Tag Archives: Preparation

Bread

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IMG_0133 Advent preparation resembles the process that occurs when I bake bread.The work of milling has crushed the grains of wheat.  I choose the grains, gather the ingredients, add them in a deliberate way and begin to work, one step at at a time. But having the yeast, flour,liquid, salt and seasoning in the bowl does not mean there is not still work to be done. As I mix and stir these together, a new work begins – one of my efforts and one that is entirely the result of what has been gathered together to create new dough, a life of its own. As I turn the dough onto a floured cloth and sink my hands into its softness to knead, an ancient chemistry begins to stretch and change, creating flavor and fragrance and nourishment. The heat of the oven finishes this alchemy. This kitchen mystery is a reflection of  Advent Mystery.

 

don’t wait

to celebrate

one who hears

kneads dough with her hands

sets bread to rise,

breathing fragrant prayer

tasting this wisdom

now

 

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Waiting, Watching

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Outside my dining room window we planted Holly. The plants were no more than large bushes when they went into the ground almost 10 years ago, but now they have surpassed their intended purpose, which was to grow tall and branch out and give us a lovely green screen in front of our fence . Each year, they produce enough holly branches and red berries to decorate the whole neighborhood with fresh holly. But the berries are unformed in the beginning, then small  green nubs which swell. Around Thanksgiving, or our first colder weather,I begin looking out the window to watch as  the berries take on a blush, deepening to a burnt orange, before finally glowing Christmas red. As I wait and watch, the right time comes to bring some branches and berries inside for our own “hanging of the green.”

Advent’s theme involves waiting and watching while preparing for the coming Christ. As I wake and greet God’s new mercies each morning during Advent, the color in this ancient story deepens. As I wait and watch and reach, the time grows nearer for me to gather the brilliant mystery once again and celebrate.

Dwelling

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PorchTimeThe above photo is not a picture of my current home, or any we have had for that matter. When we lived in Indonesia, when those who were originally from that country asked for your address or where you lived, the question would usually be “Where are you staying?” Advent asks of us not so much where we are staying, but what we are allowing to stay in us. What dwells within me? Do I show that I welcome and offer hospitality for what God brings?

Mary set this example for us in her willingness to say yes to the physical growth within her of the indescribable gift of God’s son.  Advent calls me to that kind of willingness, for Christ to be dwell within me. If I allow my list of special things I feel urged to accomplish before December 25th to drive me, I may become so strained and frazzled one might believe I have lost the whole point.

“What if instead of doing something, we were to be something special?Be a womb. Be a dwelling for God. Be surprised.”   ~ Loretta Ross-Gotta, as quoted in Watch for the Light, Readings for Advent and Christmas.

 

 

An Ucertain World

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y001My granddaughter holds out a heart made by my friend – a symbol of the open spirit and tender heart of both little girl and woman. Advent gives a time to recognize perilous times without closing ourselves to the ways God can help us to live and work in the certainty of His provision for us.

The Advent story begins with darkness and God’s silence and waiting. It begins before the angel’s visit, a pregnant girl,  the gathering of those in the manger scenes,, when there was a longing for the message that would unfold. It began in an uncertain, unsettled world. I looked through a journal I kept in 2012 recently and was reminded of months of surgeries for Joe, and the ways in which we crossed the threshold of that year, stepping into a path that we did not yet see clearly, waiting for Light for the next step, and Light to reflect to each other. Over and over, I read the notes I made that showed how that happened.  This looking back and telling the story is what Advent means – a story of a time of waiting through days that hold pain and grief, but knowing underneath all is the surety of God’s presence..

 

O God, help me live and work with certainty in an uncertain world. Help me to take the next step even if I do not yet see my way clear, trusting your Light for the way.. Help me to hold out my heart,

 

 

Advent Flames

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Another way of counting Advent days is the use of an Advent wreath with a candle to light and add each Sunday during Advent. For our Advent candles at home, we do not use the same arrangement every year, and often do not use traditional colors (3 purple, 1 pink, and a white candle for the center candle, the Christ candle).  I use the same candles from the year before when possible.  Here, the first candle, lit last Sunday, burns brightly – the candle of Hope. Of course the candles lit in the beginning burn down the furthest, If all the candles were new, all of them would be the same height in the beginning. This candle may be the tallest now, but will wind up being the shortest in the last week of Advent.

I recently learned about a little known Advent tradition of using an Advent log, instead of a wreath.  It has a candle hole for each day of Advent, plus one for Christmas day.   Here is a poem  that refers to this lovely tradition:

 

Prayer at the Advent Log

The small lights steady

against the dark

Your flame is touching ours.

Today is the fifth day.

It is a safe fire,

the candles still tall

against the brittle wood

of the birch, the air

damp and chill.

But the days will draw us

inexorably toward

Your celebration.

And again we’ll stand

in the crackling air,

the first day’s flames

licking the log

with their shortened lives,

the length of it threatened

by Your fire,

Your love dazzling our eyes,

And O Christ,

Your love

searing our nakedness.

~Jean Janzen as quoted in A Widening Light, edited by Luci Shaw.

 

 

 

Divine Interruption

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One of the ways our family walks the Advent path is with an Advent calendar. This is not like a desk calendar with pages.  We have a number of different ways of counting the days.  One of the first we used when our boys were very small was by reading a story from a Little Golden Book every night. The book came with its own cardboard triptych, a fold out replica of Bethlehem, with shuttered windows that could be opened to reveal a symbol inside. Our children loved opening the tiny windows and first listening, then reading the part of the story the symbol represented.  One of our sons and his wife gave us one that is a box, a stack of small drawers that can be opened each day.

Today is the 4th day of Advent, and this is the Advent “keeper” or calendar I used this morning during my quiet time. It is a little A frame shape box with hinged sides that fold shut and latch.  There are tiny hooks for small figures to attach representing a different character in the nativity story for each day.  When I look at these 4 figures, it seems they are all shepherds, young shepherd girls and boys. As I scattered the remaining figures, thinking of the days ahead, I thought how these had lives that were tremendously interrupted by the story of Christ’s coming – the shepherds, most certainly Mary and Joseph, and even the animals who shared their stall (there are cows and sheep to hang on hooks, too) – all were divinely interrupted and all had lives were changed forever in ways they previously could never have imagined..I wonder if I am open to such interruption, to being unsettled..  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said “We must be ready to allow ourselves to be interrupted by God.”  I

“Lord, the calendar calls for Christmas.  We have traveled this way before.During this Advent season we would see what we have never seen before, accept what we have refused to think, and hear what we understand. Be with us in our goings that we may meet you in your coming…”  ~  The Unsettling Season, by Donald J. Shelby

 

Hope

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IMG_1336My young granddaughters and I made this painting project together last week. As I laid out cardboard under a blank canvas and handed out a tube of paint and paintbrushes, 6-year-old Jordann said she didn’t want black, that she likes different colors. I explained our first step was to paint the white canvas completely black.  As I spoke, I was reminded of the words of an artist who painted many sunlit landscapes and night scenes where light shone from windows. He said that he must paint the darkness first in order for light to glow in the way that made him famous.

So they painted all black and waited as paint dried. Later I painted words and added tiny lights.  Everyone loves this simple illustration of a favorite Christmas song.  I love, too, that it illustrates hope – the coming of light to darkness, the very image of Advent.

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined.”   Isaiah 9:2

” …this is indeed a season of lights shining in darkness- candles in windows, colored lights on nighttime trees, a lantern glow in a stable, a star shining high in the heavens. Help me follow the light of these images to the unquenchable ligt of Your real presence.”   ~ in Christ the Light of the World by Thomas Kinkade, Anne Christian Buchanan, and Debra K. Klingsporn

Recollect

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On my piano rests a book given to me by my son years ago. Every year around the middle of November, I take the book from its place on a bookshelf and place it again on the piano so that we can enjoy hearing and singing this music again.  It is a collection of Christmas music from around the world, many very old traditional carols. I do not form a new collection; I remember this very good one and bring it close to me so that I can use it, savoring the words and melodies.

This is a good picture of the word recollect for me.  My grandparents used that word, pronouncing it “reck-o-lect,”  as remembering.  But the wider meaning is one of gathering back, of bring back to awareness, to assemble again something that is scattered.

It is this sense of gathering back that I am given as Advent unfolds. As I choose to open my music book once more, I am practicing one part of this remembrance.

Saving Word Seeds

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Magnolia seeds are covered with a red waxy coat.  Birds love them, but propagation of the tree from seed is difficult because of the process of extracting the seeds and preserving them. A row of Magnolia trees grew along the edge of the schoolyard that adjoined the yard of the house where I grew up. As a little girl I admired the beauty and fragrance of their blooms and played with the glossy leaves and  brown suede cones, delighting in those red-coated seeds. There were always so many, and more would come the following year. I never thought to ask why there were no trees that sprouted from all those seeds.

In a similar fashion, we are surrounded by words as Advent begins and the calendar counts down to Christmas. Beyond the noise urging us to commercialize and socialize and make our list of things to do, there are words that can help us to be quiet and still, to reflect, to simply be.  It is these words I would like to extract and preserve as Advent begins.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saying Grace

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IMG_1063                      Our entire Satsuma harvest – but the tree is very small.
                                 
 As we move toward the end of November, our garden is a reminder of things that can be counted on: Gulf Coast Muhly fronds mound up like pink froth.   Satsumas are ready for harvest, Meyer lemons are hanging ready on the tree, the last of our okra and tender herbs fade as the first frost comes. Marigolds, chrysanthemums and calendula bloom gold and copper. Thanksgiving is less than a week away.  We will gather friends and family and favorite foods at full tables.

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Marigolds

I am remembering childhood meals around my Terrell grandparent’s table in Smith County, Texas. There were hearty breakfasts with farm fresh eggs, sausage, biscuits and gravy,  dinners (at lunchtime) that often included  peas and tomatoes from their garden and an iron skillet of cornbread cut into wedges.There were suppers, often the same food reheated or a bowl of soup, and Sunday dinners after church. There were holiday meals at Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas where the table and kitchen were both filled with chicken and dressing or a ham, plus those garden fresh vegetables which had been put up into canning jars. To follow, there would be an assortment of sweets – cookies, sweet potato, pecan, and mince pies, and often a pound cake. The food and occasion might vary, but there was always the same beginning: This, too, was something I could count on.  Papa Terrell would say grace. Today we may say a blessing or give thanks, but he always said grace.  The words were always the same, and rattled off so quickly I could never understand them.  But his posture spoke to my heart with no need for words.  Over 70 years later, now I see him clearly in my mind:  gray head bent forward and bowed in humility.

“We offer grace at table as a form of waiting with confidence…reciting such a prayer is sometimes referred to as a way of preparing to receive all that has been granted to us. We offer grace in amazement that even the good things we have rejected are being offered again. And then we eat, and the food meets an earthly need of our souls, and we are made whole.” – Cynthia Rigby, W.C. Brown Professor of Theology, Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary*

For me, the calendar days designated to Thanksgiving are a wonderful approach to  beginning of Advent exactly because of this waiting with confidence…preparing to receive all that has been granted to us. Our family will gather once again around the old oak table, the very same one that Grandma loaded with food and where Papa said grace.

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Pink Gulf Coast Muhly, a coastal grass

*as quoted by Wayne Slater in DallasNews, a Texas Faith Blog