For All Who Hunger--a book review

For All Who Hunger
Emily M.D. Scott
Convergent, New York, 2020

In an earlier post I mentioned that we’re being allowed back into the library to browse the stacks. Since I’m unfamiliar with the library, as I moved here during the pandemic and it was closed, I had no idea where to start. Luckily on the first floor is a NEW section.

Of course, there was the torrid romances with their covers ALL IN THE SAME COLOR PALETTE. Sheesh!

There was also some exciting new non-fiction and then a little tiny section for religion or self-help/improvement. And, since this is Eugene OR, the section included several titles dedicated to goddess and witches/worship. So it was a broad swath of everything. Nestled in here was a title that caught my eye:

For All Who Hunger: Searching for Communion in a Shattered World by Emily M.D. Scott. I liked her back profile picture.

Rev. Scott founded what came to be called Dinner Church. Based essentially on congregants sharing a meal together. She began with a small idea that most of us are lonely (I know I am!) and living in NYC she’d met folks from all over, outsiders who just wanted to be included in some small way but didn’t want church or religion to suck up their entire life. I get it!

Before leaving Chicago I was involved in a church plant where at every turn I was made to feel guilty that I wasn’t giving or doing enough. I’m 62, I ain’t teaching Sunday School, y’all. On top of that from 2016 – till 2021 I was in a perpetual state of lament. I pretty much came to church to cry. You didn’t need to pray over me or do anything but let me alone to grieve. I needed a sanctuary, a place to be sad and then go out and not cry for another 6 days. If I could last that long. Churches are places that attest to all kinds of emotion, where it is okay to dance or dirge, whoop or wail. I turned all that I was feeling into a sacred outpouring.

Emily knew it was hard for people in big cities to come out of their shell. So she created a moveable feast or homemade soup and bread, for folks to come together. There was a song, a hymn, a homily, then clean-up, which was just as much a part of the liturgy as any of the other elements.

The book also traces her own transformation. She was well-educated and informed, yet real-life experience of standing side-by-side with folks facing injustice and then the national awakening all came together to inform Rev. Scott. First it was housing issues and then racial inequity. Hurricane Sandy brought that all home. When the news carried police shootings brutality into the headlines she researched area examples of police overreach in her neighborhood. The list was long, but because it happened before Michael Brown in Ferguson or Eric Garner “I can’t breathe” on Staten Island, there wasn’t any attention given to 12-year-old Nicholas Heyward playing with a toy gun just down the street from the church doors. Because this boy was from the projects a police mistake became human collateral for the sake of keeping the city “safe.” We’ve come to know this story well.

Safe for whom?

Emily also grew personally. Because she wanted to emphasize all kinds of inclusiveness she ran into trouble with the mainline church boards. Yet, she knew it was important to include the LGBQT etc. You see, she didn’t need to include them—they were already there, helping with clean-up, organizing events, ferrying the wheelchair member back and forth from her nursing home. They WERE the church.

But, Emily went deeper. She involved the church in issues that might push their comfort zones, Hers, as well. That’s why it was such an authentic read. She speaks about the awkwardness, the interactions that fell flat. PLOP! The times she tried and failed, but kept moving and going. She wrote honestly about burn out and questions of faith and where the church itself has failed to reach the world. She wrote about 2016 and Trump winning the election, where she sat with other congregants at a bar. Thus, began her own journey of lament.

That journey is chronicled in her book For All Who Hunger, her decision to leave St, Lydia’s and start a new church, Dreams and Visions in Baltimore and her subsequent marriage, another affirmation of inclusiveness. None of this was done willy-nilly, but in this book you can see how she came to be formed by those she sought to minister to.

It is refreshing to see how church is done—outside of the mainstream wooden doors and bell-topped steeple. Church for all.