Star over Bethlehem by Tim Jutsum
Christ Church Christmas & Epiphany2015
THE SONG VOL. 1 ISSUE 2 SWEET WAS THE SONG 16TH CENTURY CAROL
Sweet was the Song the Virgin sang
when she to Bethlem Juda came,
and was delivered of a Son.
That blessed Jesus hath to name:
Lula,lula, lula, lullaby,
"Sweet Babe" sung she.
And rocked him sweetly on her knee.
Editors letter- An open letter to babies:
Dear Babies,
You are wonderful little bundles of chaos. Come on, admit it. You love to disrupt. You won’t sit still. You make loud noises, like YOP and HARC, at inappropriate times. And, when we don’t give you our undivided attention you cry. If we continue to ignore you, you cry louder. You can be a real problem.
You also make things hard for your mothers. They want to be with the grown-ups. The grown-ups are doing beautiful and important things. Serious things. God things. It’s embarrassing. But, babies, your mommies love you and want you to be with them. They want you to grow up to do beautiful and important God things, too. But, they also worry that someone may not see how wonderful you are and scold you, or scold them, though truly, baby darlings, it feels like the same thing.
I, for one, am very happy to be reminded that you shout HARC. Some angels once did the same thing. It was to announce a baby coming who would be the most disruptive person ever born. He would grow up to remind the grown-ups that the babies were the most important people in the room; to remind them that God sees them as babies and it would benefit them to agree.
Now, is a very good time to shout HARK! We will all be doing it. Our hearts sing it with you. It turns out this group of grown-ups you have found yourselves a part of have wrapped their whole selves around being wrapped in God’s disrupting joy, just as He wrapped himself in human flesh to be born a baby. This is the season famous for wrapping and opening. Happy Christmas, baby darlings. Please feel free to yell Hark, anytime.
Affectionately yours,
Val Jutsum
Rector's Notes
“For a star to be born, there is one thing that must happen: a gaseous nebula must collapse.
So collapse.
Crumble.
This is not your destruction.
This is your birth.”
Nikka Ursula
I feel so much compassion for the wise men who followed the star. When I was a child, my compassion surfaced as pity. No matter which crèche or nativity seen, I always read them the same: they were sad because the real king was this baby. And they had been told to give away the things that made them so kingly. To give them to the baby. Later in life my compassion surfaced as sympathy. They were the last to make it to the manger. The angels burst open the night sky with song and light for the shepherds, but not for the wise men. Far away from those angel lit skies, the wise men had to study and question all on their own the star that appeared. The slowness of their long journey seemed symbolic of the slowness of their understanding - punishment even, for living inside their heads as astrologers, as scholars.
Midlife opens a new perspective. They are wise because they don’t care about the knowledge they’ve amassed. Maybe at one point in their lives they did, but not now. These old men want to concede their power to the child – they don’t take it personally. They know that in every age there is an old order, and the old order must die to the new – they don’t take this personally, either.
They’ve lived long enough to know that true power is surrender. Surrender of possessions that otherwise possess us, whether those possessions are in our bank accounts or in our heads. They know that every beginning is preceded by an ending, and they are comfortable enough in their own skin to be known in their period of history as “the ending.”
And yet this changing of the guard at the manger will not mean a swift transition into the new order. Laying their crowns at the baby’s manger is not such a big deal. What makes them wise, what makes them stand apart from everyone else, what makes them fit to be kings is how they are willing to live out the rest of their lives as strangers instead of kings. Leaving their crowns with the baby is the easy part. The hard part, the part they came all this way for, is the return journey. They won’t be the same after the manger experience (no one ever is). They won’t fit in. And they probably know that no one back home will listen to them, let alone believe them. There are journeys we make that are the stuff of legends, that are even Biblical in proportion. The journey of the magi, led by the star, is one of them.
But it’s this other journey that fills me with compassion for the magi. It’s not so much that they won’t be the kings they once were but, (in the words of T.S. Elliot) they will live out the rest of their lives “no longer at ease in the old dispensation,” which is a hard way to live. And yet it’s the only life to live if you’ve seen and understood what the wise men have.
Maybe they’ll become prophets.
Ruth+
Music Director's Notes
Christmas at Christ Church will be celebrated richly with our principal Choral Eucharist of the Nativity at 10:30 PM with the prelude beginning at 10:15 PM. The Christ Church Youth Ensemble will perform two works arranged by Fellows Jeremy Jelinek and Stacey Yang, and the Christ Church Choir will perform seasonal carols and motets. Other musicians will include our VanDelinder Fellows (Davis Badaszewski, Jeremy Jelinek, and Stacey Yang) a string ensemble, and organist David Higgs. Be sure to bring your friends to this festive liturgy.
Our dedicated musicians are long-time members of the parish, new members, faculty from the Eastman School of Music, and students who participate in Christ Church’s vocational development and training program in sacred music. Students in our program are afforded the opportunity of putting their skills into practice through our supervised liturgical training. In our program, they are confronted with the “real world” of church music and are exposed to situations that cannot be replicated in the classroom.
Our three Vanderlinder Fellows: Davis Badaszewski, Jeremy Jelinek, and Stacey Yang receive training and supervision in the various aspects of church music skills. They put into practice what they learn by teaching and directing the Christ Church Youth Ensemble, playing accompaniments and hymns for liturgies, and directing and singing in the Christ Church Choir and Schola Cantorum. It is extremely exciting to see how mutually enriching our Vanderlinder Fellows program has become. The benefit to these students, our parish, and our new and growing community is tremendous. We are eternally grateful to Roy E. VanDelinder for his bequest that comes to us through the Rochester Community Foundation. This program is making important and lasting changes in peoples lives and drawing people to Christ Church. Roy’s desire to foster the training of Eastman organ majors in liturgical organ skills is flourishing. These Fellows are exceptional and will surely become leaders in the field of sacred music.
Stephen Kennedy, Music Director
Two important January concerts and events that you will not want to miss:
Sunday, January 3, 2016
Candlelight Concert: 8:30 PM
Beiliang Zhu, Bach on the Baroque Cello
Sunday, January 10, 2016
7:00 – 8:00 PM
12th Night Celebration: Entrance of the Magi led by the dancing star of Bethlehem, Music by the Christ Church Choir, Organists David Higgs and Stephen Kennedy.
Reception following in the Guild Room
9:00 PM
COMPLINE: sung by the Schola Cantorum, Stephen Kennedy, director
works by Byrd, Gibbons & Tallis
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.
Here, you will find some of the rich threads that make up the complicated and beautiful fabric of our lives here at Christ Church. Life is more than just times, dates and check lists. We have a strong tradition of exceptional, world class music, but did you know we are also ridiculously talented when it comes to other art forms? We have artists who paint, sculpt, write stories and poetry. We want to be a venue for this work to be seen. This issue features painting by Stephen Kennedy, and Renate Eckart. The paintings ushering you into Stephen Kennedy's music notes, are his. The painting below is by Renate Eckart. Below you will also see calligraphy from Ann Piato and sculpture created by Jo Bernhardt. There is poetry gifted by Kitty Jospe and Steven Metcalfe. We hope you enjoy wandering in the Art Show section.
O Christmas Tree Standing on a Song of Rejoicing, by Kitty Jospe
O
Anti-
phons[1] let
Christmas beget
not glittercoat stock-
ingstuff nor Santa-ho nor
sore Grinch-bellow with grimace!
Torches, torches, let us run with light
O key of David, O root of Jesse, O Emmanuel
whatever your faith in dark December, up the ante
for good-hearted cheer, give not just to the lucky, but live
remembering we all come from, return to, dust. O Holy word, bright
with hope, a man, a woman and a decree,
shepherds in fields sore
afraid and three Kings,
O and star of wonder,
Gaudete! Christus est natus ex Maria Virgine, Gaudete! Tempus ad est gratiae, hoc quod
optabamus Carmina laeticiae, Devote redamus. Gaudete! Gaudete Christus est natus us
O
sapientia
Adonai, Oriens,
wisdom, seven names of God,
light returning to break open each day!
Let us praise the Lord with dancing, singing !
There’s no need for a Christmas tree if we sing rejoice!
Even if the oak has lost its leaves, light will silver its branches.
remember only this word, rejoice, that is the heart’s treasure,
the joy for all that is that continues without us,
the beauty created before us
the hope that helps sail us
from this
to that.
Last year, I created a poem “O Christmas tree, standing on two lines of rejoicing”, inspired by the O Antiphons, and the Latin words of Gaudete. This year, playing on the December 17 antiphon, O Sapientia (with a Celtic echo of the oak tree as the “cosmic storehouse of wisdom, and for the Greeks, the symbol of Zeus) I think of the lightto come as we draw near to Winter Solstice, and Christmas. In this year of increasing violence, the need for enlightenment, the shine of understanding feels more urgent than ever. I think of my own failing memory, for names, even cherished books, piano pieces I used to play, the slow loss of family I cherish, and am reminded how one word can tip the balance – Rejoice. An affirmation of Thanks. A celebration of mystery.
7 times thanks, as in the 7 names of Adonai. 7 times for each of the 7 stars of the Pleiades, so important for the Greeks navigating their sails in the Mediterranean, and 7 mornings, (and evenings) when Venus, Goddess of Love announces dawn and dusk;
Let us go full circle with wisdom and Epiphany with the arrival of Kings, following the “Star in the East”... O Oriens... splendor lucis aeternae et sol justitiae...
With love,
Kitty
December 4, 2015