PLANNING FOR ADVENT PART 2

HOW TO

In the week before Advent begins make your plans. You may want to make an Advent wreath or find the one you normally use and put it in a place of worship. Bless the wreath as you bring it out, asking God to guide your celebration of the season. Find a place to hang the calendar; plan how you will observe this time. Involve your family and your church. Pray.

To create an Advent wreath find a circular frame. Add decorations, pinecones or greenery, symbolic for some of the everlasting gift of eternal life in Christ Jesus. Add four candles spaced evenly around the circle. Three of the candles are traditionally purple and one is pink. Some add a fifth white candle in the center to represent Christ’s arrival and to be lit on Christmas Day. Buy or make an Advent calendar. To make a simple calendar collect pictures or symbols of the coming season and arrange to paste them on a calendar square each day. You might also collect small treats to mark each day.

The booklet provides suggestions for each day based on one of the lectionary passages for the week. You can find a copy of these Scriptures by going to the Presbyterian Church (USA) website, http://www.pcusa.org/. A short liturgy for use in the weekly lighting of the Advent wreath candles is offered on Sunday. Monday’s scripture can be sung; you might listen again to the singing of the Psalm or canticle from Sunday’s worship by going to the St. B. website, http://www.saintb.org/. On Tuesday we turn to the epistle and form some intentions for the week. Wednesday is a time for reflection and dialogue with family or friends either in person or in your imagination. Join your church family for evening prayers at the church house when you can. Thursday and Friday we listen and respond to the word as heard in the gospel. Our week ends with time for digging deeper, journaling or drawing responses, and engaging in the activities of Advent.

Blessings, Caroline

ADVENT PLANNING

ADVENT

Advent begins the church year. Starting four Sundays prior to Christmas Day, the Christian community anticipates the coming again of Jesus Christ. We are asked to prepare ourselves for this momentous event. Advent’s color is purple signifying it is a penitential season. Think how you would want to be when Jesus comes in glory. Think how your life would look to the Lord of All. Imagine how Jesus Christ would see our community, the Church universal. While we in our culture are preparing for the celebration of Christmas, buying gifts, baking treats, visiting and partying with friends, we are called as Christians to make our hearts right with God. How can we do both?

Two practices of Advent—the Advent wreath and the Advent calendar—are ways of measuring the days and weeks as we approach Christ’s coming. Both offer us a way to prepare using Scripture and tradition. Both offer times of worship and festivity. Both ask us to stop for a moment the frenzy of preparing and celebrating the holidays and know the one who is coming.

The Advent wreath with its four candles marks the four weeks of the season. One additional candle is ritually lit each Sunday as a part of a worship liturgy. Each week has a theme to guide our meditations. As we move closer to Christmas Day the wreath provides increasing light, symbolic of the light that is coming into the world. The darkness fades as we move through the season.

An Advent calendar is a daily reminder; each day carries a special message. A picture or treat greets us each morning as we count toward Christmas Day. Using the calendar is a way to remember whom it is we expect to come and to watch the progress toward the arrival of Jesus. The excitement of completing the picture, opening all the windows, or finding all the treasures, reflects the excitement we all sense as the day nears when we celebrate the coming of Emmanuel, God with us.

Blessings, Caroline

Planning for Advent

Advent 2009

It’s November; Christmas is just around the corner. How often at this point do we moan? “Why don’t they remember what Christmas is all about?” “It’s just TOO commercialized.” “We’ve lost the spirit of Jesus’ birth.” “I’m so tired I can’t enjoy anything.” “What can I do? How can I really celebrate Christ’s birth? Society conspires against me.” Every year we utter our complaints, but do we change?

We can ‘just say no’ and some do. But that seems so negative, sometimes Scrooge-like. We do enjoy the decorations, the wrapping paper, the tree, the good times with family and friends. Maybe we even truly relish giving and receiving that special gift. So how do we continue to do what brings joy and still honor the season?

Let me suggest we add, not subtract. Add times and activities that encourage us to do the work of Advent, to prepare our hearts and minds, as the saying goes, for the coming of the Lord. Make those activities a priority now! Our church family has ways; why not plan to be a part of them.

Decide to come to worship the four Sundays of Advent. And plan to come to mid-week evening prayers, Wednesday, 6:30, in the chapel during the season.
Daily use the Advent booklet (It will appear here daily) provided or some other devotional book for the season. It should add thought and fun.
Determine to do something for another each week. Take an angel from the angel tree in the narthex. ‘Buy’ and send a Voi card or another gift to service organization. Spend an afternoon with someone who cannot get out. Or…

Advent is the start of the church year. What a wonderful way to start anew your work to deepen your relationship with your Lord and to aid the communion of saints who faithfully strive to be heralds of God’s kingdom.

Blessings on the season
Caroline

BODY, MIND, and SPIRIT

Our spiritual journey we have found is in response to the God who seeks us. We engage in both inner and outer activities, we adopt disciplines to open ourselves to the work of God’s Spirit within us transforming us into God’s blessed and directing us in the way of God’s peace and justice in our world. We will return to specific disciplines as we walk our way through these discussions on spiritual growth.

Before we do that however I’d like to think a bit more about who we are. We think of ourselves often as body, mind, and spirit. Thus our growth as disciples involves each of these. We can think of activities that address the mind—study, analysis, and organization. We can sense the movement of the spirit within us leading us to care for those in want. We harness the power of the body to build cathedrals or to sway with the spirit evidenced in song. But we know we are one: our minds direct our bodies, our bodies bring feeling to our spirits, our spirits awaken new ideas, our thoughts lead to activities of body, our bodies inform us of unknown emotions, our hearts know in spiritual ways. We could continue circling, but the oneness of who we are becomes clear.

Division helps keep us aware—Are we avoiding parts of who we are? Do we need to find ways of hearing the mind more clearly, listening to the body more closely, knowing the will of the spirit?

Division hinders also—Do we forget that God created us enfleshed? Do we think we can separate ourselves and live only a spiritual life?

Reflect for a moment on your own living. How do you sense you mind, body, and spirit? How do they interact? How are they collectively leading you toward your Creator?

Blessings, Caroline

INNER AND OUTER LIFE CONTINUED

What do we mean when we speak of the inner life, the outer life, as ingredients in our faith journeys? Again we may have many conceptions and certainly biases which may be a good thing.

For me the inner life involves those activities I engage in that are reflective and nurturing to my intimate relationship with God. Prayer is the chief practice. The time I spend away, alone, in an effort to be in communion with all of creation, with God defines my inner life. From those times I gather strength, insight, and hope. Rest for my soul as well as for my body provides perspective and confidence. During these times doubts are faced openly; fears are named; anger expressed; sins are confessed. Honesty and humility are both desired and operative.

The outer life involves that which I do with and for others. Variety is the norm. From intercessory prayer to worship to work for peace and justice in the world, the outer life is what you see. The spiritual life is much the life of service; the spiritual life is much the life of witness; the spiritual life is much the life of stewardship. How we live in the world—our work, our play, our relationships, our concerns—reflect who we are.

One flows from the other and thus they are of one piece it seems to me. My inner life informs my outer doing; my doing provides fruits for further pondering. Others influence how I see and hear God’s call. Inner reflection brings new discernment. Community gives support and challenge. Others agree and we work together or others see differently and I return to contemplation.

How do you define the inner life, the outer life?

Share your thoughts if you will.
Blessings, Caroline

INNER AND OUTER LIFE

We all have an inner life and an outer life. We are alike in that way. But we are unlike in the relative importance we put on each; we are unlike in our awareness of each; we are probably unalike in how we define each. So our conversation may at times go astray and at times hit the mark; but conversation is possible. So let’s try.

For me God is the Lord of both the inner and outer life. I also believe that body, mind, heart, soul are a part of both. In reality there is no separation between spiritual living and physical living. Sometimes we divide them to enable analysis, but the two are one. The same is probably true of inner and outer living. The division is more a matter of analysis and conversation than reality. What goes on inside influences what happens around me. What I think and feel influences what I will and do. Yet I do think it helps to think in this duality for it pushes a balance in living.

Balance is one of those concepts that seems attractive to all. Do everything in moderation is a cliché we were taught as children and young adults. Living for a while convinces us that indeed in practice this is a hard maxim to keep. Besides we look at those who commit themselves to one thing (like athletes, musicians, artists, scientists) and think about nothing else, and we see their successes. Maybe balance is not so great! But balance in nurturing our inner life with God and our outer life with God's creation is useful, for if we spend too much time looking inward we can become self centered and fail to bring God’s love to the world, and if we spend too much time concentrating on others, the world, we can fail to nourish sufficiently our roots and become brittle and die.

How does your faith journey involve the inner and outer life?
Where is the balance?

Blessings, Caroline