There would be no story without the people of St. Lydia’s. Each one of you is a part of this book’s pages. St. Lydia’s would never have been without the partnership of Rachel Pollak Kroh. Thank you for every woodcut, email salutation, lock-shaped candle, and dishcloth banner. In addition, St. Lydia’s was shaped by each staff person and intern gutsy enough to take a risk on a wobbly new start: Julia Macy Offinger, Hannah Johnston, Sarah McCaslin, Rebecca Stevens-Walter, Zachary Stevens-Walter, Joel Avery, Alissa Kretzmann Farrar, Jack Holloway, and Melissa O’Keefe Reed.
Tim Kreider showed me that I’m a writer and taught me along the way. Thank you for talking me down all those times I was spazzing. Jacob Slichter read an early, clunky draft and told me what this book was actually about. Thank you for your faith: in me, in communities, and in the faltering church. Burke Gerstenschlager walked me through the drafting, pitching, and publication process with tireless enthusiasm. Thank you for being my dial-a-friend for all questions theological and mythological.
I am endlessly grateful to Derek Reed, my kind, patient, and thoughtful editor, as well as the entire team at Convergent. I am particularly thankful for David Kopp, who saw early on that I had a story to tell and encouraged me.
Meg Thompson, my literary agent, really is some kind of magic.
I am surrounded by friends and coconspirators who support me and my work fiercely. This book would not exist without the love and friendship of Nadia Bolz-Weber and Rachel Held Evans. I am heartbroken that Rachel cannot see the growing body of work her advocacy made possible.
Nancy McLaren, Mieke Vandersall, Jeff Chu, Lenny Duncan, and Ever Hanna all read drafts and told me the truth.
Kerlin Richter, Austin Channing Brown, Jes Kast, Neichelle Guidry, Rozella Haydée White, Jodi Houge, Mihee Kim Kort, Nichole Flores, Rachel Kurtz, and Winnie Varghese sustained me along the way.
Donald Schell, Phil Trzynka, and Daniel Simons walked at my side through the founding of St. Lydia’s and along my winding path toward serving as a pastor. No words can capture my gratitude for their love and guidance.
I was honored to write about leaders in the Gowanus Community and grateful to each for trusting me with a part of their story. Tracey Pinkard collaborated with me and St. Lydia’s with an open heart, shared her perspectives, and reviewed the “Good Fridays” chapter. Ms. Donna Heyward graciously allowed me to share the story of Nicholas Naquan Heyward, Jr., and Mr. Nicholas Heyward, who passed away in January 2019. Mr. Heyward taught me, and many others, what tireless dedication to justice looks like.
Onleilove Alston taught me immeasurably, and reviewed the “Empty Tombs” chapter. Thank you to the team at Faith in New York, as well as Shatia Strother and Michael Higgins at Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, gifted organizers who bring the world as it should be a little closer.
Hannah Soldner, Charlotte Moroz, Omar Abreu, Phil Fox Rose, Wendy Barrie, and Ula Barrack allowed me to share a small piece of their stories. Liz Edman coordinated St. Lydia’s participation in the Pride Parade and suggested the David Kirby photograph for our Good Friday liturgy. Andrew Lipsett consulted with me on the “Good Fridays” chapter in regard to redlining practices and discrimination in Memphis, Tennessee. Jeff Stark graciously reviewed the “Lost Things” chapter.
St. Lydia’s is supported by the Metropolitan New York Synod and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Grant funding, piles of paperwork, and fervent prayers were all needed to bring something from nothing. Thank you for taking a risk on us.
I wrote this book all over the nation, in guest rooms, borrowed chalets in the mountains, and a camper van named Edith Van Trundle (may she rest in peace). Thank you to Holden Village, Chris Craun, Lauren Muratore, Diana Carroll and Sarah Lamming, and Christo Allegra (who let me far outstay my welcome when my van was in the shop).
Atticus Zavaletta, thank you for loving this book as well as you love me. You are, impossibly, both the end and the beginning of my story.
NOTES
PROLOGUE
1. Jane Kenyon, “Briefly It Enters, and Briefly Speaks,” in Collected Poems (St. Paul: Greywolf Press, 2005).
I. CREATION
1. New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 10 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 231–232.
2. Kyna Leski, The Storm of Creativity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2015).
II. ENOUGH
1. The Dreary Coast, written and directed by Jeff Stark in 2014, was an immersive theatrical work. The work explored the character and perspective of Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, and leaned on and reinterpreted Greek myth, in particular, the stories of Persephone, Hades, and the “descent” themes found in the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice. An imaginative retelling of ancient stories, The Dreary Coast wove together characters and themes from such diverse ancient sources as Hesiod, Homer, and Ovid.
2. Joseph Alexiou, Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal (New York: New York University Press, 2015).
3. Alexiou, Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal.
4. Alexiou,Gowanus: Brooklyn’s Curious Canal.
III. JUSTICE
1. With thanks to Lenny Duncan, who consulted with me on this chapter. Lenny Duncan, personal communication, July 2019.
2. For more on redlining see Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law (New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017).
3. Lenny Duncan, personal communication, July 2019.
4. Evan Osnos, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,” The New Yorker, January 22, 2017.
5. Osnos, “Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich.”
6. In the opening paragraph of his book, Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky writes, “What follows is for those who want to change the world from what it is to what they believe it should be.” Dependent on the Jewish belief of Olam HaBa, or “the world to come,” this phrase not only reflects a Jewish understanding of the afterlife, a time after the arrival of the Messiah, but has become a commonly used framework for organizers of many faiths and no faith.
IV. RESURRECTION
1. J. Cheryl Exum, “Song of Songs,” in Women’s Bible Commentary (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 249.
2. Exum, “Song of Songs,” 249.
3. David M. Carr, The Erotic Word: Sexuality, Spirituality, and the Bible (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 119.
4. Fred Sargant, “1970: A First-Person Account of the First Gay Pride March,” The Village Voice, June 22, 2010, https://www.villagevoice.com/2010/06/22/1970-a-first-person-account-of-the-first-gay-pride-march/.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
EMILY M. D. SCOTT founded St. Lydia’s Dinner Church, a progressive, LGBTQ+-affirming congregation in Brooklyn, New York, where worship takes place around the dinner table. A Lutheran pastor (ELCA), Scott is a graduate of Yale Divinity School and the Institute of Sacred Music. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, and her work at St. Lydia’s, which sparked a wider Dinner Church movement, has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic. After serving eight years at St. Lydia’s, Scott is now creating a new church community, Dreams and Visions, in Baltimore, Maryland.
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