psalms. This is one of the psalms I’d marked for myself to read and reread. I like it for the poetry of the language. I brought the King James’ version – which many people feel is the most “poetic” Bible translation. I also brought Eugene Peterson’s contemporary idiomatic translation The Message. There you can see a somewhat hilarious and certainly enthusiastic interpretation of the action, the passion of the psalm.
I have a lot of favorite lines in this poem/psalm. I like the part where the psalmist compares the sun to a bridegroom, a champion bridegroom even. I can just imagine some young man racing out of his nuptial chamber shouting hooray! I
love the part where the psalmist compares God’s judgements to gold and honey in the comb.
But the line that stands out for me the most, the main reason I bookmarked this psalm in my BCP is verse 2 – One day tells its tale to another and one night imparts knowledge to another. The KJ version says – Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night sheweth knowledge. Isn’t that just beautiful? The Message version has “Madame Day holds classes every morning, Professor Night lectures each evening.” Not as lyrical, but fun and with more personification.
My understanding of those lines in verse 2 is that it gets better. The western world is progressing year by year, decade by decade as the majority of the people become more tolerant and accepting. America has its first African American president. Gay marriage could never have passed in my mother’s time. Good wins over evil … eventually. During the same decade that nationalism and fascism took hold in throughout Europe, Bill Wilson met Dr. Bob and shared his experience, strength, and hope and A.A. was born. I’ve heard it said that more people around the world have come to a deep personal relationship with their Higher Power through 12 Step groups than via all the religions of the world.
The idea that it gets better has kept me going for my entire life.
Read the rest of Jen’s sermon here.
July 28th, 2011
by Pablo Neruda
translated by Ben Belitt
I go copying mountains and rivers and clouds:
I shake out my fountain pen, remark
on a bird flying upward
or a spider alive in his workshop of floss,
with no thought in my head; I am air,
I am limitless air where the wheat tosses,
and am moved by an impulse to fly, the uncertain
direction of leaves, the round
eye of the motionless fish in the cove,
statues that soar through the clouds,
the rain’s multiplications.
I see only a summer’s
transparency, I sing nothing but wind,
while history creaks on its carnival floats
hoarding medals and shrouds
and passes me by, and I stand by myself
in the spring, knowing nothing but rivers.
Shepherd-boy, shepherd-boy, don’t you know
that they wait for you?
I know and I know it: but here by the water
in the crackle and flare of cicadas,
I must wait for myself, as they wait for me there:
I also would see myself coming
and know in the end how it feels to me
when I come to the place where I wait for my coming
and turn back to my sleep and die laughing.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on July 10
July 20th, 2011
Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Betwixt and Between,” on her blog, Sit and Eat.
July 7th, 2011
by Linda Pastan
Dear lost sharer
of silences,
I would send a letter
the way the tree sends messages
in leaves,
or the sky in exclamations
of pure cloud.
Therefore I write
in this blue
ink, color
of secret veins
and arteries.
It is morning here.
Already the postman walks
the innocent streets,
dangerous as Aeolus
with his bag of winds,
or Hermes, the messenger,
god of sleep and dreams
who traces my image
upon this stamp.
In public buildings
letters are weighed
and sorted like meat;
in railway stations
huge sacks of mail
are hidden like robbers’ booty
behind freight-car doors.
And in another city
the conjurer
will hold a fan of letters
before your outstretched hand—
“Pick any card. . . “
You must tear the envelope
as you would tear bread.
Only then dark rivers
of ink will thaw
and flow
under all the bridges
we have failed
to build
between us.
–Read at St. Lydia’s on July 3
