About: at The Lion

The Venue

at The Lion, so named for the bronze sculpture of a wingéd lion, in the courtyard next to the venue at St. Mark's on the campus Episcopal Church at 13th & R streets, is a place where activities of interest to the community are held on the evenings of select Fridays each month.

at The Lion is, essentially, a free, public "affinity gathering" for literate members (or those who aspire to be literate) of the Lincoln community, with free refreshments. These things are not something that is common these days, although you can find them at places such as, in the case of poetry, the John H. Ames Reading Series sponsored by the Lincoln City Libraries, the No Name Reading Series sponsored by the Department of English's graduate student writers at UNL, and the Lincoln Poetry Slam!!! sponsored by Larksong Writers Place. Similarly, we are simply Poetry at The Lion, sponsored by St. Mark's on the Campus.

Church & Community

Of all those words, the most threatening to many people is: “Church”.

Rest assured that no one should feel reluctant to come. This is only about the community with 13th & R streets at its center: UNL and downtown Lincoln (roughly "A"to "X"  streets, 1st to 27th streets, plus the Near South and East Campus areas); a neighborhood, not in a religious or even in a demographic, statistical, economic, or strictly geographical sense, but in the sense of people who live near each other – in this instance sharing a mutual, academic & often artistic, cosmopolitan environment. And many of these neighbors visit from well outside this geographic area.

It is, sadly, an all too fragmented community, due mainly to the gentrification of its center, around 13th & R streets. While the venue is in a church (all that is left of the older neighborhood), we nonetheless hope to nurture that wounded, inherently cosmopolitan, academically and artistically inclined neighborhood, which continues to exist, just scattered over a wider area.

Activities at The Lion

On the 2nd Friday of each month, poetry readings are held, called “Poetry at The Lion”. At present, the Featured Readers are poets (and whatever guests they bring) to a 90-minute presentation of their own design. Their guests are often musicians, artists, and others who have inspired them, or who they wish to give exposure to a public reading here. We hope to, in the future, expand Featured Readers to include fiction writers, essayists, artists, and others who might just speak on various topics with an emphasis on the Fine Arts. Check out Videos of Past Readings to get a better feel for what takes place here. 

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On the 4th Friday of each month, potluck dinners are held – with a speaker or event of some interest to our neighbors, called “Potluck Possibilities”.  These are often "events" (such as SCA-type activities and other discussions), or presentations from other organizations and community groups. Together this constitutes a potluck of food and activities for the community of which St. Marks on the Campus is a part. People can come for the food or the presentations and activities. It is not necessary to bring any food, although you are welcome to bring your own and partake of whatever else is available. It is a potluck of food and, from month to month, of activities.
 

These are held for the community to help our neighbors (and ourselves) become more familiar with each other. Our "religious motive" is nothing more ominous than that found in the second part of The Great Commandment: 'to love our neighbors as ourselves'  (Mark 12:31).

Our Neighbors

Regarding the idea of "Neighbors", this neighborhood was in 1970, at the time of the Kent State massacre, a thriving residential neighborhood, stretching roughly from A to Vine streets & 10th to 22nd streets, which as part of the UNL milieux, frequently welcomed many new people as part of its family. 

That neighborhood family was very heavily humanities based (Arts & Sciences), primarily in theatre, graphic arts, music, poetry, philosophy, and sciences  –   from anthropology to physics & zoology – as well as many other disciplines. It consisted entirely of off-campus housing and residents. Many people lived here around 13th & R streets, with St. Mark's as one of the most visible landmarks at it center.

Today it has been divested of that feeling and identity as a neighborhood; yet it still is one. Only St. Mark's on Campus remains at the center of the old "town & gown" neighborhood that transitions the UNL and the Downtown areas. However, it was, and still remains, emphatically, a transitional neighborhood: the gateway for students to downtown Lincoln, and for downtown residents the gateway to UNL. It has, simply expanded geographically, returning it to boundaries more characteristic of the first half of the 20th century, when luminaries such as Willa Cather, John Frederick Ballard, Weldon Keys, Marie Sandoz, Karl Shapiro, Loren Eiseley Hartley Burr Alexander and others of their ilk were residents, and often found in creative downtown venues. 

The spirit of the neighborhood nevertheless remains in the “students,” be they the more permanent residential students 'of life and the arts' (downtown), or the more fleeting, ever-renewed presence 'of academic students' (UNL). These are the elements that mix at 13th & R streets.

The people of St. Mark's on Campus want to embrace their neighbors – all of them – as neighbors; people rather than “fodder” serving any particular religious or economic-political role. We want to become visible as a people, mostly settled academics and other educated people who care and share; rather than as nothing more than an old building in a highly gentrified area,  beside the oil-stained 'bedrooms for cars' (parking lots) and school buildings – of significant, meaningful interest only to a few Christians –  and Episcopalians at that.

We hope, of course, that anyone interested in the church will check us out, and maybe help us grow, but that is not the purpose –  or function –  of "at The Lion". 

Purpose

Our purpose as a venue (and a church, for that matter) is, simply put, to be good and caring neighbors in our community. (Mark 12:31)

While this is true for all of Lincoln, this neighborhood in particular is the most cosmopolitan area of the town, due largely to the influence of UNL. Our neighbors, both at UNL and in the downtown area, are of all nations and all religions . . . which includes atheists as well as other religions and denominations. 

All are welcome here, from all parts of Lincoln and the world. They might not share our beliefs or wish to worship with us, but we hope they will enjoy mixing with us.

The Arts

Poetry is one of the classically recognized Fine Arts.

Arts, the metaphysical phenomenon behind the artifacts of our cultures, speak to all, so we are offering an arts-focused venue for readings, the rubbing of elbows, and neighborhood-related interactions centered on a metaphysically based take on the physical world we all inhabit.

Beyond, and aside from, the craftsmanship of the artist is found the art, which, as humans, we all inherently possess, and which in its turn is what makes us all sentient beings. This is what we reach out to in each of you whom we invite to "at The Lion". Here we try to connect with the consciously & unconsciously feeling creatures that are our neighbors; the aware and creative neighbors in our community.