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Advent Calendar & Chain Pairings

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I know there are wine pairings for just about every food on the planet. But here are some resources for word pairings to go along with the Advent Calendar Templates or the Advent Chains from my November 9 and November 25 blog posts

1) #AdventWord is is a global, online Advent calendar. Each day from the first Sunday of Advent through Christmas Day, #AdventWord offers meditations and images to inspire and connect individuals and a worldwide community of believers to the themes of Advent. AdventWord is a ministry of Virginia Theological Seminary.” 

I love using the words from #AdventWord because I know that people all around the word are praying and pondering them too. You can post your reflections, images, poems, prayers…every day and see how others are responding. Below are the 2019 words. You can sign up to receive a daily reflection at adventword.org

#AdventWord 2019

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2) This year along with #AdventWord,  I’m using a reader called Low: An Honest Advent Devotional by John Pavlovitz. I have not read the whole book yet, but I like what I have sampled, especially this paragraph in the introduction about Advent: “the invitation is not to escape this place to an elevated heavenly sanctuary somewhere; it it to bring heaven down. Immanuel means ‘God with us.’ In other words, it is Jesus getting low. This is really good news for us here on the ground.”

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3) There are many wonderful daily readers for Advent. Here are five of my all time favorites–and there are many others. I would use these over and over again. I will include just the title and author. You can click on the title for further information. They are linked to the Kindle editions if they exist but hard copies are also available.



  • Light Upon Light compiled by Sarah Arthur–wise and literary excerpts from stories, poems, essays, and books.

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4) Here is a review I wrote in 2017 of four other books for Advent.

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5) If you are looking for playful and prayerful ways to celebrate Advent you can also get my book The Season of the Nativity: Confessions and Practices of an Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany Extremist by Sybil MacBeth. I have tried just about everything I suggest.

I am an Advent freak/geek and proud of it. I think Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are the underrated, most important seasons of the Church Year. They prepare and equip us to live the rest of the year as embodied disciples of Jesus.

 

Gratitude Gobblers 2019

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“For the Beauty of the Earth, Sing, Oh Sing Today
Of the Skies and of our birth, Sing, Oh Sing, always.
Nature, Human and Divine, all around us lies,
Lord of All to Thee we raise grateful hymns of praise.”

These simple and beautiful words are from the “Canticle of Brother Sun” from the Missa Gaia by Jim Scott and Paul Winter (Litchfield, CT, Living Music Records, 1982). This is one of my favorite thanksgiving songs.

Here are three turkey templates to use for a Thanksgiving gratitude exercise. This can be a fun, family activity between dinner and dessert on Thanksgiving Day. In the center of the turkey write your name for God: “Loving God, Gracious God, Holy One….” In the spaces within the turkey and on the sides of the page, write your “gratitude list.” The list does not have to include sweeping, important things like “family, country, home, teachers…”–though it can. Just go for the little, ordinary things that pop into your head.–“gravy, pumpkin pie, colorful leaves on the ground, a game of checkers with my brother…” Part of the purpose of a gratitude list is to learn to “think in gratitude” in the same way we “think in French or Spanish” when we learn a foreign language. 

If this gratitude gobbler is a little too goofy for you, trace around your hand to make your own template. Draw lines or arcs to delineate spaces for words.  

Click on the link of the template you want. Download it first. Then print. Feel free to make multiple copies.

Left  .pdf or jpg 
Middle   .PDF  or .JPG 
Right  pdf.   OR    .jpg

Below are examples of completed turkey from previous years.

A Blessed Thanksgiving to all.


Advent Paper Chains

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Advent paper chains are like 3-D Advent calendars. They are a physical and visual way to mark the daily journey to Christmas.

Paper chains are an easy and playful way for kids to learn Advent words. Pick simple words like “wait, prepare, watch, baby, dark….” For children who are too young to read, write the word on one strip of paper and talk with them about its meaning. Let them doodle or draw around the word and along the strip. When the artwork is finished, take the strip of paper, make a loop, and staple the ends together. Give children two other strips of paper on which to draw and color. Remind them of the word without necessarily writing it again. Add the finished strips to each side of the original loop to create a three-loop chain. If you decorate a Christmas tree right after Thanksgiving, you can hang the trio on the tree. (Or maybe forget the Christmas decorations completely until closer to the 25th.)  Repeat the process every day of Advent with a new word. Reviewing the previous words each day immerses children in the rich vocabulary of the season.

Adults can also create Advent chains. Try any of the ideas I suggest for Advent calendars in my November 9th blog post. I like to pick an Advent word for each day and pray it/meditate on it as I doodle. The word seems to stay with me for the rest of the day. Adults might enjoy the meaty and fresh daily Advent vocabulary offered by #AdventWord.

Keep the 3-loop chains separate as individual “ornaments” or connect them together in one long, swoopy chain. It’s amazing to me how the simple practice can end up being both beautiful and spiritually satisfying.

Since I often travel at Christmas time, I buy a little Norfolk Island pine and designate it as an Advent tree. Purple or blue lights on it remind me that it is still Advent and not yet Christmas.

2019 Advent Calendars

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My early-childhood, next-door neighbor always had an Advent calendar. In our Christian Science household we did not celebrate Advent, but I coveted all those little doors my friend Marian opened every day in the weeks before Christmas. Each door revealed tiny, colorful scenes of sheep, shepherds, stars, and angels. The pictures summarized the stories I knew from The Bible and from Christmas carols. I think an occasional Santa Claus and reindeer popped out of doors, too.

Advent is now my favorite season of the Church year and using an Advent calendar is my favorite way to pay attention to the four weeks before Christmas. The calendars I use, however, are different from the store-bought versions. Mine have no doors, just a calendar template with blank spaces for the days of Advent. Each day I fill one of the little spaces with my prayers–not just verbal prayers but visual ones. The calendar grows day by day with doodles, drawings, and words–whatever feels right. After four weeks the page is a patchwork quilt of my small, daily efforts to be present with God. This practice feels prayerful and playful.

I posted the first Advent templates in 2009. I still love using the calendars because they engage my mind and my body in the Advent experience. The daily practice of drawing on the calendar gives me a creative and simple way to immerse myself in the story of God’s Incarnation and to watch and wait for the celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 25. The accumulation of my daily doodlings is a colorful tapestry and a record of my spiritual journey for the weeks leading up to Christmas. Below are samples from past years, a list of ways to use this year’s calendar templates, and eight possible templates.

Finished Calendars from Previous Years

Creating an Advent calendar is not supposed to produce a great work of art. Enjoy the process. Drawing skills are not a requirement! Advent calendars can also be just black and white.

Calendars by Cindy O
Candles by Connie Denninger

The free, downloadable calendar templates below provide spaces for your daily prayers, words, and doodles. Since Advent starts on December 1st this year, each calendar has twenty-four empty spaces. These Advent calendars are for both adults and children.

Ways to Use the Calendar Templates

1) In a space or shape on the calendar, write the name of someone for whom you are praying. Doodle around the name, add color. Think of each stroke of color or each doodled mark (line, dot, arc, spiral…) as a wordless prayer. If words come to you as you draw and color, pray them. Squeeze them onto the calendar in the shape or along the margins if they feel important. When you have finished with your daily entry, say “Amen” or recite a short passage of Scripture appropriate to Advent like “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” (Psalm 27:1) This tiny colorful mosaic creates a frame around the person’s name. Every time I look at the calendar, the names and designs are a visual reminder to pray for each person again.

2) Combine your calendar with one of the many wonderful Advent books of meditations and reflections. Read the entry for the day. Choose a word from the reading that jumps out at you. Write it in the shape and start to doodle and color around it. Marinate in the word. What is the word saying to you? What does God have to say to you about the word?
Listening + doodling+ coloring = praying.  Keep a computer or notebook next to your calendar so you can write any insights or “ahas.”

3) Write and ponder an Advent word: prepare, wait, pregnant, hope, watch, darkness, wilderness, longing, light… as you doodle and color.

#AdventWord, a ministry of Virginia Theological Seminary, offers a new word each day and the chance to see how others throughout the world have reflected on the word. 

4) Advent is a season of hope. Write something you hope for each day. Offer that idea to God as you draw, write, and color.

5) Celebrate the Women and Men of the Bible. Choose a different person for each day and learn what they did and why they are important to our story and God’s story. As you draw, be quiet and listen to what these people might reveal to you.

6) Advent means “coming,” and specifically the coming of Jesus. Write one of the many names for Jesus in the daily box. Here are a few of the many ways we refer to Jesus: savior, messiah, friend, Prince of Jesus, Emmanuel…. Use the Bible, Handel’s Messiah, Christmas carols, and hymns to uncover those names. Pray and ponder how that name for Jesus stirs, affects, annoys, delights, or inspires you.

7) Choose a word from the daily lectionary readings for the season. Here is a link to the Vanderbilt University site for the daily readings.

7) For smaller children, print the calendar on 11″x17″ paper and just let them color. Light a battery-powered votive candle and give them a quiet, secret place to work. The Advent Tree template might be a simple one for a child to use.

2019 Advent Calendar Templates in .pdf  form.

Click on the links below the pictures for the one you want. When the image appears as a  google doc, click on the download button at the top (the square with the downward facing arrow). Download first; then print. Feel free to share the calendar templates with others, for individual or group use.

Thanks to Cindy O for creating the Box Calendar template for 2019.

Notes:

  • Advent is short this year. It starts on Dec 1 and lasts 24 days.
  • Each calendar has a space for Christmas. On the Advent Tree Calendar it is the star. The Angel Calendar has the face of the angel.The Box Calendar has the central oval. The Star Calendar has the large Star of David in the center.
  • I like to enlarge the 8.5″x11″ format to 11″x17″ card stock. It gives me more room to doodle and color and consequently more time and space with the person or word.
  • Thanks to Cindy O. for the 2019 Box Calendar template.

P.S. If you have trouble downloading the template, send me an email from the Contact page and I’ll send a calendar template to you directly. Sometimes school and church computers or accounts will not allow you to download things from unknown sites on the internet. If you contact me, use your home email instead of a school or church email. If you would prefer a .jpg, contact me.

Yes to Easter!

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Yes to the new creation! Yes to Christ is Risen! Yes to all that I do not understand about this new beginning! Alleluia!

This year I am neither exhausted nor “sooo ready for Lent and Easter to be over.” What is different from past Lents was not bingeing on a multitude of spiritual practices. Lent is a time to go down, go deeper, and go spelunking into the dark and unexplored caves of the heart. I misread this as an invitation to gather up a overlarge slew of spiritual tools and start digging: give up something, take on something, read more, pray more, blog more, meditate on my shortcomings, exercise more, snack less, be kind, do a complete makeover in 40-some days….

A week into this overzealous archaeological expedition, I know I have overpacked; so many tools are a burden. But I trudge on with grouchiness and guilt added to the load. Self-shaming and trash talk about my spiritual inadequacy make me the center of all this exploring. I forget that the inner work is not primarily about me, but about connecting with Jesus. I’m not sure why I overload during Lent. I don’t know if I try to out-holy my efforts from the year before. But with uncharacteristic kindness towards myself, I think it’s more basic than that. I am hungry, really hungry for a deeper and more loving relationship with God, other people, and myself. Bingeing and hoarding on spiritual practices seems like the logical, if misguided, way to get what I need.

Thanks to a three-week cough right before this Lent, I did not have the energy for rounding up as many tools as usual. I picked one calendar template and one devotional to use with it. With his book Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C: A Daily Devotional, New Testament scholar and retired Anglican Bishop N.T. Wright was a terrific guide for my Lenten exploration. Each day Wright offers a passage from Luke, a reflection, and a prayer. I chose one word from the daily reading, wrote it on the calendar, thought about it, doodled around it, and listened to it. The practice felt spacious and satisfying rather than burdensome. And I was not alone. Luke, N.T. Wright, and Jesus were there with me. That one simple word became my manna for the day. Not too much, not too little. Food and Enough.

Stations of the Cross

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When people as early as the 4th century began to make pilgrimages to the Holy Land from Europe and Asia, they wanted to walk the route Jesus took from the place of his death sentence by Pilate to the place of his crucifixion and burial. This walk became known as the Via Dolorosa or Way of Sorrows. At each stop along the way, pilgrims sang hymns, read Scripture, and said prayers.

Stations of the Cross are a way people can experience this journey of tears without traveling to Jerusalem. Many churches have paintings or sculptures of these events or stations on their walls. Over the centuries the number of stations depicting Jesus’s journey to the cross and death has changed.. Fourteen is the common number for many churches now. Each station offers an opportunity to enter into the story, to contemplate, and to pray. Holy Week and especially Good Friday are typical times for praying the Stations of the Cross.

If you are unfamiliar with this practice, you can explore websites with the history of Stations of the Cross. There are thousands. Also look for Images. There are many examples of Stations of the Cross liturgies with prayers and readings. Click here for one example.

Below is a template for you to make your own Stations of the Cross journey with Jesus on paper. Each of the fourteen cloud shapes has a sentence for the station and an empty space with a cross. As you imagine yourself in Jerusalem on this sorrowful walk to the cross, add your own images, doodles, or words. Read. Sing. Think. Pray. Be there.

Download a pdf. or .jpg template. Download it first then, print. The sequence of stations is left to right, row by row, starting at the top of the page.

Two Weeks of Lent–A Visual Diary

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I love this one-day-at-a-time, one tear-at-a-time journey through Lent. Lent for Everyone–Year C by N.T. Wright is a thoughtful combination of Scripture and reflection. The devotional includes a daily reading from Luke followed by a meditation from the author. As I look back at the growing pathway of words, I remember the stories from the Gospel. (Or on Sundays, a Psalm) Some of the words I chose are from the Luke reading itself: others are from the reflection piece. Both readings challenge me to rethink my relationship with Jesus. I’m trying to read not to confirm the opinions and beliefs I hold so tightly and arrogantly, but to receive what God might be asking me to consider or rethink or affirm.

The word combined with the doodles has been a helpful prompt to remember, review, and refresh my thoughts and prayers about the readings from a particular day.

How I’m Using the 2019 Lenten Calendar Template

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This year I’m combining the Tear Drop Spiral Template with a daily devotional called Lent for Everyone: Luke, Year C: A Daily Devotional by N.T. Wright. In many liturgical churches, the Gospel readings for the Sundays of Lent this year (Year C in a three-year cycle) are from Luke. Wright’s devotional takes a daily small chunk of Luke and goes through the whole Gospel during the Lenten season.

Each day I read the passage from the Gospel of Luke and Wright’s reflection on it. From either the gospel or the reflection I choose a word that jumps out at me. Sometimes the choice might require more than one reading. Then I write the word in a space on the calendar. Yesterday’s word was seed. I wrote it in the starting tear drop dated March 6. On a separate piece of paper I wrote the word seed and started brainstorming about the word. I call this a data dump. I wrote down everything that came to mind when I thought of seed—no editing. What I write about a word might be silly or serious: I’m just clearing my mind of all preconceived ideas to make room for new ones.

When I feel empty, I stop writing and start doodling around the word of the day. The doodling can be abstract or realistic. It doesn’t matter. But I stop overt “thinking” and just listen to the word. “What does it have to say to me today? What might God be saying to me through this word?”  I doodle and color and try to get still on the inside. For me, this is taking a single word and praying it, or letting it pray in me.

If words, phrases, or feelings come to me while I’m drawing, I write them down—on the same page as before or on a new page (or even on the calendar). When I finish drawing, I might sit with the word/drawing or look at the brainstorm page again. Sometimes insights come; sometimes silence and quiet are enough. Time spent with the chosen word and with God helps to frame my whole day. I love this simple, day-by-day process of staying in touch with God and orienting my outlook on life.

Baby was my word for Day 2.

It’s not too late to download a template. See the March 4 or February 15 post.

Additional Calendar Templates for Lent

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Lent starts this coming Wednesday, March 6! Here are two additional Lenten Calendar Templates. Click on the version you want below the picture; download; and print. The first one with the hearts was created by Pat Maier of Visual Faith Ministry. It has 40 spaces. For more ideas about how to incorporate art with your prayer life and Scripture study, visit the Visual Faith Ministry Facebook page and website. The second template is the Cross template from last year. Counting the divisions on the cross, it has 46 spaces to include the weekends during Lent.

Hearts 2019 pdf
Cross .jpg  or .pdf

Instructions on how to use the calendars and examples from previous years are on my blog post from February 15. Or you can click Here to download a Word document of the Instructions.

Here are the first three calendar options from the February 15 post.

Spiral Tears Calendar 2019 pdf
Box Calendar 2019 pdf
Stained Glass Lily 2019 pdf

The Journey Through Lent on a Calendar Template

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Using a calendar template is a simple, daily prayer practice for making the journey through Lent. Each day choose a word to ponder or a person to pray for. Write the word or name in the allotted space with a pen and draw or doodle around it. Add color with colored pencils or markers. Let the word or name speak to you. If words come to you as you draw, pray them. If not, just continue to draw, stay quiet, and let the word or name burrow into your mind and heart. Returning to the calendar each day establishes a hallowed time and a place to be present to God and listen.

Think of each mark of the pen or stroke of a colored marker/pencil as a small non-verbal prayer. The goal of the doodling and drawing is not to make a beautiful work of art, but to create a visual prayer. Drawing/doodling invites the body into the prayer, gives the eyes and hand something to do, and helps to focus attention on the word or person.

Praying on the calendar is a visual and kinesthetic Lenten discipline. The accumulation of words or peoples’ names on the calendar creates an emerging tapestry of your spiritual journey through the forty-plus days of Lent.

BELOW are three templates to download. Choose the one or ones you like and click on the link below the calendars. Download the template first, then Print. Below the templates are some suggested ways to use the calendars. Since the spaces are small you can take the template to a copier and enlarge it (129%-132%) onto an 11″x17″ piece of card stock. Although Lent is officially 40 days, there are 46 spaces on each template to include the weekends. Further down the page are some finished templates from previous years. Feel free to Share this post and the templates with others. 

Spiral of Tears Calendar .pdf
Box Calendar .pdf
Stained Glass Window w/Lily Calendar. pdf

Ways to Use the Calendars:
1) Pray for a person each day of Lent.

2) Use a daily book of Lenten meditations. Read the mediation for the day and select a word that jumps out at you. Meditate on the word as you draw and color around it. Let it enter your heart and mind. Ask God what you need to hear from the word.

3) Follow a daily lectionary and choose a word from one of the Scripture readings.

4) Read the same Psalm each day and choose a daily word. Psalm 51, for example, is a penitential Psalm with lots of juicy (sometimes depressing) words in it.

5) Read a different Psalm each day and choose a word.

6) Use nouns or adjectives that describe the nature and character of Jesus: savior, redeemer, healer, radical, obedient, forgiving,…

7) Since Lent is a time for reflection and self-examination, scatter your confessions, character defects, regrets, worries, fears, and sorrows on the template. Ask the Holy Spirit to be present as you reflect on these. This is not meant to be an exercise in self-flagellation, but a way to be honest with yourself and draw closer to God and god’s unconditional love. Mix in some dreams, hopes, and thanksgivings.

8) Create a visual gratitude list. Each day add a word or an image. The items on your gratitude list can be important and profound or simple and fleeting: a cup of coffee, a walk around the block, a smile from a child….

Here are three examples of finished calendars from previous years.

Thanks to Lynne M for permission to use her calendar in the middle from 2011.
Thanks to Connie D for her Lenten calendar in the top row of calendars, second from the right.