{"id":1773,"date":"2012-09-13T16:58:10","date_gmt":"2012-09-13T20:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stlydias.org\/blog\/?p=1773"},"modified":"2012-09-13T17:01:17","modified_gmt":"2012-09-13T21:01:17","slug":"interview-with-emily-in-ny-spirit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/2012\/09\/interview-with-emily-in-ny-spirit\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Emily in NY Spirit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily recently did this interview with Bianca Swift for Issue 168 of NY Spirit magazine. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

A Visit with Emily Scott, St. Lydia\u2019s Pastoral Minister<\/p>\n

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A new kind of Christian worship is on the scene in New York. This one doesn\u2019t take place on Sunday mornings in a church, but instead sitting around a dinner table in a Zen center located in Brooklyn. The focus is on prayer, scripture, sharing, and appreciating life through the body\u2019s five senses. We were curious about this alternative approach to religious worship and connected with Emily Scott, St. Lydia\u2019s Pastoral Minister.<\/p>\n

Bianca:<\/strong>\u00a0Can you quickly describe St. Lydia\u2019s for readers?<\/p>\n

Emily:<\/strong>\u00a0At St. Lydia\u2019s, we gather every Sunday evening to share what we call a \u201cSacred Meal.\u201d We cook a big meal together, then bless the meal with an ancient Eucharistic Prayer that we sing together. Our worship takes place around the table as we share the meal: we read and explore scripture together, offer prayers, and sing. At the end of the evening, everyone works together to clean up.<\/p>\n

Sharing a meal together is a practice that has its roots in the earliest days of the church. In the Bible, we read of Jesus breaking bread with his friends and saying, \u201cThis is my body.\u201d For the first few centuries of the church, Christians gathered on Sunday to share a full meal. Those who had much to give shared food with those who had little, and bread was blessed and broken. Over the years, the practice of sharing a meal became more and more symbolic, gradually becoming what we see in most churches today.<\/p>\n

At St. Lydia\u2019s, we\u2019ve returned to the practice of sharing a full meal with one another, and have found that it\u2019s fed and nourished us, spiritually and physically.<\/p>\n

Bianca:<\/strong>\u00a0What can you tell us about the beliefs you explore?<\/p>\n

Emily:<\/strong>\u00a0We have this phrase at St. Lydia\u2019s, \u201cpractice before belief.\u201d Instead of trying to figure out what it is that we believe \u2014 trying to capture it and write it out on paper \u2014 we try to simply practice faith. That means showing up for Dinner Church, singing and praying, being in communion with others, even if you\u2019re not sure what it all means. We trust that God works through our worship to draw us closer, to change us and be revealed to us. We\u2019re very comfortable with doubt at St. Lydia\u2019s, and see it as a healthy and active part of our lives of faith. Sometimes we\u2019ll read a scripture passage and someone will say, \u201cI really can\u2019t get on board with this.\u201d Other times, folks will speak about feeling like God is absent in their lives. It\u2019s all a part of the seasons of our relationship with the divine.<\/p>\n

Bianca:<\/strong>\u00a0You call St. Lydia\u2019s progressive. Can you explain?<\/p>\n

Emily:<\/strong>\u00a0I think the most important thing about St. Lydia\u2019s being a progressive church is that we are not only inclusive of, but affirming of a full range of expressions of human sexuality. I believe that God created us as embodied people, which means that we inhabit bodies made of flesh and blood. We desire connection and relationship with one another. We crave intimacy. No matter how we\u2019re called into relationship with one another, be that a relationship between two men or two women, or how we\u2019re called to express our gender identity, God has made us just as we are, and blesses our impulse to love and honor one another with our bodies.<\/p>\n

Check out the rest of the interview here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Emily recently did this interview with Bianca Swift for Issue 168 of NY Spirit magazine. \u00a0 A Visit with Emily Scott, St. Lydia\u2019s Pastoral Minister A new kind of Christian worship is on the scene in New York. This one doesn\u2019t take place on Sunday mornings in a church, but instead sitting around a dinner […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[10,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1773"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1775,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1773\/revisions\/1775"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stlydiasliturgy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}