Here is a link to the Financial Giving Form. You can copy and paste the form into an email, google doc or word file, fill it out and email it back to Rachel at rachel@stlydias.org.
The other day we were sitting up in Pastor Phil’s office drinking Three Buck Chuck from little plastic cups and outside it was rainy and cool and summer was slowly slipping away. I am beginning to get sick of summer, the whir of window units and the sticky subway stations. Now, although the heat has returned, the fall semester is starting up. Teachers are decorating their classrooms with posters and construction paper or preparing lesson plans. Students are registering for classes and trying not to think about the amount of debt they are sinking into to get their MFA (or I am anyway).
After my first week of classes I now have to write something like twenty to thirty pages in the next couple weeks. It can be shorter, my professor said, “it just has to be outstanding.” This is a little terrifying. For the next several weeks I will be spending a lot of time in front of my computer, or pacing around my apartment brainstorming and scratching my head, trying to pull something out of the void.
I haven’t written anything all summer. This was partially because I was moving and traveling. There was a break up and a broken computer. There was the heat. But really it’s because writing, like any kind of creation, is hard. At St. Lydia’s we’ve been reading Genesis and Emily has been talking a lot about the act of creation. It’s an experience of fear, she said. “Fear of the clean, unmarked sheet of paper, of the blinking cursor, of the unblemished canvas.”
It’s also necessary, something we are called to: “God has made a world that is dynamic, in constant motion, and decided not to retain control over that world, but to give ownership and authority away in a divine collaboration with humanity and creation.” I feel like I’m forgetting something when I am not writing, like I’m missing a friend or like I’ve forgotten to put on my underwear and something invisible but crucial is missing from my wardrobe. Creation is how we imitate God, how we participate in the world we live in, how we reach each other, whether we’re creating art or a story, a conversation or a community.
I’m ready for the fall. I’m excited about this new school year, and about whatever it is I’ll be writing over the next several months. I’m hoping to make sense out of the events of the summer and my occasionally chaotic life with words and with friends and classmates, to make something out of the void.
So I’ll be sharing some of my experience with you on this blog every now and then, mostly small experiences and reflections, but good, I hope, like cheap wine in plastic cups.
– Jeremy
by Thomas Merton
When psalms surprise me with their music
And antiphons turn to rum
The Spirit sings: the bottom drops out of my soul.
And from the center of my cellar, Love, louder than thunder
Opens a heaven of naked air.
New eyes awaken.
I send Love’s name into the world with wings
And songs grow up around me like a jungle.
Choirs of all creatures sing the tunes
Your Spirit played in Eden.
Zebras and antelopes and birds of paradise
Shine on the face of the abyss
And I am drunk with the great wilderness
Of the sixth day in Genesis.
But sound is never half so fair
As when that music turns to air
And the universe dies of excellence.
Sun, moon and stars
Fall from their heavenly towers.
Joys walk no longer down the blue world’s shore.
Though fires loiter, lights still fly on the air of the gulf,
All fear another wind, another thunder:
Then one more voice
Snuffs all their flares in one gust.
And I go forth with no more wine and no more stars
And no more buds and no more Eden
And no more animals and no more sea:
While God sings by himself in acres of night
And walls fall down, that guarded Paradise.
Read at St. Lydia’s on August 29
Yum yum!
Prepared at St. Lydia’s on August 29, 2010
Dear Lydians,
A little over a year ago St. Lydia’s was little more than an idea. We started our church from scratch: no budget, no staff, just a home cooked meal, and a table in a congregants’ dining room, and a bunch of generous people. It’s been a whole mess of wonderful people giving what they can that’s added up to the budget that keeps our church growing.
Giving is a spiritual practice. We talk a lot at St. Lydia’s about how practice shapes our faith. It’s what we do that transforms us bit by bit into new people. The act of giving generously and regularly helps us live lives that are characterized not by clenched hands, but open ones.
A practice of giving also helps us keep our eyes on the prize, as the old spiritual says. Jesus talked a lot about possessions and money getting in the way of a relationship with God. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 6:21). Giving keeps our hearts and minds turned toward God.
Our budget for the 2010-2011 program year is $31,624, an increase of $8,500 from last year’s budget. This increased budget will ensure we have funding for our weekly meal, publicity, and program supplies. We intend to put more of our resources toward facebook ads, as well as increase the salary of our Community Coordinator.
I invite you to take some time this week to consider making a generous and regular financial contribution to St. Lydia’s. What might you offer each week or each month? The practice of giving consistently will make a huge difference in supporting the work of the church we’re building together. You can fill out a financial commitment sheet at St. Lydia’s on Sunday. The sheet will also be available in the weekly update during the month of September. Once you’ve made your financial commitment for the 2010-2011 program year, it’s easy to give what you’ve committed by writing a check or giving online at our website.
It’s an honor to work with each of you in building St. Lydia’s.
-Emily
Read Emily’s sermon, “Earth’s Dirt God’s Breath” preached on Sunday, August 29, 2010, at her blog, Sit and Eat.
by Charles Simic
They arrive inside
The object at evening,
There’s no one to greet them.
The lamps they carry
Cast their shadows
Back into their own minds.
They write in their journals:
The sky and the earth
Are of the same impenetrable color.
If there are rivers and lakes,
They must be under the ground.
Of the marvels we sought, no trace.
Of the strange new stars, nothing.
There’s not even wind or dust,
So we must conclude that someone
Passed recently with a broom…
As they write, the new world
Gradually stitches
Its black thread into them.
Eventually nothing is left
Except a low whisper
Which might belong
Either to one of them
Or to someone who came before.
It says: “I’m happy
We are finally all here…
Let’s make this our home.”
Read at St. Lydia’s on August 22
The familiar story of Adam and Eve (Genesis 2:4-3:24) is a separate narrative written in a voice different from the story we hear in chapter 1. The style of storytelling becomes folksy and colorful, God walking through the garden as if in human form. This is a second creation story, distinct from the account of God making the world in seven days. Take a look at Genesis 2:4 and you’ll see the hinge where the two stories are spliced together.
The story begins with a garden with no one to till it. So God forms a mud creature out of the dust and breathes life into it. This mud creature is called “’adam,” the Hebrew word for human. The word is also related to “’adamah,” which means ground. The ‘adam, therefore, is a being fashioned from the ground and made in connection to the earth: to till the ground and tend the garden.
We learn that there are four rivers that flow from Eden, and two trees within it. One is the Tree of Life. The other is the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Scholars debate the meaning of this name. Some argue that the tree offers universal knowledge, others maintain that the tree offers the “power of discernment between good and evil” (Collins). These finer points aside, if one tree is the Tree of Life, the other must surely be the Tree of Death, a reality that the story goes on to explore.
-Emily M D Scott
Sources:
Collins, John J. Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004.
Sharp, Carolyn. “Creation, the Garden of Eden and the Irony of Wisdom.” Yale University, Introduction to the Old Testament. New Haven, CT. Fall, 2004.
Read Emily’s sermon, “When God Lets Go,” preached on Sunday, August 22, 2010, on her blog, Sit and Eat.