🎵 Prepare the Way for Love 🎶

Getting Ready In the Not Yet and the Wilderness

Blessed Advent, my friends!

Are you here yet? Are you finding your center in this place of waiting?

A friend said to me the other day that she didn’t believe it was Advent yet. Thanksgiving just happened, she told me.

Of course, that is how that happens every year, at least in the United States. And this friend doesn’t even work in a church!

Personally, I think I’ll find my way to Advent sometime in the course of this week. I’ve gotten things moving in my professional life. Families have come and made Advent wreaths. We told the story of St. Nicholas, who is remembered this week. We’ve lit the Advent tree out front (except for that one stretch where the lights broke between when they were hung and when we turned them on) and devotionals have been printed and stapled and set out.

None of which is to say that I’ve made time for Advent practices of my own. I’m hoping to unearth my usual wall hanging this week. Plus I had the pleasure of singing Music that Makes Community’s E.D. Conie Borchardt’s Feisty Advent Song with our Monday Morning Grounding community. It’s not a lot, but it’s something.

Indeed, as I sit here reflecting on the place I’m not (yet), I am reminded of one of the many valuable things about the liturgical year: we get to keep coming back. We get to try again. We get to find those gentle but powerful anchors of tradition or even just the recollection of tradition.

Which brings us to the promised ornament story –

When you Google “walnut ornament” you’ll find a wife variety of objects: shiny metal faux walnuts, walnut shells transmuted into Rudolph, others painted with tiny scenes. Of all the many forms, though, these little diorama-style walnut ornaments come closest to the ones I made with my mother sometimes between the ages of about three and six. They may have come from the pre-subscription box craft program we belonged to – Toucan Do (meant to be done by a parent and child) – or maybe they came out of a magazine or one of the various books she’d reference, like the one that inspired my pig-themed birthday party. Honestly, I have no idea.

The main thing about these little walnut ornaments, looped onto the tree with a sort of fine gold bric-brac, was that they must have been nearly foolproof. Stuffed with bits of cotton, tiny wooden nutcrackers and trees, we hung them up year after year. While I can’t say for sure, it’s likely my parents are still putting them on the tree thirty years later. And unlike the paper plate ornaments and other classroom holiday projects often adorned with moment-in-time photos of me or my sisters as children, there’s something stylish about the acorns. None of us were trying to hide them in the storage box or in some back corner of the tree.

The walnut ornaments were one of many handmade ornaments on our tree when I was growing up. What arts and crafts projects shaped yours?

A Baptism of Repentance

I did not head into this Advent season expecting to think so much about Jesus’s cousin John. Of course, my failure to expect that aspect of this particular season was my own error – I taught about John this summer via birthday party-coffee hour and, I mean, the man’s key narrative elements include not cutting his hair, eating bugs, and eventually getting his head cut off.

All of which is to say, you can bet my church school kids want to talk about him regularly.

This Sunday’s Gospel, indeed, points us particularly toward John as the one who declares what is to come. This was when “the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness [and h]e went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.” It’s a useful reminder, amidst all the discourse that happens and whether or not your parish uses purple or sarum blue, that repentance is a central part of this season.

Or, rather, as one of the many fragmented and wonderful conversations I have been having about the Church lately went, repentance is required, always. As Martin Luther wrote, “When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said “Repent,” he intended that the entire life of believers should be repentance.”

The entire life of believers is also rejoicing at Christ’s coming and His coming again. The two are inextricably linked.

I can’t help but think of the final panel in Godly Play’s Faces of Easter:
On one side, Christ crucified, crowned with thorns.
On the other side, the risen Christ reaches out, offering us the bread and the wine in which he is always present.

Here, in the not yet times of Advent, it can feel like neither piece of the puzzle. We are waiting for the Christ Child. And, like the St. Nicholas story I shared with the children in my life, we are called to look for that child in everyone we meet. That is another version of this already and not yet kind of place.

Resource Roundup

It’s that funny time when we’re already overrun with stuff, but there are still things worth highlighting, both seasonal and more general.

• Looking for a way to structure your family’s prayer life without trying to do too much? Bedtime Chapel, a new project launched by two deacons (and parents of two toddlers) in my diocese, may be just what you’re looking for! I especially love the way they’ve envisioned this podcast – brief daily prayer that’s short enough for the littlest humans accompanied by longer seasonal Bible studies and reflection for the grown-ups. Follow them over on Spotify (or wherever you get your podcasts) and stay updated on their Instagram.

• Word & Wonder has a really great assortment of beautiful, simple Advent resources available for download (as long as you sign up for their mailing list). In keeping with the creators, they’ve got some particular emphasis on seasonal music but also some coloring pages that are simple enough for children and attractive enough for adults.

• For my fiber arts friends, Studio Senn puts out a new free Advent stitch-a-long each year. I started one last Advent that is still far from finished, so I won’t be starting another project, but there are several different years’ designs available.

• If you’re still considering your devotional options for Advent, the Episcopal Church has been sharing simple but meaningful prompts under the title Journeying the Way of Love. Track them down on social media!
  
  You also can’t go wrong with Sarah Bessey’s breath prayers for Advent. She’s written a full 24, but she’s shared two to start with on Instagram and just taking the time to breathe intentionally each day in Advent can be transformative. Just because we can breathe automatically doesn’t mean that’s all or enough.

• In non-seasonal news, I finally got my hands on a copy of CSB Grace Bible for Kids in the dyslexia-friendly design. While I had assumed when I first heard about it that this Bible would be in one of the distinctive fonts that are shown to improve fluency in readers with dyslexia, I was impressed when I opened the package to a set of colored page overlays. Different colored paper or tinted overlays can also help readers navigate the text.

  

  Holman/Lifeway, which worked with typesetters experienced in dyslexia and accessibility, makes a number of Bibles that I really love, particularly their Holy Land Illustrated Bible, so I look forward to spending more time with this volume. I’m also excited that there’s an adult CSB coming out using similar design tools from the same publishers, while Crossway is publishing a dyslexia-friendly ESV next month, per Christianity Today.

That’s all for now, I think. It’s time for me to take a good deep breath. To sit with the waiting. To make room in the note yet. I hope you can join me in that space this Advent.

Peace,
Bird