A Newsletter by and for the people of Christ Church Bronxville

February 2012 VOL. LXIIV, No. 5

Contact us:914.337.3544

Monday-Thursday

9:00 AM to 3:00 PM

Fridays9:00 AM to 12:00 PM

www.ccbny.org

Children’s Formation 2

EYC 3

Music 4

Adult Christian Formation 5

February Highlights 8

At a Glance

The SpireInside the Annual Meeting

Continued on the page 6

Every year, on the last Sunday in January, we gather in Taylor Hall for the Annual Meeting. While some of us might think of it as a Sunday off, it is one of the most important times when we come together to hear about where we as a community have been and where we are going.When we hear the term “Annual Meeting”, we might think of it in the corporate world when shareholders have an opportunity to meet with the Board of Directors and get a report on successes (and less likely, failures) of a company. Board members of corporations are elected and paid high fees to advise and direct large companies. The Annual Meeting held annually at Christ Church is made up of the members of Christ Church. The “Board” is the Vestry, who are made up of dedicated people who are not paid, but who are willing to share their time and expertise to insure that the mission of Christ Church is able to move forward. The Senior and Junior Wardens are similar to the President and Vice President. Wardens serve two year terms and vestry members serve three year terms. Nominations for the vestry can come from the congregation or pledging members might be asked to be vestry members. Ideally our vestry includes people from different professions, people who are involved in different parts of our worship (music, Working Mothers, Altar Guild, Outreach, etc.), come from different parts of our community, (Bronxville, Yonkers, Eastchester, Mt. Vernon) and cover different age groups.Being part of the vestry is a rewarding “job” and really does help shape the future mission and ministry focus of the church. Mary Behrens was asked to be on the vestry after being part of the search committee to find our current Rector. During her vestry tenure, Mary helped to launch and

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The Spire

Weekly Children’sChristian Formation

Schedule9:55 AM Children arrive in Taylor Hall for a brief music rehearsal10:00 AM Worship for Children Begins10:20 AM Students move to their classrooms or remain in Taylor Hall for art

10:45 AM Students enter church for Holy Communion

Church School CalendarFebruary

Church School CalendarSunday, Feb. 5thBaby MosesSunday, Feb. 12thMoses and the Burning BushSunday, Feb.19thNo Church SchoolSunday, Feb. 25thNo Church School

Nursery Careis always available for babies and children too

young for Church School.

Ash Wednesday is February 22ndAsh Wednesday, a day of fasting and penitence, is the gateway to Lent. The ashes we receive remind us of our mortality. Our coming to receive them is a sign that we will make a sincere effort to cleanse our lives of sin and to put God first. Ash Wednesday calls us to put aside pride and choose humility. It calls us to acknowledge our failings and amend our hearts in the comfort of knowing that we are loved.

The Christ Church service schedule for Ash Wednesday is as follows:7:00 AM Holy Eucharist and Imposition of Ashes12:00 PM Imposition of Ashes7:00 PM Holy Eucharist and Imposition of Ashes

Traditional Lenten Regulations:The Book of Common Prayer indicates two days of expected fasting and abstinence from meat – Ash Wednesday and Good Friday.For many Christians, Fridays in Lent have been days of special observance, generally including fasting. Traditionally, fasting has meant that one full meal per day be taken. Two smaller meals have also been allowed to maintain strength. The tradition has also been to refrain from eating meat on Fridays. Remembering Jesus’s death through some form of observance on Fridays is an important aspect of any Lenten spiritual discipline. It is our hope that these Forty Days of Lent might be well used to set our hearts, minds and souls toward “things ofimportance.”

Ash Wednesday

Tuesday, Feb. 21st from 5:30pm-7:00pm

Taylor Hall $6 per person over the age of 12, $3 for those 12 and under.

The Feast before the Fast is Courtesy of the Men of Christ Church Bronxville.

Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

Coffee Hour Hosts NeededCoffee Hour hosts are needed for 2/12, 2/19, 3/4, 3,11, 3/18 and 4/15. You don’t need to sign up alone – if you want to grab a friend and bring something together – please do so! You will be emailed or called the week prior to your chosen week as a reminder. Please look at your calendars and email Katie Elder at katie@elderbxv.com, as to which Sunday you can host.

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EYC

Some of our teens will travel on their annual pilgrimage to the Taizé monastery from February 17th – 27th. Thirty-one teens and seven adults will participate in the trip this year. Taizé is a monastery for all Christians founded during World War Two as a place of reconciliation. Each year, tens of thousands of young people travel there to spend time praying and reflecting on faith in diverse Christian Community. It is a life changing experience for all.Father Bird and Mother Brown will lead the trip this year as Christ Church Bronxville’s Youth Minister Krista Dias is expecting a baby in April, and so will not be able to travel. EYC volunteer Katie Gojkovich will travel in her place. On Sunday, February 12th we will commission our pilgrims at the 10am service. Plese keep them in your prayers as they journey towards a deeper faith and a different experience of God and God’s people.

Midnight Run - Friday February 3rd As usual we will meet in the church kitchen to prepare clothing and food at 7:45PM. Please let Krista (kdias@ccbny.org) know if your teen can come so we are sure to have enough space in the vans.

Interfaith Food Bank Sorting at Scarsdale Synagogue Monday, February 6th The Sr. EYC will be meeting during our usual 6:30-8:00 time at the Scarsdale Synagogue on February 6th. We will eat dinner, sort food and spend time with the synagogue’s youth group. Last fall when we were there the teens got a tour of their worship space and a demonstration from their cantor. It is very meaningful for us to gather for prayer with our Jewish sisters and brothers, and work together to feed hungry neighbors. After we sort the food, I will need three volunteers to drive it to three different shelters. The teens will load the cars on Monday night at the synagogue, then food can be delivered the next morning. If you are free and willing to drive please let me know. - Krista Dias

Sr. EYC Summer Mission Trip-City Camp New YorkJuly 28th-August 4th For one week during the summer of 2012, Christ Church Bronxville will work with the Church of the Intercession in Harlem to host a new program called City Camp. City Camp is a program started in the Diocese of Pennsylvania. It combines an elementary-aged Christian day camp with a life changing experience for teenagers doing Christ’s work in an urban environment. Intercession will become the second location of City Camp as it expands.The City Camp program for the children will be designed to support Intercession ministries such as the elementary school reading group and the Intercession Hoops basketball program. It will be low cost for all neighborhood children. The day-camp will be run by a full-time staff, assisted by teenage volunteers and their adult chaperones from Episcopal Churches all over the country. The full-time staff will be an experienced group of adults and young people who will have just completed five weeks at City Camp Pennsylvania. The teenagers will be focused on building community and deepening their faith. The teens will spend time learning about God in Christian community, by working with the day camp children and completing other service projects in the neighborhood. Their faith will be deepened by the beautiful architecture and prayerful atmosphere at Intercession. They will also receive the great gift of cultural experience in the wonderful city of New York.At this time the Episcopal Church does not have a strong network for supporting the formation of teenagers nationwide. By supporting this initiative the people of Christ Church Bronxville are making a statement about the importance of youth ministry and the faith development of our young people.

Annual Pilgrimage to Taizé

4 The Spire

EYC (Cont.)Godspell on Broadway March 11th - RSVPs Needed By Next Week!

One of the EYC parents Gary Hayes has secured a group rate for the EYC to see Godspell on Broadway March 11th. Seeing Godspell will be a wonderful shared experience for our teens and will provide us with a lot of theological material to talk about. Gary secured wonderful seats for our group at only $55 each. The seats are normally $135, so it is a great deal! We have a limited number of seats reserved, and have to give a final number to the theater by February 6th. That is just over a week away. If your teen is free for Godspell please email Krista right away, then send us a check for $55 made out to Christ Church Bronxville. If you are in need of financial assistance please let Krista know. As always, we will do our best to make the trip available for everyone.

MusicConsider yourselves warned! – Jesus is about to be transfigured!

Sunday February 19th is the last Sunday in Epiphany. We will hear the story (this year from St. Mark) of Jesus ascending a mountain with Peter, James and John where he will stand with Moses and Elijah, transfigured. Jesus appeared for a moment, clearly not earthly and with clothes that were “dazzling white”. Strange? Extraordinary? You bet!So, perhaps an explanation will be helpful for a departure from a normal, ordinary choice of repertoire for this Sunday: Larry King’s Transfiguration. This music is scored for “Chorus, Organ, and Prepared Tape” although we play the latter through an iPod for convenience. You will find the choral parts to be rather standard, even the organ’s role most would consider within our repertoire’s status quo. The “tape” part however….Think back to 1977. Think “Space Invaders” on a then-awesome Atari 2600. Think back to the Moog synthesizer of the late 60’s. And finally, think back to the actual “high” fidelity quality of an audio tape from the those days. Hopefully you will be able to appreciate this tape for the product it is from its time. May this be an unusual offering that will heighten your experience of The Transfiguration this year.Icon of the Transfiguration.

Early 15th century, Theophanes the Greek.

Women’s Spirituality Group “How do we embrace the other?” “How do we deal with identity and difference?” Join the Women’s Spirituality Group as we read and discuss Miroslav Volfs’ book Exclusion and Embrace. Volf, Professor of Systematic Theology at Yale Divinity School, and a native Croatian addresses the “other” through the lens of “embrace” as a theological response to the problem of exclusion. In his work, Volf analyzes the complexities of human conflict in light of God’s call for reconciliation.

We will start this book on Thursday, January 26th from 9:30-11:30 AM in the conference room. For more information call Ruth Singleton 337-6450 or Hondi Brasco 771-8870.

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Adult Christian Formation FebruaryBirthdays

2: Aaron Srebnik; 3: Amy Freed, Paige Nagle; 4:Hen-drik Kranenburg; 5: Margaret Eaton, Todd Rubsamen; 6: John O’Neil, Mark Roberts; 7: Carter Callaway, Brian Firth; 8: Stephen Howard; 9: Jim Beit, Stephen Mordaunt,Hannah Buendia, Victoria Mordaunt; 11: Patrick Conaton, Joshua Philips; 12: Emily Hicks, Sophie Ca-pello; 13: Christopher Behrens, Robert Murray; 14: Mary Ter-rito; 15: Elizabeth Harrington; 16: Andrew Garvey, Timothy McCann; 17: Blanche Johnson, Patrick Bird; 18: James Rooney, Agatha Dunbar; 19: Rita Dur-niak, Dylan Ecklond; 20: Betsy Howard, Thomas Bender; 21: Payton Elder; 22: William Anderson; 23: Didi Romley, Scott Thomas, Cody Unterseher, Camilla Seirup, Lorenzo Seirup; 24: Alekzandra Thoms, Chris-tian Welch; 25: Lucille Noone; 26: Halloran Garvey, Jack St. Philip, Lila Hely, Eric Fleisig; 27: Cherry Lawrence, Charles McKhann, Molly O’Neil; 29: Mary Turino

To submit birthdays please send them to Amy Capeci at acapeci@ccbny.org.

Attention Women of the Parish!The Working Mothers’ Fellowship is excited to welcome the Reverend Yamily Bass-Choate to our next meeting on Wednesday, February 8 at 7:30pm in the Crispell Lounge.Mo. Yamily is the Bishops’ Vicar of Iglesia Memorial de San Andres, our sister parish in Yonkers. At San Andres, Mother Bass-Choate oversees the operations of the church as well as several outreach programs they offer, including the food pantry, after school program and summer camp. In addition, San Andres offers immigration services in the form of guidance, translations, advocacy with referrals to attorneys specializing in immigration for more complex immigration problems, and a support group for immigrants.Prior to coming to the Diocese of New York, Mother Bass-Choate was the former ECUSA (Episcopal Church USA) Province IV Coordinator of Hispanic Ministries. In May, 2002 she established Contacto Linea de Crisis in the Diocese of Mississippi. This ministry became part of Contact the Crisis Line, an existing interfaith ministry in Jackson, offering a statewide Spanish-language crisis line. Contact the Crisis Line is a fully accredited affiliate of Contact USA and of Lifeline International. Established in 1971 by a group of clergy and mental health professionals who realized that people were alone in their grief and troubles, the Jackson chapter currently logs over 1,000 calls each month. She also served as the Canon for Hispanic Ministries of the Diocese of Mississippi, where Mother Yamily offered a Total Immersion Spanish language course at the Duncan M. Gray Episcopal Camp and Conference Center, near Canton, Mississippi for several years.In 2005 Mother Bass-Choate received the Rescuers Award, as one of the Hurricane Katrina female heroes at the 16th Annual Glamour Magazine Women of the Year Awards.Mother Yamily will speak about her experiences as a working mother and her important work supporting and raising up strong women in the communities that she serves.All women of the parish are invited to join us as we celebrate Yamily’s ministry and spend time together in fun and fellowship and purpose!

6 The Spire

Annual Meeting - cont’d from page 1execute the recent Capital Campaign, which raised $1.4 million and put most of our deferred maintenance issues to rest. As a result, much of the vestry’s time can now be utilized in support of programs and projects.At this year’s meeting, Sarah Kraemer, the new Sr. Warden, thanked the current vestry members, who were cycling off – Ken Richardson, Rich Whitney and Ruth Singleton. In addition, Sarah and the congregation acknowledged the service of Jim Redpath, who devoted 10 years to vestry service. Sarah asked whether we all remembered the theme of last year’s meeting – which was to “Bring a Friend” to church. This year, the focus is on creating a Legacy program for the church. Many people grow up in Christ Church, have their children baptized or confirmed here, get married, send their children to youth group, participate in adult forums, and then move south. If Christ Church means something to your family and has been there for you in good times and bad, then think about adding Christ Church to your will. Sarah has worked very hard on helping to put together an “End of Life Planning” booklet. None of us want to think about our end of life, but we all need to and there is no time like the present.Jim Rooney outlined our current financial situation. Last year we met our financial goals with the help of plate and outside donations, which balanced out the lower than projected pledge income. In 2012 we have our usual challenges. We have cut what we can but insurance and other costs continue to go up. We cannot control the Debt Service or the Diocesan Assessment. Right now we are under our pledge goal for 2012 by about $40,000. We hope that new pledges will come in and that those who can may choose to increase their pledges. We have formalized our relationship with the Eliza Corwin Frost Child Center, and we are glad that the school and the church are working together to make a difference in the lives of so many children and their families. And with God’s grace, we will be able to maintain our momentum by adding new families and spreading the word that Christ Church is alive and well.Father Bird outlined his plans for his upcoming sabbatical, which begins on April 9th and continues until October 9th. Fr. Bird framed his plans by reminding us of the importance of “the stories”. Our Christian Formation program has made the Bible stories its focus by spending two weeks in a row on a particular Bible story. The second week includes art time where the children are able to express their reaction to the story they have heard. At Christmas, Fr, Bird pointed out that the children had included the Angry Birds in the Nativity Scene, which while horrifying at first, made him realize that the Nativity Story is today’s story, not just a story from long ago.

In today’s world we are struggling against “The Worship Mall”. Sunday services are now in competition with leisure and entertainment time. Stores are open on Sundays, but we still need to tell our story. Fr. Bird shared images of Bishop Desmond Tutu’s Children of God Storybook Bible, which includes artwork contributed by artists from around the world to help tell Bible stories; of Visio Divino, which is the encountering of God through art and transforming the word through art; and finally Rob Bell, an author and pastor whose You Tube video on “Resurrection” reminds us that “what we do in life matters.”. Fr. Bird showed us the changes made in the Christ Church logo, which includes the image we have had for so long, but has added our name and the cross which is over the altar. Fr. Bird asks that

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Annual Meeting - cont’dwe weave our own stories together with the community around us. One of the changes planned for this year is a restructuring of the vestry to include three groups: Evangelism (telling others about Christ Church and bringing them to church), Discipleship (working with the different groups which make up our church – music, outreach, EYC, Christian Formation) and Management (which will be called Stewardship). Since 1901, the Rectors of Christ Church have articulated the vision of the church, Fr. Bird says that the time has come for the parish to articulate this vision. It is up to each of us to relate our own stories through our participation in our parish and in our community.In early April, Fr. Bird will make his own journey and continue with his own story. First he and his son, Patrick, will make a pilgrimage along the El Camino de Santiago de Compostela – or the Way of St. James. The walk begins on the French side of the Pyrenees and finishes about 780km (about 490 miles) later in Santiago. Over the summer, Fr. Bird will be home in Bronxville, but will be working on a priest’s manual. In the fall, he will go to Jerusalem and to the locations of the early Christian Desert Mothers and Fathers. He will also connect with a group called Kid’s for Peace.While he is away, Mother Jen Brown will be in charge of all pastoral duties. The vestry will be covering financial and building issues as needed. There will be additional clergy who will be in church regularly from April until October.Prior to the service of Holy Communion, the new vestry members were announced and recognized:Warren, Ilchman, Stephen Palfrey, Marca Ewy and Georgeann Delli Venneri. - Deborah Ross

8 The SpireThe SpireChrist Church Bronxville17 Sagamore RoadBronxville, NY 10708-1599

HighlightsFri., Feb. 3rd 7:45 PM Midnight Run

Sun. Feb. 5th 10:00 AM Healing and Scout Sunday 11:00 AM Taizé Info Meeting

Wed. Feb. 8th 6:30 PM Choir Dinner

Sun. Feb. 12th Youth Sunday Fri. Feb. 17th-27th Pilgrimage to Taizé

Tues. Feb. 21st 5:30 PM Shrove Tuesday Pancake Supper

Wed. Feb. 22nd Ash Wednesday Tues. Feb. 28th Vestry Meeting-Crispell

Ash Wednesday

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

7:00 AM Holy Eucharist & Imposition of Ashes

12:00 PM Imposition of Ashes

7:00 PM Holy Eucharist & Imposition of Ashes