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Sixth Day of Christmas

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Here are my two Advent calendars for 2020. The calendar on the left incorporates the words of #AdventWord–a ministry of Virginia Theological Seminary. The one on the right contains my prayers for others. Advent was full of illness and death for friends and family. The daily encounter with the emerging tapestry of words and names on both calendars made me feel part of a widespread community of both hurt and hope.1

It’s the 6th day of Christmas and I want to beg my neighbors not to discard their Christmas trees so quickly. Already, there are naked trees at the ends of driveways. Not yet, please; at least keep the decorations up until January 6. I confess to some hefty rigidity about celebrating Christmas until Epiphany, the day after the twelfth day of Christmas. But this year especially, when there has been so much darkness, I need the lights and the glitz.

My psyche is still in Advent mode. Advent lasted twenty-six days in 2020. I had almost a month to practice being an Advent person, a person who remembers, longs, hopes, waits, despairs, expects….  I need more than one day to practice what it means to be a Christmas person. A Christmas person delights in prophecies and promises fulfilled, celebrates Incarnation–God’s coming into the world in Jesus and our own experience of being flesh and blood, and in spite of so much evidence of Sorrow, recklessly touts the victory of the Joy team…. I guess I need the visual reminders of light and color to regale this time and to keep my spirits from falling back into the dark side of Advent and pandemic despair.

For many people Christmas is just plain over. Christians included. They wait for the next big part of the church year which is Lent and Easter. I want to propose a little “front-porch” theology. This is the stuff I pray about and ponder as I sit on my front porch. I think we miss half of the message of the Salvation story of Jesus if we think of Easter as the most important Christian season. In the Episcopal Church and many other liturgical churches, we have a three-sentence story we proclaim every Sunday as we celebrate the Eucharist or Holy Communion:

Christ has Died.
Christ is Risen.
Christ will Come Again.

These words are called the Mystery of Faith. It is the Lent and Easter story. And I love saying them. They summarize the Death, Resurrection, and Return of Jesus, the Christ, with the emphasis on Jesus’s divinity. But I think there is an equally important three-sentence story about Jesus, the man who was born and experienced three decades of life before the showdown at Lent and Easter. Here is my three-sentence story:

Christ was Longed For.
Christ was Born.
Christ will Spread like Wildfire.

For me, this is the prequel to the Mystery of Faith or the First Mystery of Faith. These sentences celebrate Incarnation—the life and humanity of Jesus. They are a summary of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany—the whole Season of the Nativity. My desire to extend the Nativity Season at home is not just my selfish need for light and glitz, but a passionate belief that Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany are just as important as Lent and Easter. We are in the Christmas season for another week. Epiphany starts on January 6 and celebrates the spread of Jesus’s influence beyond the boundaries of a small town in a small country. Theologian and preacher Peter Gomes said, “This is the most important season of the church’s year because this is the season in which we come to see who Jesus is, where he is to be found, and where we begin to understand what he is about.”2  Epiphany, the “shining forth,” is the reminder that we are players and makers in the emerging kingdom of God, that we spread the fire of the Gospel.

 

1 Walter Brueggemann, Advent/Christmas Proclamation 3
2 Peter J. Gomes,Sermons: Biblical Wisdom for Daily Living(New York: William Morrow and Company, 1998), 30-31.

 

Florida Advent Wreath

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Advent is a time of quiet contemplation and reflection but also a time of restless expectation and journey. My favorite practices, like Advent calendars and Advent wreaths, are ones that give me day-by-day opportunities for reflection but also activate my senses. They emphasize the juicy paradoxes of Advent–like light and darkness, “already there and not yet, flesh and spirit, stillness and movement, faith and fear, sorrow and joy, despair and hope. Advent asks us to rest and go inward but it also propels us forward to a future of “God with us” in a new way.

Advent in Jerusalem was on my calendar for 2020. Advent in Florida is where I am. Except for two years when we lived in Florida a few decades ago, most of my Advents have been in colder places with bare trees and leaves on the ground. I’m learning to appreciate the dense jungle greenery of this almost-tropical state, even in November. The saber pines, cedars, water and live oaks, palmetto scrub, and palm trees are home to the raccoons, possums, woodpeckers, and squirrels we see almost every day (or night) in our yard.

Using local plants and greens seemed like the logical choice for this year’s Advent wreath. Since I have divided loyalties between blue and purple for the candles, I’ve have two wreaths. I put the candles in the holders, placed them on a table, and with haphazard delight walked in my yard and neighborhood to gather local flora. The wreath with the blue candles has cedar clippings and Brazilian pepper plant (invasive, I think, but pretty). The wreath with the purple and pink candles has saber pine, cedar, pinecones, water oak, and a puff of Spanish moss. (I wanted to use more Spanish moss, but I over boiled it in an attempt to get rid of the pesky red bugs that sometimes live in it.).

The candles of the Advent wreath mark the four Sundays and four weeks before Christmas. The traditional color for Advent, purple, represents reflection, repentance, and royalty. Some churches and people prefer blue as a symbol of hope, joy, expectation, and Mary. The colors purple and blue claim their own paradox. Advent, as preparation for welcoming and receiving Jesus, includes both hope & expectation AND self-examination & repentance. So hang a little purple; hang a little blue, if not literally then at least in your heart and in your mind’s eye. Pre-Christmas time can be overwhelming and depressing. On those days, focus your eyes on the blue. When you are overloading your car with presents and decorations and carping at everyone around you, focus on the purple.

The colors are a visual reminder of Advent messages in Scripture.
Blue: “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:13 NRSV)
Purple:  “In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near…“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” (Matthew 3:1-2, 7b-8 NRSV)

Some people like to use a pink candle for the third Sunday of Advent to mark the halfway point to Christmas.

Light the first candle on the first Sunday of Advent, November 29. Say a prayer, recite a passage of Scripture or sing a song.  With small children, a short and repeatable scripture verse might keep their attention and help them to learn some words of Advent. Use the same prayer or line of scripture all during the first week. On the second Sunday of Advent light the second candle as well as the first. As the weeks pass and more candles are lighted, the darkness of Advent is infused with the anticipated brighter light of Christmas.There are dozens of Advent Wreath lighting devotionals available online. The website Building Faith has many ways to celebrate the weekly ritual.

If you missed my Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany book, you can still order it in Paperback or on Kindle. Click on the photo below. It offers other examples of Advent Wreaths and many ways to celebrate the whole Nativity Season at home. Many of the activities incorporate praying in color.

 

Two Online Events: Lectio Divina and Advent Workshops

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1) Lectio Divina and Praying in Color with Ruah Space
November 15, Sunday, 7pm Central Time 

Join Phil & Erin Vestal of Ruah Space and Sybil MacBeth, the author of Praying in Color, for a special live event. As a community, we will explore the practice of praying in color in tandem with lectio divina. Lectio divina means “sacred reading.”  It is an ancient way to read and pray scripture as living word, always fresh and new.

Bring paper, a black pen, colored pencils, markers, crayons, paint, or whatever you would like to use to pray in color with us!

To sign up Click Here

2) An Advent Workshop—November 29, Sunday 7-8:30 PM ET

Praying in Color Advent Workshop–Zoom
Sponsored by the Jordan Ministry Team, a collaborative ministry of the Salvatorian Family.  For Details and Registration:   Click HERE

Advent is the season of preparation for God’s coming into the world as flesh and blood at Christmas.  Advent—which begins on Sunday, November 29—is also the season of preparation for our daily pilgrimage with Jesus throughout the whole liturgical year. With left-brain and right-brain exercises, we will explore the rich and lush language of Advent. We will learn some meditative and playful prayer practices for use during Advent or anytime. Bring some plain paper, a pen, colored pencils or markers, and a spirit of holy Adventure.

#AdventWord and Another Advent Calendar Template

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“For the seventh year in a row, #AdventWord will gather prayers via a global, online advent calendar. Virginia Theological Seminary (VTS) in partnership with Forward Movement is offering 27 daily meditations and images during this holy season beginning Sunday, November 29. During a year of disparate worship and communities of prayer, AdventWord offers a way to reflect and pause for the Advent season and await the birth of Christ.”

“Gathering a worldwide community, #AdventWord provides a daily meditation, visual image, and invites your personal reflections via social media to share your own Advent journey. Thousands have participated each year, responding to the words with photos, written responses, crafts, drawings, poems, found art, and Holy Spirit-filled posts.”
For more info: #AdventWord

#AdventWord and publisher Forward Movement partnered to create a booklet of meditations called Waiting and Watching. I was invited by them to draw a calendar template to go with the booklet and the words. The AdventWords are on the border of the calendar and there are spaces for each day of Advent. Except for three days where I have already entered the word and a doodle (to give examples), the spaces do not have a designated date or word. You can decide where to write each word on the calendar and make a visual response with doodles, drawings, color, or more words.

The calendars are 17″X22″ and come in packs of 5 for $12. Each person in your family, small group, or congregation can participate with their own calendar. The booklets are $7 each. To order the calendar and/or booklet, go to the Forward Movement website:
Booklet
Calendar
Here is an example of the 2020 AdventWord calendar with other words and color added.

 

For the past three years I have combined my Advent calendar templates with #AdventWord. Besides having a word to think and pray about, I am a member of a worldwide congregation and community of people making the daily prayer journey to Christmas. I love this full-bodied practice. My mind, heart, eyes, hands, and imagination all get to participate. This is my #AdventWord calendar from 2017.

Advent Calendar Templates 2020

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Advent is my favorite season of the Church year. For me, it is like a many-sided, many-faceted star. I tried to write a coherent paragraph or two about its many facets, but the words collided and fell in a boring, incoherent heap. So I decided to just brainstorm all of the things that come to mind when I think about Advent. So many juicy words and only twenty-six days to ponder them….

Using an Advent calendar is my favorite way to ponder and pay attention during the four weeks of Advent. Unlike the store-bought versions, my calendars have no doors, just blank spaces for the days of Advent. Each day I fill one space with a prayer or meditation– in words, doodles, and color. The daily practice of drawing on the calendar gives me a creative and simple way to immerse myself in the Advent experience and to prepare for the celebration of the birth of Jesus on December 25. The accumulation of daily doodlings forms a colorful tapestry and a record of my spiritual journey for the weeks leading up to Christmas. This practice feels prayerful and playful. No artistic skill is necessary! (Examples from previous years are at the bottom of the post.)

2020 Advent Calendar Templates

To download, click on the links below the Calendars. 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. I think I have resolved the “gray” background issue that some of the templates in the past had. Please Share this post on your social media platforms. Thanks. These templates are also on my Handouts Page.

Note: Some school system emails do not allow downloads from unknown webpages. If you are from a school or church and having trouble, try using your personal/home email to download the templates. You can also contact me from the Contact Page.  

DOVE  w/Dates      .jpg       .pdf
DOVE  no Dates     .jpg       .pdf

STARS                  .jpg     .pdf
GRID/BOX              .jpg       .pdf

 Ways to Use the Calendar Templates

1) Write the name of someone for whom you are praying in the space. 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. Returning to the calendar each day is a visual reminder to pray for each person again.

2) Choose a word from your daily reading. Combine your calendar with one of the many wonderful Advent books of meditations and reflections. Read the entry for the day and choose a word 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? 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) Write something you hope for each day. Advent is a season of hope. 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 about Jesus and God .

6) 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 Peace, 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.

8) Just color and doodle in the space. For smaller children, print the calendar on 11″x17″ paper to create larger spaces. (I do this for myself, too.) Light a battery-powered votive candle and give them a quiet, secret place to work.

Advent Calendars From Previous Years


    “Veni” Grid Calendar by Cindy O.

Notes:

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 2020 Box/Grid Calendar template.

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.

 

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.

Sing, Sign, Expect–Advent Words

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Below are a few verbal and visual reflections on words from#AdventWord 2018.

#SINGing is my primary learning style. It is probably not in the educators’ official handbook of learning styles with auditory, verbal, visual, kinesthetic…but it includes all of those ways of learning. With melody and emotion thrown in, singing is a full-bodied way to import information into my entire being. Almost everything I know and remember about God, Jesus, and Scripture, I learned in Song.    December 17

 

 

 

There are #SIGNS everywhere–portents of doom, promises of prosperity. We can read the signs in the news and on TV and claim that biblical prophecy is now being fulfilled in both the portents and the promises. This is not new news. People have been matching current events with biblical prophecy in a one-to-one correspondence for at least 2000 years. This exercise seems a little self-focused, a way to confirm smug beliefs and opinions about how the world works and what MY God will do. But God will do what God will do.  More important for me than sign interpretation is to ask “What kind of sign am I?” How do people read me? Am I a sign of God’s love, compassion, and hope or am I a billboard slathered with words of self-righteousness, judgmental certainty, and despair?  In John 4:48, Jesus says, ” Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will never believe.” Current events may be signs, but I believe Christians are called to be living signs and wonders.      December 21

I #EXPECT a good meal and service when I go to a fine restaurant. I expect teachers to pay attention to my children and grandchildren. I expect my husband to make me happy. I expect to receive good things from God if I am a good girl. But these EXPECTATIONS have an unpleasant ring of entitlement to them. My expectations are not necessarily reasonable and often doomed to end in disappointment and resentment.  I  like the word EXPECTANCY better than EXPECTATION.  Though the roots of the words are the same, the first feels like an attitude of wide-eyed openness and humility rather than a sense of entitlement and arrogance that the second implies. EXPECTANCY helps me to honor the possibilities beyond my limited wants and imagination. What I think I can EXPECT is a God who surprises, who may not give me what I want or expect but who makes all things new.   December 22