Dear Friends,
The Circle of the Church Year is determined to send me into a tailspin lately. Advent is inching closer and closer and I’m not ready! I haven’t ordered the wreath forms. I’m not ready to think about pageants! I could use a little more Ordinary Time. That’s not how this works, though.
One thing the secular calendar teaches us is that we don’t always get second chances. It’s a good lesson in a lot of ways, a reminder to treasure the moments we do get, especially the rare ones – sunsets and changing leaves, children laughing, extraordinary public art, or unbelievable sights (did anyone else notice the news about the man who ran the New York City Marathon with a pineapple on his head?!). So sure, there are things that won’t come around again, and appreciating them is a good practice, an intentional and prayerful one, even, it’s just one way of being.
Some things only come around once, but we can’t build our lives around hoping those miraculous moments into being or trying to chase them down. If anything, the best way to understand any of those singular things is as blessings. Just this Friday, making my way through one of Boston’s many college campuses in the unseasonably warm weather, I bumped into this Mary Baker Eddy quote at Christian Science Plaza - “To those leaning on the sustaining infinite, to-day is big with blessings.
Whatever thoughts you may have about Christian Science (and trust me, I have plenty), this quote gets to the heart of something about both the once-in-a-lifetime moments and the cyclical liturgical calendar. In the “to-day” and in the infinite sustaining sacred, at the juncture where those things meet and can even be said to be the same, live a world big with blessings, and that world includes us.
So, while I’m feeling overwhelmed by the nearness of Advent and everything that needs to be done, it is worth pausing for the blessings – and they have been great. Six children were baptized on the Feast of All Saints – and watching our Sunday School children watch the process, the joy on their faces, was almost equally wonderful. We hosted a Godly Play training on Saturday, and I got to help others grapple with this important work. I’ve been sharing a variety of hobbies with friends, and sharing their delight in the discovery process. Every moment, big with blessings.
Sustaining Ourselves, Sustaining Each Other
November brings us to the end of Ordinary Time and into Advent, and preparedness is our common friend if anything can get us through this time. Here are some resources sustaining me right now:
Have you seen the new Illustrated Ministry Advent devotionals this year?! I’m really excited about Now In Flesh Appearing, which is deeply concerned with the idea of incarnation. As someone with a particularly troublesome body-mind, knowing that Jesus understands the matter of embodiment first hand, and not just through some omniscient empathy, is one of the deepest messages of hope I can imagine.
Pressed right up against Advent is one of those challenging markers in the Episcopal Church: Thanksgiving. It’s on the calendar, sure, but we also repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery over a decade ago and the reality is that the history underlying Thanksgiving is a far cry from the Great Thanksgiving we celebrate each week. So, how do we express our gratitude in ways that do right by historically wronged and disenfranchised indigenous communities?
There are so many options available to us, but one of the most moving starting places for acknowledging the wrongs of Christian settler colonialism is this Godly Play-inspired land acknowledgment (you’ll need to have access to Knowing Godly Play in a New Way on FB for this) developed by Foundation Trainer Sharolyn Swenson Browning. Modeled on The Great Family, it speaks a familiar language to address broken covenant. Giving thanks is empty when we don’t also make amends and reparations.Returning to Advent, the Wandering Wisemen begin their journey later this month during what will be an especially long Advent (because Christmas is on a Sunday!). I just love their hijinks and I think it can be a fun practice to stage on your own as a community.
Personally, I love an Advent spiral at least as much as an Advent calendar! They’re very Waldorf-inspired, but I do like the day-by-day intentionality of them, and you can make a very simple one with salt dough, as described here.
Stay Present, Stay Honest
Rolling into Advent is stressful for church staff, it’s enormously overwhelming for families with children, and it’s okay to be honest about that stress, that this is not the most joyful thing at times. Let that be true and let the blessings be true as well.
Lean into the Sustaining Infinite. Let that carry you.
Blessings,
Bird