Friday, 12 June 2026 - Friday after the Second Sunday of Pentecost

Dear friends,

In the earliest days of gathering this Episcopal Mission in Sunnyside, I was telling a friend about our first experiments and initial moves. She said something I’ve always held close:

The mantra of the start-up world has been “move fast and break things.” But it seems like you’re aiming to go slow and grow things.

Go slow and grow things. Another mentor of mine often says something that chimes with this: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

One way we walk together is by listening to each other, reflecting on where the adventure has led us, and discerning together where the path leads next. And we do all this in the trust that our loving, liberating, and life-giving God walks with us, and shows us the way.

Please join us a "Community Check-In" THIS Sunday, during Coffee Hour. June 14 will mark 9 months since our launch: this is a time for us to do this listening and reflection together.

If you can’t make it this Sunday, PLEASE share some thoughts with us through this online survey. Write as little or as much as you want: your voice matters, and your vision matters.

On Sunday, our leadership will share some of the things that are unfolding in our mission. Even more importantly, this will be a chance to hear from all of you what's resonating, what's not quite right, what opportunities and challenges you see ahead of us. How can we better cultivate integrity as a faith community? How else can we show this neighborhood that "things which have been cast down being raised up, and things which have grown old are being made new?"

peace,
carl+

p.s. Hope to see many of you at SunnyPride tonight! I’ll be one of the speakers at the 5:30 rally under the 7 at 46th Street—more info below!

As a community, we take turns giving and receiving—spending time in the spotlight, and doing work behind the scenes.

Can you help out this week? Or in the Sundays to come? Sign up here!

We’re thrilled to be partnering with Ari and Cristina of Citation Needed to offer afterschool art classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, beginning September 22. We’ve been so blessed by this partnership since we began hosting monthly Process Art gatherings in the fall of 2024, and we’re excited to pilot a new program—exploring what it might look like to offer a full-fledged afterschool program beginning in September 2027.

You can learn more here—and if you have questions feel free to reach out to Ari or Fr. Carl. But the basics are…

Tuesdays and Thursdays: 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM (extended day available 5-5:30 PM)

K-5th Grade

Full school year coverage, following the DOE calendar. Starting September 22, 2026 and ending June 17, 2027…

*

In the coming weeks, we’ll have even more news to share about new and exciting things happening this fall…stay tuned!

Looking for ways to protect this community from ICE?

The neighborhood ICE Watch “Office Hours” meets every Saturday from 2-3 pm in the sanctuary. This is a great way to get connected to the work of protecting our neighbors and building power. All are welcome.

Cristina Ferrigno
Tabula Rasa

Cristina Ferrigno is a Colombian-born, Brooklyn-raised artist based in Sunnyside. Her work explores cultural “in-betweenness” as a transnational adoptee through combined-media practices and ongoing community-based projects. She loves all kinds of prints and printmaking, photography and image-making processes, as well as working with personal and visual archives.

This work grew out of experiments using leftover paper pulp from an intergenerational workshop she led in the church garden in August 2025. This lovely, messy, hot event was an epic collaboration between the Episcopal Mission in Sunnyside and Citation Needed, a community-based press and workshop series where Cristina has served as Studio Director since 2025. So this work invites the question…

What's something you’re working on that feels like a soggy, smelly mess?

Here are new response we received this week:

My character. I feel like I go through these ebbs and flows of feeling like I have developed into a more well-rounded, aware person - but then I notice these moments of regression and seclusion. These moments of regression are daunting and feel heavy - soggy and smelly, if you will. They can cause me to be hard on myself and frustrated, as I should know better than to be quick to anger, judgement, or selfish. Personal development is a never ending journey, but those low moments of stagnation or steps backwards can feel endless and challenging.

Let us know what YOU think on the Little Window Gallery website! We’ll anonymously post all the responses there, and on the LWG’s Instagram page. And in a few weeks we’ll randomly select one of the people who responded and they’ll get to keep a print of Cristina’s paper pulp poem—a local work of art for their very own!

Thanks to Cristina for sharing this tender reflection on grief—and for sharing her practice with us in so many ways, and in ways yet to come!

Please—if you're yearning for something that you haven't seen here, reach out start a conversation. This new mission in Sunnyside is made up of...US. So it gets to be what we want it to be...