10/9 Community Meeting Notes

The notes from the meeting are here.

St. Lydia’s in Sarah Lawrence Magazine

The article about St. Lydia’s in SL Mag’s current issue on Building Community in NYC is out!

St. Lydia’s in the Lutheran

There’s an article on St. Lydia’s in the current issue of The Lutheran!  Here’s an abbreviated online version of it.

Pumpkin Rice Pilaf

– 12 cups brown rice (cooked) (we used to boxes of Trader Joe’s frozen)
– 9 cups wild rice (cooked) (3 packages of TJ’s vac-sealed)
– 1.5 cups of raisins, chopped
– 3lb bag of apples, cored, peeled and chopped
– 3 large onions, chopped
– 29oz can of pumpkin puree
– About 2 lbs of peeled, chopped butternut squash
– 14 oz bag of walnut pieces and halves
– Balsamic vinegar, apple juice, salt, and nutmeg

Set chopped raisins to soften over low heat in balsamic vinegar. Roast walnuts (until crisp) and butternut squash (until soft). Sautee onions until clear and apples until soft. Toss all four into bowl.

Sautee brown rice and pumpkin puree until puree starts to cook into rice. In another skillet, cook wild rice with apple juice (about a cup) and the softened raisins until most liquid absorbs or evaporates. Mix rice into apples n’ squash. Season liberally with nutmeg and salt. Serve warm.

–Prepared by Richard at St. Lydia’s on October 24

Ten-Year Plan

Emily created this document, A Vision for St. Lydia’s, this summer in response to a conversation we started at the retreat in July, and which we are continuing to have amongst ourselves about what we imagine for the future of St. Lydia’s.  Please read it at your leisure, and feel free to email emily@stlydias.org with any questions or comments it might raise!

Sermon: Ephesians 3:14-21

Read Emily’s latest sermon, “Not About Playing Nice” on her blog, Sit and Eat.  The sermon was preached on October 24 as the last installment in our series on St. Lydia’s relationship to the wider Church.

Happy birthday Emily and Ula!

See more pics in the picasa album!

Lamp Day

by Matthew Zapruder

All day I’ve felt today is a holiday,
but the calendar is blank.
Maybe its Lamp Day. There is
one very small one I love
so much I have taken it everywhere,
even with its loose switch.
On its porcelain shade are painted
tiny red flowers, cleary
by someone whose careful
hand we will never know.
Because its Lamp Day I’m trying
to remember where I got it,
maybe it was waiting for me
in the house on Summer Street
I moved into almost exactly
17 years ago.  I think
without thinking I just picked it
up from the floor and put it
on my desk and plugged
it into the socket and already
I was working.  So much
since that moment has happened.
On Lamp Day we try
not dreamily but systematically
to remember it all.  I do it
by thinking about the hidden
reasons I love something
small. When you take
a series of careful steps
to solve a complex problem,
mathematicians call it an algorithm.
It’s like moving through
a series of rooms, each with
two doors, you must choose one,
you can’t go back. I begin
by sitting on a bench in the sun
on September 21st thinking
all the walks I have taken
in all the cities I have chosen
to live in or visit with loved ones
and alone make a sunlit
and rainy map no one
will ever be able to hold.
Is this important?  Yes and no.
Now I am staring
at clean metal girders.
People keep walking past
a hotel, its bright
glass calmly reflecting
everything bad and good.
Blue boots.  Bright glass.
Guests in this moment. A child
through the puddles steps
exuberant, clearly feeling the power.
I am plugged in.  I am calm.
Lamp Day has a name.
Just like this cup
that has somehow drifted
into my life, and towards which
sometimes for its own reasons
my hand drifts in turn.
Upon it is written the single
word Omaha.

–Read at St. Lydia’s on October 24

Traditions and Denominations

Jeremy Sierra is a MFA student and lives in New York.  A congregant at St. Lydia’s, he blogs here under the category Jeremiah Speaking.

Recently, I have been having something of a denominational crisis.  My father is an Episcopal priest.  I own at least five versions of the Book of Common Prayer, and I took my first communion in a tiny stone Episcopal Church before I could walk (I think.  I was too young to remember).  And now, somehow, I am going to a Lutheran Church.  Maybe.  Sort of.

When I moved to New York I skipped church without a good excuse for the first time in my life.  I like going to church, and so every other instance I had a reason – I was traveling, I was sick.  When I moved up here I was living by myself and school and started and I was lonely and looking for community, but I was sick of standing around awkwardly at coffee hour (a special kind of torture that seems designed to alienate shy people and visitors).  I zoned out during the sermon and said the creeds and prayers half heartedly, believing only bits and pieces.  So I started skipping it altogether.

Then I went to St. Lydia’s one Sunday in January, and a few weeks later I found myself at a community meeting, then dinner.  I didn’t have to break into any coffee clusters. After church I could grab a drink and be honest about my doubt. I wasn’t worried about St. Lydia’s denomination (Wasn’t it Episcopalian, anyway, right?), as long as I could continue to work and worship and talk in the community.

A few weeks ago Pastor Phil talked about relationships, about how St. Lydia’s is dating the Lutheran Church right now, and in the best relationships you can tell each other your story, and refine each other’s stories.   I’ve been in relationships in which I could hardly get a word in and it didn’t work out, and I’ve even been in relationships in which I did all the talking and that didn’t work out either.  It only works when you can be honest about who  you are, where you are, and where you come from.  It only works when everyone talks and everyone listens.

It seems to me that the Lutheran church is listening to St. Lydia’s, though I have to admit that it’s a tradition I don’t know much about.  My story has always been a Episcopal story, but I think that’s a story I can continue to tell at St. Lydia’s.  I don’t have ot give it up here, and I don’t have to become Lutheran (Not a chance.  No offense, Pastor Phil).  That’s what tradition is, isn’t it?  A story we tell ourselves about how we got here, how we do things, and why we do them?

While I think St. Lydia’s is still developing it’s history, and the community is still growing, I also think St. Lydia’s already has a tradition.  We are intentional and conscious of this in a way that few other churches are:  we share a meal, we work together, we tell our stories, and this is the heart of our tradition.

Now, I’m not 100% sure I would have come to St. Lydia’s if it were called St. Lydia’s Lutheran Church but I doubt it will ever be that.  It’s St. Lydia’s Dinner Church.   Our identity is local and communal first.  I also think it’s important for a church to be connected to a larger community, formally and informally, to help us stay grounded and connected.   Of course there is danger in joining a denomination of St. Lydia’s becoming something else, but that danger already exists.  There is always danger in relationships, and danger in simply existing.  What I’m concerned with is that we, the community of St. Lydia’s, are able to tell our story and that we are able to let it continue to unfold out of the tradition we have already begun. If we can continue to do that, then I’m not too worried about whether I’m going to an Episcopal Church or a Lutheran Church.

Filling Station

-Read by Jeremy at St. Lydia’s on October 17