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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.

 

Advent, My Brother, and Advent Calendars

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If Don had to die
I’m glad it was in Advent
When Grief and Hope Dance

My brother died a week ago. Don was my big brother by six years. His death was a surprise but not a shock. He had escaped death on multiple occasions with heart issues. Every time a family member’s name showed up on my phone, I held my breath. And then a sigh of relief followed when the conversation was about other things. But this time the phone call brought the unwanted news. Don was in a wheelchair at the hospital waiting to be picked up to go home after a one-day stay. The nurses found him unresponsive. The next couple of hours held little chance of recovery. The gift of those hours was the gathering of eight family members in the hospital room and a relative who was a priest. It is rare that families get to assemble in the hospital during CoVid, but they did. With prayers and anointing, they released Don into God’s hands and comforted each other. With a phone placed next to my mouth and Don’s ear, I spoke love and goodbyes to him. I am both sorrowful and grateful. We were siblings but we also had a hard-won, easy friendship. We have no unfinished business.

Two friends and I started writing daily haiku a few weeks ago. Haiku are the tiny, 17-syllable poems, like the one at the top of the blog. They are a wonderful way to corral thoughts, memories, and emotions and to investigate the world. I have written six or seven about my brother—some serious, some silly. Haiku-writing, daily reading of Advent meditations, and the Advent calendar drawing keep me grounded in the paradoxes of the season. Grief and hope really do dance arm-in-arm, hand-in-hand. Scripture readings about sorrow, longing, and despair are juxtaposed with ones about hope, expectation, and promise. Psalm 30: 10-11 (NIV) is just one example: 10 Hear, LORD, and be merciful to me; LORD, be my help. 11 You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy. 

I have two Advent calendars this year, one with the names of people, the other with words from #AdventWord. When I enter my calendar worlds, I burrow into prayer and stillness. The people-calendar reminds me of my place in a large and loving, if scattered, community. I am one of many pieces in this colorful patchwork of friends, family, and even strangers. The words on the #AdventWord calendar remind me of who I want to be and the vision I have of a God-infused world. I love the ebb and flow between words and silence I experience when I doodle/pray on the calendars.

The time between the first phone call and the call confirming Don’s death is vivid in my mind. I walked outside and sat on the hood of the car in our jungle-y property. It was winter-dark and quiet. I wanted to walk, so I edged through the vines and ferns to the road. The neighborhood has no street lights. As I turned the dark corner not more than fifty feet from where I had been sitting, I was met with an exaltation of light and color. Almost every house on the street had Christmas lights—two blocks of them. I tend to be pretty cranky about Christmas lights before December 20, but not that night. The shimmer and glitz and glare were like a proclamation, an announcement—“Glory to God in the highest and Peace to God’s people on earth.” I was not alone on the flip-flop journey of gratitude and grief. Millions of other people were on it, too. This was unexpected, this gift of light on the night I became the last person alive in my family-of-origin. I was alone, but not alone, and smiling.

Advent Calendars–Doodling Ideas

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Just in case you are drawing- or doodle-phobic, here are some examples of ways to fill in your Advent calendar template. Below is the template/poster I designed for Forward Movement and #AdventWord. To read more about that partnership look at my November 9th Post. The calendar shows a new word for each day of Advent. The first word is the word Tender on November 29.

On the calendar below are six possible ways I might illuminate the word Tender. This is not great art; some of it is even messy. One version has no color, just a black pen. One version is just a mini-brainstorm on the word. The point of writing the word and drawing around it is to keep it front and center in my mind, eyes, and heart for the whole day. What does this word mean to me? What might I need to hear from it? How does Scripture enlighten me? What might God be saying to me through this word today? Maybe I could “try a little tenderness” more often as Otis Redding wrote in his 1966 song of the same title. Tenderness is not my go-to relational skill. It needs to be honed. Honesty and directness tend to supersede tenderness and kindness. Maybe this is a reminder. Tender also makes me thinks of steaks and greens and shoots and shepherds and babies. What else do I need to hear?

This template is still available along with a devotional/reflections book from Forward Movement. There is still time to order it before the first Sunday of Advent. Here are the links.
Booklet

Calendar

My free Advent calendars templates are available on my Handouts Page and on my November 6th Post.

#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.