June 10th, 2011
While this recipe calls for small shell pasta, feel free to use
whatever shaped pasta you have on hand.
Serves 4
1 large head Swiss chard
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 1/2 cups chopped well-drained canned plum tomatoes
1/2 pound whole wheat shells
3/4 cup crumbled goat cheese
1/2 cup canned kidney beans, drained and rinsed
3 tablespoons olive tapenade
3 tablespoons capers
1/4 cup freshly grated Parmesan
freshly ground black pepper
Rinse the Swiss chard, drain very well, and chop it into chunky pieces. It’s going to get cooked down, so no need to be too precise here.
Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a large heavy skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until just slightly tender. Stir in the garlic, add the tomatoes, and then add the Swiss chard. Cook for about 8 minutes or until the chard has just wilted. Be careful not to overcook the Swiss chard; it will have the opportunity to bake in the oven as well.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Bring a medium pot of water to a boil. Cook the pasta until al dente. Drain and set aside.
Remove the chard and tomatoes from the heat and stir in the goat cheese, kidney beans, olive tapenade, capers and half the amount of parmesan. Fold in the pasta and season with salt and pepper.
Pour the pasta mixture into a 1 or 2 quart casserole dish and sprinkle remaining Parmesan on top. Bake until heated all the way through, about 15 to 18 minutes.
–Prepared by Erica at St. Lydia’s on June 5
June 3rd, 2011
by Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common pattern
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
-Read at St. Lydia’s on May 22
June 3rd, 2011
Paul Thorson is a member of the St. Lydia’s community. This week, he’s moving from New York back to his hometown of Minneapolis, MN to pursue ordination in the ELCA. He preached this sermon last Sunday, May 29, on the text of John 21:15-25.
This is a letter from (p)aul to the Lydian’s:
It saddens me to think of us not together but soon I will see you in my mind and that, that will bring joy to my heart. It’ll be like this exchange between Winnie the Pooh and Piglet:
“Pooh,” Piglet said.
“Yes, Piglet, what is it?”
“Nothing,” said Piglet, “I just wanted to be sure of you.”
It goes without saying that when I am in Minnesota, I will want to be sure of you; to know that you are gathered together on Sunday nights sharing a meal, a story, and yes, a bit of work as well.
These interactions between Peter and Jesus seem somewhat tense. Jesus’ message is, yet again, a challenging one and Peter, well it seems Peter doesn’t always like a good challenge. I hear Jesus telling Peter that loving and following Jesus means Peter’s well-being and existence will be tied to those of Jesus’ sheep. Peter values privilege. He wants to be well thought of, and more than that, he wants to be thought of as special, raised up, important. Tying his becoming to others, to Jesus’ lambs, goes against his deeply rooted values, everything he’s been taught and seen modeled throughout his life before meeting Jesus.
The text makes me think of call, of being called. Jesus speaks personally to Peter and says, “Follow me.” How scary it is leave what you know and enter in to something unfamiliar. Jesus’ very presence in the story makes it clear, though, that we are not alone. He doesn’t say, “I am with you.” He IS with him.
This reminds me of the beautiful yet simple song we sometimes sing before and after prayers: What we need is here. Simple enough: 5 words, very direct and yet if the words are to have meaning, they must be interpreted.
What is need?
Where is here?
All of a sudden, it seems we need Camus or Nietzsche to sing our simple song. But, we don’t. We’ve already said that what we need is here. We don’t need to look outside of ourselves, to other people, to other things; at least not in comparison to ourselves the way Peter does towards the end of our text.
In Jesus’ world, all will be well. All manner of things and all people. Jesus explains to Peter that he needn’t worry about John, that…regardless of what Jesus or God wills for others, we are to concern ourselves with what Jesus wills for us. In this story, Peter becomes for us an example of what can happen when we seek to be understood more than to understand; to be comforted than to comfort, basically the opposite of what St. Francis recommends. How can St. Lydia’s seek to comfort rather than be comfortable, to understand rather than be understood?
When we sing “What we need is here,” we’re not so much saying we don’t need what isn’t here as we are singing there’s more here than meets our eye. We don’t know everything that is here…for we do need others if we claim to love Jesus and Jesus’s presence means even things we can’t see are with us.
As we discern our affiliation with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, St. Lydia’s might identify with Peter in this story. The questions Jesus asks Peter deal with freedom and trust. Freedom and trust are two words, that…well, they are two words. Words mean a lot to me. St. Lydia’s enjoys a measure of freedom in our becoming. That measure may be far greater than we’d enjoy if we were to affiliate with any institution, let alone the ELCA. Then again it may not. Without a conscious effort on our part to participate in disturbing things, we are bound to our own ideals as if we somehow know what it is we need. We know, at least kind of, what we want, but we frequently want what we don’t need and what we truly need, we often want nothing to do with. Jesus says to Peter, “But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.”
Hmmm.
Free from our own wants and desires/free to be a disciple/free to be saved/ but…bound to something? Not really. Freedom to become always feels submissive because it requires our engagement with disturbance. Isn’t a step away from difference, a step towards towards remaining the same?
I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone pray to be disturbed. Like other prayers for strength, this woman said, “Disturb us O God…” Disturb us? Disturb us?! I didn’t come here to be disturbed. I came here to be comforted, right?! I—we—will be taken where we do not wish to go.
About a year ago, I was on my way to St. Lydia’s with a professor of mine, Dorothy Bass. As is usually the case, my life was up in the air. I was graduating Union and considering what next. I was drawn to the Catholic Worker but they had no room. The people there recommended I stay upstate at the farm until something opened up. I wasn’t crazy about this idea. Professor Bass, in her wisdom, probably sensed my lack of excitement. “Maybe,” she said, “you don’t get to be where you want to be to do what you’re called to do.” Damn you! I thought. “You’re…right.” I said with a smile, defeated nonetheless.
For me to live out God’s will, I have to get rid of all the photographs of me; photographs that haven’t been taken yet but somehow I’ve already developed, in a dark room, complete with airbrushed aesthetics that become for me a deportment of sorts that I perpetually think I have to uphold.
These photographs are me putting on my own belt, dressing myself as it were, and as you can imagine, I have photographs like this of the whole world. They portray a world I want to see and keep me from seeing the disturbing and beautiful images of the world as it really is.
We are not alone. We have what we need. All will be well. Think of well in terms of not worrying rather than paradise. We are free to depend on something beyond us and this something makes how we fare in relation to others inconsequential.
My love for Jesus will take me places I do not wish to go…it already has. It is also taking me from places I do not wish to leave.
June 2nd, 2011
by Philip Larkin
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd —
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
-Read at St. Lydia’s on May 29
June 2nd, 2011
Quinoa Salad:
2 Cups Quinoa
Tomatoes
4 Ears Corn
2 Avocados
Red onion
1 Can Black Beans
4 cups water
Cook the quinoa in boiling water according to directions on package and cool. Roast the corn on the rack over a gas range so it blackens. Cut kernals off cobs when they have cooled. Dice the red onion. Cut the avocado into smallish pieces. Rinse the black beans. Toss all ingredients together in a large bowl.
Broccoli Slaw:
4 Bags Broccoli Slaw (Trader Joe’s is a good source for this.)
2 Fennel Bulbs
2 Green Apples
1 Cup Dried Cranberries
Mayonnaise to taste
Apple Cider Vinegar to taste
Dice the fennel and cube the apples. Toss all ingredients with mayo & vinegar. Delicious!
-Prepared by Jen at St. Lydia’s on May 29
June 2nd, 2011
- 1 cup lentilles du Puy (French green lentils) or brown lentils
- 3 tablespoons white-wine vinegar
- 1 1/4 cups water
- 1 cup quinoa
- cucumbers chopped
- 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1/4 cup olive oil (preferably extra-virgin)
- 1 large garlic clove, minced and mashed to a paste with 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves
- 1 bunch arugula, stems discarded and leaves washed well, spun dry, and chopped
- 2 cups vine-ripened cherry tomatoes, halved
- 1/4 pound feta, crumbled (about 1 cup)
In a small saucepan simmer lentils in water to cover by 2 inches until tender but not falling apart, 15 to 20 minutes, and drain well. Transfer hot lentils to a bowl and stir in 1 tablespoon vinegar and salt and pepper to taste. Cool lentils completely, stirring occasionally.
In a saucepan bring water to a boil and add couscous and salt. Remove pan from heat and let couscous stand, covered, 5 minutes. Fluff couscous with a fork and transfer to a large bowl. Stir in 1 tablespoon oil and cool completely, stirring occasionally.
In a small bowl whisk together garlic paste, remaining 2 tablespoons vinegar, remaining 3 tablespoons oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir lentils and dressing into couscous. Chill salad, covered, at least 3 hours and up to 24.
Just before serving, stir in remaining ingredients and season with salt and pepper.
-Prepared by Juliana at St. Lydia’s on May 15
