It’s about time to order your Advent candles and choose your Advent spiritual practices.
I offer several suggestions for your consideration.
So … blessings upon you in this season of light!
This year, our holidays — All Saints, Thanksgiving, Advent, and Christmas — will be different and challenging. I’m grateful to be a part of several events from The Upper Room to comfort you during this difficult season.
All Saints Service
I recently wrote about my saints in an article published on The Upper Room’s website. If you don’t have a church family with whom to celebrate All Saints Day, please consider joining us on Facebook or YouTube for an All Saints service from The Upper Room Chapel on Wednesday, November 4, 11:00 a.m. (Central Time). We will gather together, light candles, and name our saints.
Advent e-Course – Blue Christmas
This Advent will undoubtedly prove to be an unusual one. In the midst of a global pandemic, following a contentious presidential election in the U.S., and in the swirl of racial unrest, we long for a vision of the Holy One.
The Upper Room invites you to join us this Advent as we seek the Light in a season of darkness. Together, we will spend daily time reflecting on the light of the season, gather weekly for online worship, and engage in times of prayer and reflection on scripture. Learn more.
Blue Christmas Service
Join us on December 21, 11:00 a.m. (Central Time) for a Blue Christmas Service in The Upper Room Chapel. Streaming on Facebook and YouTube.
Nine of us gathered this morning in The Upper Room Chapel to pray with and on behalf of the world. Two guests from Colorado joined us. We sang, prayed, and lit the first candle of Advent, the candle of peace.
Our candle lighting prayer by Steve Garnaas-Holmes:
Loving God, you are our peace;
prepare our hearts for your coming.
Forge the swords of bitterness into plows of blessing;
till the soil of our souls for your springing forth in us.
Remove our heart’s defensive armor,
clothe us in light alone,
and pierce our wide-open hearts with your love.
By your Spirit in us, may we be at peace:
awake, and ready to welcome your presence.
Amen.
Join me in an online course this Advent. Child of the Light: Walking Through Advent and Christmas.
Advent’s arriving on Sunday! It’s time to dig out the Advent wreath. (Now, where did I pack that? I’m hoping that I’ve still got a box of unlit candles.)
This year, I’m looking forward to an online course using my first Advent book, Child of the Light: Walking through Christmas and Advent.
“We all need this time of Advent to slow us down, to open our ears to God’s quiet voice, to guide us through the chaos of the consumerist culture that Christmas has become.” Child of the Light provides tools to help you find your quiet center. Our eCourse invites you to find that quiet center with friends old and new. Enter with Beth into readings and reflections inspired by the season’s carols and hymns. Your spirit will be lifted and your mind quieted. The experience extends past Christmas to Epiphany, encouraging you to live into the joy of Christmas beyond seasonal celebrations.
I hope you’ll consider joining us in Child of the Light.
Remembering my saints this weekend.
On All Saints’ Day, it is not just the saints of the church that we should remember in our prayers, but all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives who, one way or another, have been our particular fathers and mothers and saints, and whom we loved without knowing we loved them and by whom we were helped to whatever little we have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own.
Frederick Buechner
Sacred Journey: A Memoir of Early Days
I’ve loved Advent as long as I can remember. And running across this photo of me, face to face with the Nativity set let me see the gift my parents gave me as a young child.
My memories are of our family lighting the Advent wreath together every Sunday. Each child yearned to be old enough to light the candle. Once you could read, there was the Bible passage or that week’s meditation from the Advent booklet. I didn’t love accompanying the family’s Advent hymn on the piano. 😉
When The Upper Room invited me to write a book for the Advent season, I was thrilled. It called back all those memories of the Advent wreath, the candles, the little book, the awkward hymn playing and the singing.
And I am grateful for this gift.
God, open our hearts and the hearts of the world to your hope. Peel back the layers of our stubborn opinions, our fearful assumptions, and let the light of your life-giving spirit enter in. Amen.
I’m sitting here reading about the world’s latest craziness. (What is going to happen next?!?) And I’m wondering where those the nice Advent feelings are that I used to be able locate inside myself. “Maybe, this year, there will be peace.” “Oh, look, there are the signs of hope (or joy, or love).” Right now, I’m not feeling very hopeful.
I remembered something I’d written about hope in The Uncluttered Heart and share it here:
Hope isn’t a simple, sweet sentiment or an unreachable goal. Hope’s a bit risky — it’s not based on and doesn’t rely on some kind of secret-handshake promise from God. Our hoping does not mean that everything will turn out the way we want it to.
Hope is, instead, a spiritual practice, appropriate any time but especially during the season of Advent. We wait and hope for the coming of Christ into the world. We hope even when it doesn’t feel like it’s going to make a difference. We hope because we are children of God, children of hope. …
When we hope, we align ourselves more closely with the God of the Universe — the eternal force of good, of hope and love and peace.
Carry these words in your heart today: I am God’s partner in hope.
From The Uncluttered Heart by Beth A. Richardson. Copyright © 2009 by The Upper Room. Used with Permission.
For those of you looking for The Uncluttered Heart … The emails and texts are no longer available. But the content is here. Blessings on your Advent season! – Beth P.S. The book is available in print, EPub, and Kindle formats.
Week One of Advent
First Sunday of Advent – Read reflection.
Monday, Advent Week One – Read reflection.
Tuesday, Advent Week One – Read reflection.
Wednesday, Advent Week One – Read reflection.
Thursday, Advent Week One – Read reflection.
Friday, Advent Week One – Read reflection.
Saturday, Advent Week One – Read reflection.
Week Two of Advent
Sunday, Advent Week Two – Read reflection.
Monday, Advent Week Two – Read reflection.
Tuesday, Advent Week Two – Read reflection.
Wednesday, Advent Week Two – Read reflection.
Thursday, Advent Week Two – Read reflection.
Friday, Advent Week Two – Read reflection.
Saturday, Advent Week Two – Read reflection.
Week Three of Advent
Sunday, Advent Week Three – Read reflection.
Monday, Advent Week Three – Read reflection.
Tuesday, Advent Week Three – Read reflection.
Wednesday, Advent Week Three – Read reflection.
Thursday, Advent Week Three – Read reflection.
Friday, Advent Week Three – Read reflection.
Saturday, Advent Week Three – Read reflection.
Week Four of Advent
Sunday, Advent Week Four – Read reflection.
Monday, Advent Week Four – Read reflection.
Tuesday, Advent Week Four – Read reflection.
Wednesday, Advent Week Four – Read reflection.
Thursday, Advent Week Four – Read reflection.
Friday, Advent Week Four – Read reflection.
Christmas Eve – Read reflection.
Christmas Day – Read reflection.
2nd Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
3rd Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
4th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
5th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
6th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
7th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
8th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
9th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
10th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
11th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
12th Day of Christmas – Read reflection.
Ashes and hearts.
Hearts and ashes.
The convergence of this day of
Sacred and secular.
As if we needed a reminder that
To dust we will return.
We with our bodies showing signs of age …
We with our society exploding?
Imploding?
Teetering on the edge of
We-don’t-know-what?
What is this day,
Then,
Of hearts and ashes?
Ashes of hearts?
Hearts of ash?
From dust you came,
And you will go back to dust.
And, along the way,
There is Love.
Before, behind, beside, within,
There is Love.
Great Lover of the Universe, may there be love … before, behind, beside, within us. Mark us with your love. Amen.
I sit on the floor watching a sleeping child. Three months old, she is a miracle of breath, of tiny hands and feet and eyes and mouth.
How can hearts not be softened by the sight and sound and touch? Perhaps this intent was part of the divine gift. …
That a child would come into the mess of this world. That we who stopped to watch would be forever changed by the sight and touch and sounds of an infant babe.
Come, all you with hearts of stone. Come, all you with spirits of cynicism. Come and see this miracle of breath, of tiny hands and feet and eyes and mouth.
To us, this child is born.
All the Wonders 