Christ Church Advent 2015
THE SONG VOL.1 HARK! THE GLAD SOUND THE HYMNAL 1982 HYMN 71
Hark! the glad sound, the Savior comes! the Savior promised long:
let every heart prepare a throne and every voice a song.
-Philip Doddridge
Let every heart prepare a home and every voice
a song.
Editor's Letter: An open letter about names
People do this thing that I find staggeringly great. We make stuff. The stuff we make has the power to open our hearts and share our selves, often with fewer filters. The stuff we make inspires other makers to do more making. All this creating is woven into our identity as humans. We are creators and it’s one of the many ways we find ourselves imitating Christ, imbued in God. I love it when God, in the creation narrative says, “That’s good…and that’s good… and that’s very good.” because, we say that, too. I also love it that one of the bullet points of our job description, in this same narrative, is to name stuff; the stuff we find and the stuff we make.
We wanted to make a new publication, a web and print magazine sort of a thing, for our family of Christ Church and whatever part of the pond our ripples touch. I frequently look around the church on a Sunday morning and feel deeply moved by the huge amount of majestic, brilliant, loving, gifted people who surround me. Wow…just, wow. Here, all around me, is heaven. This new publication should have a new name.
We considered names that were fun and whimsical, such as: X-Cathedral Statements and East End Times, and frankly, I liked both of those, and yet, when I said them they made me chuckle, but left me unmoved. We are grander. We are more of a song.
A song is a living thing. There is something about a song that is hard wired into being human. I think it’s because it has a life of its own, yet we make them. They inspire and console. They are ancient and now. They are the miracle that flows from the gifted composers, magnificent instruments, and voices in this sacred space. I love the metaphor of God singing the whole universe, and beyond, into being.
As it turns out, we are a Song.
Val Jutsum
Editor
Rector's Notes
One sabbatical evening I walked the beach of the Marie Joseph Retreat Center in Biddeford Pool, Maine. Three days in, I was no longer struggling against the silence of my silent retreat. A product of my frenetic, chronically overworked and hurried culture, I’d finally found the means to embrace the open ended stretch, vast as the ocean, of quiet and stillness. So when I found my way to a marshy pond and saw a turtle (Blanding’s), I sat on a bench and envied him. “He doesn’t fight silence,” I told myself. Look at him. He goes about the business of survival in a quiet, unhurried, non anxious manner. How can I learn from him, how can he be my teacher? Then, out of nowhere – and contrary to the nature and purpose of a silent spiritual retreat - I castigated myself and the rest of the human race: what is wrong with us that we can’t be more like this turtle?
It was good that I had a few more days at the retreat center to do what my spiritual director always reminds me to do, to be kind to myself. Driving home on rt (?) from Maine, it came to me that I don’t, in fact, have to be like a Blanding’s Turtle to be a better priest. Or a better mother. Or a better person. The struggle to be more fully human in a world that feels increasingly dehumanizing is a struggle that is holy to God. The struggle to sit and be still is holy to God. Being human is holy to God. You gave me the luxury of stepping away from the ten thousand things to be still, and I welled up with gratitude.
On my sabbatical, I made food grow from the earth – I’ve never done that. Cherry tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, snap peas, and carrot tops (I assume there were carrots underground but I never found them). I don’t really know how to describe this, but I got to know Liza and Hannah in a new way. We rode bikes through the streets of Stone Harbor, New Jersey, played and cheated at Monopoly, “adopted” endangered species of turtle and bird, jumped on the trampoline, overspent on ice cream cones, and grew together in the long hours we shared.
On my sabbatical, I did what many of you already do – ministry outside of ministry (ministry within my ministry?) I participated in labor and climate justice events, and planned an interfaith service in anticipation of the Pope’s visit to the United States. Jewish, Christian, Hindi, Buddhist, and Muslim voices spoke at St. Mary’s on Washington Square in September, uniting in the call to care for our earth and its inhabitants. I did not speak, but I got to know each speaker personally. I learned that, as much as I love to speak and preach, I absolutely love to be the one who arranges the microphone and gets glasses of water for other speakers. These endeavors have deepened my relationships with my interfaith colleagues to lasting friendships.
On my sabbatical, something came clear, which frightened me at first. It came clear that I would not return to you with a vision. I would not return with a “this is our identity – this is our mission!” proclamation. What came clear is that, working alongside you, I am supposed to keep the home fires burning. I am among you to visit the sick, to preach the Gospel, to celebrate the resurrection, and to keep our doors open to friends and strangers alike. I’m not sure how I got it in my head that I should announce some new or more grandiose vision or mission for Christ Church, but I did. What came crystal clear to me is the call I must have forgotten in search of something more complicated, more sophisticated: the call, “feed my sheep.” The call to baptize in the name of Jesus, to bury the dead, to bless the vows of the newly married; the call to work hard with you and your vestry, to cook for covered dish suppers, to raise the young people in our midst. The call to help balance the budget, to maintain our physical property, to serve Christ and to be Christ in all the glory and frailty of what it means to be human and to be “community.” The call to listen to God and one another with open and discerning hearts – we can’t afford not to! The winds of change are ever upon us, and God’s Spirit is ever brooding over His Church in the act of new creation.
When I returned from sabbatical, you gave me two new, custom made chasubles. When I say “thank you,” I mean THANK YOU. I have never been at a church where the chasubles I wear are just the right fit. This is how generous you are. I like to joke about how fashionable I am in them, and to do little dances around the sacristy, but my humor is a cover up. It is serious business to wear a chasuble. And yet something wonderful happened several Thursdays ago. I was alone in the sacristy as I donned the red chasuble for the feast of St. Simon and Jude and, I kid you not, I had an image of wrapping the Christ Church quilt around me.
When you installed me as your rector, you gave me a quilt that was quite literally sewn from the fabric of your own lives, from pieces of cloth you had given for the sewing of the quilt. I’ve never thought about my chasuble as a Christ Church quilt, but of course it is! At every Christ Church baptism, we welcome the newly baptized into the priesthood of all believers with a specially sewn Christ Church quilt. Suddenly, I know what it means to wear the chasubles you have given me, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude. It means that we are knit together in the priesthood of all believers, those who have come before us in this magnificent, old cathedral building and those who will come after. The fabric of our past, present, and future will always be sewn together in the work we have shared in this holy place and outside of it. I cannot express my gratitude for these chasubles and all that they mean – they stir in me the very gratitude that God wants and needs us - but I will do my best to live and minister from this deep gratitude. As I write, I am overflowing with it.
Music Director's Notes
ADVENT for Christ Church Music
For many years now, Christ Church Music has been striving to reach out to the greater Rochester community by offering unique and distinctive reasons for people to view our church as a center for spiritual nourishment through music. With Tuesday Pipes, Candlelight Concerts, Advent Lessons and Carols, special events and liturgies, EROI Festivals, Jazz Festivals, and Compline, Christ Church has become an essential hub for many Rochesterians. With our Youth Ensemble, Consort, Christ Church Choir, Schola Cantorum, as well as our collaborations with Publick Musick and Pegasus, ours is one of the busiest and comprehensive music programs in the region.
Although we have been building this program for more than 20 years now, it is only “Advent” in the program’s development. We are planning to create and develop even more reasons for people to feel passionate about calling Christ Church home. Please feel free to assist and support our program in any way you can. Donations may be made through the special envelopes for music during this Advent season. You may also support our music education and enrichment opportunities for young musicians who are dedicating their lives to the field of sacred music by contributing to Christ Church’s "Friends of Music" fund.
Please continue to follow the musical life of our parish by reading the monthly Music Notes and Calendar that are emailed from my address via MailChimp.
The music sound files contained here are from the many CD recordings that have we have produced over the years. These recordings are available for purchase by clicking the link below.
http://www.christchurchrochester.org/recordings-cd-shop
Other links of interest are:
https://www.facebook.com/ccscholacantorum/?fref=ts
https://www.facebook.com/ChristChurchRochester/?fref=ts
http://www.christchurchrochester.org
In this issue . . .
- FALL FESTIVE DINNER
- LESSONS AND CAROLS
- YOUTH GROUP EVENT
- ADVENT WREATH MAKING
- CANDLELIGHT CONCERT
- ANGEL TREE
- USHERS NEEDED!
- RAIHN UPCOMING EVENTS
- UPCOMING GARDENING DAY
- LECTORS NEEDED!
Talent share and dinner with friends: Friday, November 20th, 6:30 in the Guild Room
Pots of delicious food, laughter, and people entertaining each other with lighthearted joy, is not just a scene from one of the Chronicles of Narnia. It is a description of an evening at Christ Church. This particularly charming evening will take place on November 20th at 6:30 pm. Please bring something to share with friends; a morsel of supper, an entertainment, a heart for cheering others and receiving cheer in return. See you, there.
To celebrate the Advent season, the Christ Church Choir and members of the the Christ church congregation will sponsor a Service of Advent Lessons and Carols at 7 PM on Friday, December 4. The service will feature the Great O Antiphons. These antiphons, of which there are 7 and which refer to the Messiah in the various ways He is known, have been used in this service or services of this kind since almost the beginning of the Christian church. They played an important role in monasteries throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. The music, the procession of banners and seasonal scriptural readings make for a sublime introduction to the liturgical season which precedes Christmas. Indeed, the service offers one an opportunity to escape the frenetic pace of the holiday season and to focus on the meaning of Advent and the approaching Nativity of our Lord.
Following the service there will be a reception and a visit from St. Nicholas who will have goodies for all. Please plan on joining us for what portends to be a sublime and ethereal event.
Dear Christ Church,
So much of Advent Spirituality is about waiting for deliverance. We encounter apocalyptic themes of the end of this world and the breaking in of a new one. While we wait with eager longing, Christians the world over are beginning to hear God's longing as well: that we care for one another and for this earth, our fragile island home, in new ways.
Please join the Youth Formation Group Friday, December 11, from 6:30 - 9 pm as they host Rochester members of the Pachamama Alliance, and help lead the adults of our parish and community in an urgent conversation: how can we live together in our loving Creator’s world in ways that are more environmentally sustainable, socially just, and grounded in faith?
Sign up sheets for "The Call to Care: Awakening the Dreamer, Changing the Dream" are on the hallway bulletin board, or you can sign up through the front office: 454-3878.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoXJZ_3-J9w
In Christ,
Ruth+
The LEGO figures take cover behind last years Advent wreath.
After the Thanksgiving Day feast, while the frenzy of pre-Christmas activities whirl around us, we have a quiet gift in the season of Advent. We wrap ourselves in the smoky beauty of the fire of candles, to light our way, for our journey into the heart of God. November 29th, on Sunday, at 5:30, we will gather to build wreaths of evergreens and trinkets that remind us that we are all children in the eyes of God. These become, in our homes, the home of the lights of the season. Join us. Bring a dish to pass. You can RSVP in the contact section of this publication. All are welcome.
CHRISTMAS SERVICES
Christmas Eve: 5 p.m. service; 10:15 p.m. (prelude) & 10:30 p.m. service
Christmas Day: 10:00am in the chapel
Shout outs!
Newsy bits that inquiring minds need to know.
Be a Christ Church Rock Star!
Well, maybe not a Rock Star but we are looking for persons that would be willing to volunteer just one Sunday a month as a Christ Church usher. Besides being part of the offering and assisting with communion, Christ Church ushers pride ourselves on being that friendly face to visitors that are coming to our beautiful church. Openings do exist for usher positions that allow you to participate in our great services with minimal disruption to your worship.
If you think that serving as an usher would be a great way for you to contribute your time to Christ Church, please contact Hugh E. Kierig at 585-705-6723 or via e-mail at hkierig55@gmail.com. We look forward to hearing from you.
THE ANGEL TREE
One of our many Outreach programs is the collection of Christmas gifts for the Willow Domestic Violence Center (formally the Alternatives for Battered Women) clients and their families. The in gathering of these gifts will take place on the first and second Sundays in December.
Angels with gift suggestions written on them will decorate two trees. Parishioners are asked to take an Angel (or two) and bring their gifts into church unwrapped. This is our opportunity to provide some pleasure for these families.
WANTED
Christ Church needs a few more
LECTORS
If you like to read and can climb the stairs up
to our Lectionary Angel, we need YOU!
We can help you become a pro at the microphone.
If interested contact Pat Kingsley
pkingsly@rochester.rr.com
or 585-621-4728
RAIHN News:
Since it will be time to start thinking of the holidays soon, here are some neat and simple ways to help families in need during the holiday seasons through supporting RAIHN:
1) SAVE THE DATE for the annual Shop Til You Drop and Dining at Benucci’s!!! Mark your calendars for Tuesday, December 1st, 5 – 9pm at Pittsford Plaza. Benuccii’s will again donate 20% of your dining check to RAIHN – reservations recommended #264-1300. Go to ww.raihn.org for more information
2) Link your Amazon accounts to RAIHN at AmazonSmile, and a portion of every purchase will be donated to RAIHN. Follow this link - https://smile.amazon.com/ch/41-2064888.
3) Also, if you want to shop at Old Navy, Target, Staples, Expedia, Shutterfly, and lots more, visithttp://www.goodsearch.com/goodshop first to find coupons, then shop through their link and they will donate to RAIHN.
(Links are on RAIHN's website www.raihn.org on the Home page).
RAIHN 2015 Volunteer Trainings
Tuesday, January 19th, 2016, 6:30 pm, Messiah Lutheran Church, 4301 Mt. Read Blvd., Rochester
Tuesday, April 12th, 2016, 6:30 pm, United Church of Pittsford, 123 S. Main St., Pittsford
GARDENING INVITATION
Dear Gardeners,
Deb, Kitty, and the St. John Fisher "Students With a Vision" made amazing inroads in the fall cleanup, creating some 40 bags of leaves, moving shrubs, extirpating weeds, and other activities in some of these lovely fall days. We're scheduling one last go at the last minute just to tidy up the last roses of summer (or whatever else). Please join us for one hour (or more) on Saturday, Nov. 21 between 1 and 3 p.m. Bring rakes and spades if you have them. We have some if you don't.
To dirty fingernails--
Sarah
This space is dedicated to the creative works of our own church family. Please consider becoming a contributor for a future issue of The Song.
A Visit to the Gallery by Renate Eckert
"The Painting on the left is a copy of a Kandinsky Painting and the one on the right is one I created."
This painting can be viewed at Barnes and Nobles. The Rochester Art club is having their fall show there during the month of November.
God's holy laughter
Filled Heaven,
Stilled Earth;
Made of our anguished cries
Muffled echoes of The Fall.
By Ron Hilton
Baptism 2005 Tim Jutsum
Let’s not only think about Advent, let’s live in it.
The Rev’d Steven Metcalfe
To one enchanted by the intellect, Advent spells trouble. Even as we look toward the traditional story of Jesus’ birth, some of us keep tossing in tasty morsels of theology and historical practice. You’ll hear themeslike “holy anticipation” or looking back with renewed enthusiasm to the prophets who promise God will himself care for the sheep, or out of the wilderness comes word of humanity’s new start from the likes of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Hosea, and others. We look not only for present rescue from the consequences of losing our way to God but also the more spectacular promise of sharing in the Love of God at the very end of all that is. See how Advent can flip the thinking switch on. In a way yet to be described adequately, the person filled with God, Jesus, will ultimately gather us into one people where each human being will be a shining star and the “earth will be filled with the glory of God as the waters cover the sea.” This is the spiritual track of creation as Christians understand it. The Way of Christ runs beneath, beside, and within the biblical stories we choose to hold before us. Dissecting the Gospel narratives with even the sharpest intellectual tools will never result in opening our hearts to any Advent attitude. That awakening comes when, as the angel told Mary, “A sword will pierce your own soul, too.”
Advent revives the often dormant recognition of the tangle that is human life both personally and at every level of community. Who among us can reveal the way out of persistent mistreatment of people who are generally considered contemptible? Despite our pride- enhanced power to manipulate creation to serve human comfort, we’re not accustomed to looking back and seeing wreckage as well as triumph. Mostly it appears we want to rebuild that great tower of Babel to reach the “place” we’re told God is so that the creature can dethrone the creator. First this happens within us where God often is an idea, an image, a set of beliefs, a projection of our gentlest though most ruthless perception of power. As the psalmist says in Psalm 13, “They say in their heart, ‘God has forgotten; he hides his face; he will never notice.’” Advent judges human grandiosity, pierces delusion and casts blinding light on our cooly cruel unconcern with much beyond our own survival. It is the child, innocence, and putting aside every pretense of knowing and doing the Truth of God on our own that will lead to the gift of righteousness.
For thou art our salvation, Lord,
Our shelter and our great reward;
Without thy grace we waste away
Like flowers that wither and decay.
Charles Coffin (hymn76)
Additional credits: Original artwork- Val Jutsum, Photography- Annie Jutsum, Val Jutsum