Since I was rummaging around in the Advent box, I grabbed a dozen or so of our favorite Christmas books and brought them upstairs, too. As I looked through them, it was like catching up with dear friends I haven’t seen all year, remembering all over again why I like them so much.

And Jack and Jane are getting old enough now to remember some of the books.

“Ooh, Mama.” Jane holds up The Witness. “Can you read this?”

“Oh!” Jack grabs One Wintry Night. “I love this book! Can we read it? Right now?”

In our house, December is all about candles and books.

You’re on your own finding candles, but I’ve listed the kids’ and my favorite Christmas books in the hope that you’ll find a new book or two to love.

*****

The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey by Susan Wojciechowski, illustrated by P.J. Lynch

One of my favorite Christmas stories, this book brings a glad smile to my face each and every time I read it. P.J. Lynch’s gorgeous illustrations illuminate this story of hope and transformation.

Christmas Day in the Morning by Pearl S. Buck, illustrated by Mark Buehner

Every time I read this book, I get teary or choked up or both. My kids don’t get why, but that’s okay; they like the book even if it does make Mama cry. It’s a beautiful story, and I was thrilled when I learned several years ago that it had been made into a picture book. Lovely, all the way around.

One Wintry Night by Ruth Bell Graham, illustrated by Richard Jesse Watson

I’m not sure this is technically a Christmas book, but we’ve read it every year during Advent since Jack was three. The story weaves between a boy lost in an Appalachian blizzard and the whole sweep of the Biblical narrative, from creation to crucifixion. And the illustrations – oh my. They’re simply stunning:

The Witness by Robert Westall, illustrated by Sophy Williams

Okay, so this book takes some liberties with the Nativity story. Purists will be appalled. For the rest of us, though, this lovely book tells the story of Jesus’ birth through the eyes of an Egyptian temple-cat who’s been captured and sold to a Judean shopkeeper. Though it’s long for a picture book, it’s compelling: Jane sat through it, to my utter surprise, when she was just two.

The Story of Christmas, illustrated by Pamela Dalton

The kids and I have read a dozen brand new Christmas books (as in just published in the past month or so) these past few weeks, and this is the only one we’re buying. That’s not to say some of the others weren’t enjoyable, but this one was exquisite.

The text is the Christmas story from the King James Version, which is unparalleled for the beauty of its language. Dalton’s cut-paper-and-watercolor illustrations, which stand out dramatically on black backgrounds, are nearly edible in their deliciousness.

Other Christmas books we enjoy:

The Donkey’s Dream by Barbara Helen Berger. A weary donkey dreams some seriously beautiful and richly symbolic dreams.

The Friendly Beasts, illustrated by Sarah Chamberlain. This is unfortunately out of print, but there’s also a version by Tomie dePaola.

Silent Night, illustrated by Susan Jeffers. The late 1970′s hair on the angels is worth the price of the book. It makes me giggle, but Jane thinks it’s beautiful. To each her own.

Great Joy by Kate diCamillo, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline. An organ grinder, his monkey, a little girl, and a Christmas pageant add up to great joy in this sparely written and lushly illustrated book.

One Starry Night by Lauren Thompson, illustrated by Jonathan Bean. The rhymed text is fine, but it’s the stylized illustrations that make this book.

Lighthouse Christmas by Toni Buzzeo, illustrated by Nancy Carpenter. It’s pretty hard to resist the allure of a lighthouse, a one-eared cat, two endearing children, and Carpenter’s pen-and-ink art.

The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. But of course. How could you have Christmas without the Herdmans?

If you have favorite Christmas books that I’ve not listed here, will you please let me know? I’m always up for a good book! (Or two. Or ten…)

In a recent post, Patricia Spreng wrote that Advent snuck up on her and she didn’t have her Advent wreath out yet, but hey, she’d wear her purple suit coat to church on the Sundays of Advent so that she could be the Advent candle, the living light.

I thought, what a lovely idea. Then I thought of my pink coat (it’s bright pink, perfect to liven up gray Seattle days), and I thought, hey, I could be the pink candle.

There’s just one small problem. The pink candle is the joy candle. I would have to be the joy light.

Pardon me while I snicker into my sleeve. Me? The joy light? Hardly. Growing up, my sister’s nickname was Sunshine. I didn’t have a nickname, but if I had, it would have been Rain Cloud. (There’s a reason I felt an affinity for Seattle the first time I came here.)

You see, I’m a slogger. I gut things out. When life is good, I get nervous, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Yeah, I know, God only has one shoe. But what if He hasn’t dropped that one yet? Hm?

I’ve had to work hard not to be a glass-half-empty kind of girl. I’ve had to cultivate gratitude, teach myself to see the good and the true and the beautiful right here, right now, in my life, just as it is. And I’m way better at it now than I’ve ever been.

But the joy light?

It sounds so … sunny. So happy. So, well, celebratory. And I suck at celebrations. Too much work. Too much planning. I like my safe little habits and rituals. Celebration busts those wide open, blows me out of my comfortable little rut.

And really, who wants that?

But still, I wonder, ponder: what would it look like if I could embrace that pink coat I wear? If I could be the joy light? Or at least a joy light?

I think of what Susan told me a few weeks back, about how “Thank you” is the prayer that never fails, how it always brings joy.

Maybe that’s why this third week of Advent – this week of joy – is focused on Mary. Mary, who rejoiced because “God has done great things for me.” Mary, who rejoiced because she saw the gifts God had bestowed.

I see the gifts, too, I do. So. Maybe I already am a joy light. A wimpy one that gutters out on a daily basis, it’s true. But that’s why I look for the Light: because by His light I see light. By His light, I get to be light.

Even – yes? – joy light.

Gathered in Julia’s living room, we sit in a half-circle, some dozen volunteers in our church’s Godly Play program, sprawled on sofas and chairs and the floor. Debbie sits before us, a large piece of purple felt spread on the floor.

“This is the season of Advent,” she says as she smooths a long thin piece of tan felt over the purple, “the season when we get ready to celebrate the mystery of Christmas.”

She gently sets a beautifully-carved facade of Bethlehem at the left end of the tan felt. “During Advent, we are on the road to Bethlehem.” She sets the star above the city. “Who will show us the way?”

She sits for a moment, quiet, letting the question linger, echo in our minds. Quietly, she holds up a piece of wood with an Advent wreath carved on one side, a prophet on the other. “The prophets show us the way.”

She lays the wood on the felt and holds up a small carved figure. “This is the prophet Isaiah, who proclaimed that one day, the people who lived in darkness would see a great light. He can show us the way to Bethlehem.”

She sets Isaiah on the felt road and holds up a purple votive. “This is the candle of the prophets. It reminds us that the light is coming into the world. It lights the way to Bethlehem.” She lights the candle.

In the silence that follows, you could hear a pin fall onto the soft carpet on which I sit.

Over the next half hour, she lays out four more carved pieces of wood and half a dozen more carved figures: Mary and Joseph and their donkey, a shepherd and his sheep, the Magi and their camel.

Each time, she lights a candle. “The Holy Family can show us the way to Bethlehem. The shepherds can show us the way to Bethlehem. The Magi can show us the way to Bethlehem.”

Finally, she holds up the baby Jesus, his swaddled body in the shape of a cross, his bed a manger. She sets him in the center of Bethlehem. All the other figures stand around him, adoring.

We sit in our half-circle, a mirror of the one around the Holy Child, looking at the story unfolded before us, contemplating, maybe even adoring.

After a long moment of silence so deep I can hear my own breathing, the breathing of the woman next to me, Debbie says, “I wonder where God met you in this story.”

Julie says quietly, “Awe. As you told the story, I felt this deep sense of awe. How often do I begin Advent with awe?”

Around the half-circle heads nod. Yes. Yes. Yes.

“And silence,” I say. “It was such a gift to sit here and be quiet and still and listen.”

Another moment of silence, so quiet, so rich, and then Carol speaks, wonder lacing her voice. “Seeing the figures gathered there, around the baby – it reminds me of the story of the banquet, when people come from east and west and north and south, to gather at the table of the Lord.”

I think of the stained-glass window I saw in Chartes when I was pregnant with Jack, how the baby Jesus lay not in a manger but on a table, an altar. And I think of that word manger. In French, it means “to eat.” This baby is our food, as He will one day declare to His disciples. “My body,” He will say, “my blood. Take and eat. It is for you.”

It is all here, in this story, the whole Gospel.

“I wonder,” Debbie says, holding up the little cross-shaped child. “I wonder how such a tiny baby could be the light of the whole world.”

We all look at the baby. At the cross He already carries. No one speaks.

****

“Who will show us the way to Bethlehem?” Debbie asked at the beginning of the story.

“I wonder,” she said at the end.

I wonder, too: who will show us the way to the Christ Child? Who will light our journey? The prophets, yes. Mary and Joseph, yes. The shepherds, yes. The Magi, yes.

But also – Debbie.

And Julie. And Carol. And maybe me, too. And maybe you.

Maybe we can hold hands on this dark road and help each other to see: “Look, there is the light!”

“And there!”

“And here!”

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

 
This post is part of the Community Writing Project for Advent over at The High Calling.

Each of the four weeks of Advent has a watchword. The word for this first week is wait.

Advent waiting occurs on two different levels. Certainly we wait for Christmas and the celebration of Christ’s birth in history past, but we also wait for the risen Christ to come again.

In fact, the Gospel passage for the first Sunday of Advent is not the story of Jesus’ birth, not the story of the Annunciation or of Mary’s response to the angel’s startling proclamation or of Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem. Rather, it is part of Jesus’ speech about the signs of the end of the age, when we will see “the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory” (Lk 21:27).

The Church’s choice of this passage speaks of the larger significance of Advent. Yes, it is a time of waiting and preparation leading up to Christmas — the celebration of Jesus’ birth in history — but ultimately, we are not waiting for Christmas; we are waiting for Christ’s return.

In English, the word “wait” tends to imply passivity, maybe even boredom. But this is not the implication that Jesus would have had in mind when he spoke of his disciples waiting for his return. In Hebrew, the word for “wait” is also the word for “hope.” (Thus translators can render “Wait for the Lord” as “Hope in the Lord” with equal accuracy.)

This linguistic equation of “wait” with “hope” means that for Jesus, immersed as he was in the language of the Hebrew Bible, there is no conceptual differentiation between waiting and hoping. They are one and the same activity. This melding is especially apropos during Advent, when we wait in hopeful expectation for the return of Christ. Henri Nouwen calls this “active waiting.”

Active waiting, he says, “means to be present fully to the moment, in the conviction that something is happening where you are and that you want to be present to it. A waiting person is someone who is present to the moment, who believes that this moment is the moment.”

One of the traditions I find most helpful in cultivating this attitude of mindful attention during Advent is our family’s nightly lighting of the Advent wreath.

Each week during Advent, we light an additional candle, proclaiming as we do so, “Jesus Christ is the Light of the world, the Light no darkness can overcome.” This progressive lighting of the candles reminds us to wait with attentiveness through the darkness of December, because the Light who is coming into the world already shines in the darkness — if only we will watch and see.

This Advent, I invite you to pay attention: where is the light of Christ breaking through the darkness of the world?

And I invite you to share a few of those God-sightings with others (maybe in the comments?). Let’s help one another see the light as we wait for the Light.

–an edited excerpt from my book,
The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year

It was dark, and scary, sort of like an alley in a seedy part of town at two in the morning, with overflowing dumpsters, sticky sidewalks, and creepy shadows, a place where you’re either going to slip in a giant pile of doggy doo and fall and crack your pate, or a thug is going to jump out of those creepy shadows and hold you up at knife point unless you turn over all your money only you don’t have any because you suddenly realize you’re standing there in the damp cold wearing nothing but your skivvies.

Except that makes it sound like it’s almost funny, a comic version of fear.

It didn’t feel funny, though when I look back on it, I’m not sure why. It’s not like anything about my life is different now, or was different a month ago before I went to hoodoo-land. Maybe that’s why it’s so frightening: because nothing was different, and at the same time everything was different; reality was suffused with fear, and no amount of deep breathing, yoga, positive self-talk, cognitive-behavioral therapy, or even prayer changed that. I felt alone in the alley of the shadow of death.

And it scared me spitless. It scared me something-else-less, too, but I’m a nice Christian girl and we’re not supposed to say such things. And certainly not out loud. (If you hear hysterical laughter, that’s my husband, who hears such things fly from my mouth on an all-too-regular basis, and is kindly refraining from calling me a hypocrite.)

Madeleine L’Engle wrote frankly in several of her books about going through periods of atheism. I never understood that. I’m not sure I understand even now, but I definitely have been in a place of frightening agnosticism these past weeks, praying ridiculous and illogical prayers like, “Jesus, please be real” over and over again. For someone who wants her life to revolve around Christ, it’s terrifying to think that the center may not be a Person but a black hole.

I am grateful not to be standing on the edge of that abyss today. I am grateful that I’ve only had moments of looking over the edge into the darkness this whole past week. I am even grateful that when I was on the brink, I had the courage to look, to face the darkness and the fear, and to believe – oh, help my unbelief – that there is Light in the darkness, even if I couldn’t see it.

I’ve been to the seedy alleyways of my mind before, and I expect I’ll go back there for a few more rounds of sightseeing in the future – because it’s sooo much fun – but for now I am glad to be back from the dark place, to feel my normal self begin to emerge again, and to believe with my heart and not just my lips that the Light is coming – indeed, has already come – blazing into the darkness.

***

For anyone else who’s drifted into those scary dark mental spaces, here are a few blog posts that provided the pinpricks of light I needed to give me hope. Maybe they’ll help you, too:

Love or Fear by Susan Forshey

Christmas at the Solstice by Ann Voscamp

And if you’re too tired or too busy to read, here are a few sermons to listen to from our church’s Advent series on Isaiah 9. I cried my way through all three, because they spoke so perfectly to what I’ve been feeling – and fearing – all this long, dark month:

Unto Us A Child Is Born (part 1) by Tim Dearborn

Unto Us A Child Is Born (part 2) by Tim Dearborn

Unto Us A Child Is Born (part 3) by Jeff VanDuzer

I had twins in July.

Five months into this adventure, I am very, very tired. I feel like I am wandering around in a fog; there’s a sort of haze around my brain that makes me feel like it’s wrapped in gauze.

I am waiting—eagerly longing—for the day when the twins sleep through the night. Or, more accurately, for the day when I sleep through the night. I am hoping that a couple weeks of good sleep will remove the gauze from the inside of my skull.

Sometimes I get so caught up in my longing for this future day that I miss the good stuff that’s happening in my life right now. Sometimes I forget to give thanks for the goodness of my life as it is. Sometimes I get frustrated, even angry, that I am so tired. Sometimes I think the tiredness will never end.

Sometimes I get tired of waiting.

To read the rest of today’s post, click here.

“Come to me,” Jesus says, “and I will give you rest.” I want that rest.

In this Advent season of waiting, I am waiting for God’s rest. I am clinging to the promise of Isaiah:

Those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,
they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.

I want my strength renewed. I want those eagle’s wings, and the stamina to run without flagging, to walk without fainting.

I think of Ben, how my friend Susan, his godmother, claimed this verse for him in those scary days when he was in the NICU at Children’s Hospital, how she envisioned his battered, distressed lungs filling with the breath of the Spirit and his limp little body reviving and his strength renewing.

And I think: God did that. He did that for Ben. All of it.

And I think: God will do that for me, too. He will renew my strength. He will make my spirit soar. He will strengthen me and help me. He will uphold me with His hand.

I had grand plans to go down to the basement yesterday morning and drag up the boxes of Advent and Christmas books and decorations.

But at 9:30, I was still in my pajamas, hadn’t had a chance to make my bed, and hadn’t yet taken a shower. When I managed to get both babies to sleep at the same time, I decided I’d better use what few minutes I had to get clean. Getting out the decorations could wait.

I told Jack and Jane to please come get me if the babies started crying, and then I jumped in the shower. When I turned off the water 15 minutes later, I heard not just crying but wailing. I grabbed my towel, wrapped it around me, and as I walked, dripping, to the bedroom, I asked Jack and Jane why they hadn’t come gotten me like I’d asked them to.

Sweet things, they’d tried to pat Luke’s bum and get him back to sleep so they wouldn’t have to interrupt my shower. Sweet, but no cigar.

I picked Luke up and popped him in the swing in the hope that he’d calm down long enough for me to dry off. He didn’t calm down.

Then Ben started crying.

That’s when I realized that the cats had yakked all over my bed.

I stood in the bedroom in my towel, my hair dripping down my back, with a baby yelling in the crib, another one yelling in the next room, and kitty vomit all over my sheets.

Some days are like that.

Needless to say, I still haven’t gotten the boxes of books and decorations out of the basement, but I will. Maybe tomorrow?

In the meantime, here are two lovely Advent resources for those of you who’d like to get past the kitty puke and embrace this season more deeply:

My friend Susan has created a joy-full Advent calendar with a simple activity for each day of Celtic Advent (which started back on November 15).

And over on her blog, Ann Voscamp has Jesse Tree Devotionals available for download.

The word for the fourth and final week of Advent is “love,” and it is associated with Joseph. When God’s angel told him in a dream to not be afraid to marry Mary, Joseph loved his fiancee enough to make her his wife, in spite of the raised eyebrows and innuendo that would be directed his way because of her illegitimate pregnancy. He then loved as his own the son Mary bore, though the boy was neither flesh of his flesh nor bone of his bone.

As we wait, not passively, but actively, for Christmas and Christ’s coming, we have the opportunity, like Joseph, to see one another as the God-bearers we are, and to support and love one another as we attempt to bring to birth the new life that God has planted within us.

Henri Nouwen sees this loving support not just in Joseph and Mary’s relationship but also in the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary (Luke 1:39-45):

These two women created space for each other to wait. They affirmed for each other that something was happening that was worth waiting for. I think that is the model of the Christian community. It is a community of support, celebration, and affirmation in which we can lift up what has already begun in us. The visit of Elizabeth and Mary is one of the Bible’s most beautiful expressions of what it means to form community, to be together, gathered around a promise, affirming that something is really happening.

Mary and Elizabeth’s mutual support points beyond itself, giving us a picture of what Christian community looks like.

In a similar way, Joseph’s love for Mary and for Jesus, with its attendant self-sacrifice, points beyond itself, giving us a glimpse of God’s great outpouring of himself in love for all of us, love that is seen so clearly in the Incarnation, the coming of the God who created the cosmos to live among us as one of us.

From Kimberlee Conway Ireton, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity Press, 2008), p 21-23.

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Taproot Theatre Blogathon Update: Thanks to the generosity of Herb and Esther Arden, Adam Bailey, Scott Cummins, and Tiffany Werner, each comment will raise $5 for Taproot’s reconstruction efforts after the fire. We need just 10 more comments to raise $250! If you haven’t yet, please go leave a comment on the blogathon post.

The watchword for the third week of Advent is “rejoice,” and it is connected with Mary whose “soul doth magnify the Lord” (Luke 1:46 KJV). This week also has a different color than the other weeks: pink, for joy.

Mary’s words and the change in liturgical colors remind us that this time of waiting and preparation is a joyful time, that even in the midst of fasting and penitence we can know joy because, as Mary sang in the Magnificat, “God has done great things for [us].”

In my Protestant upbringing, Mary was simply a Jewish peasant girl who was the mother of Jesus. I’ve since learned that Catholic and Orthodox Christians have a much richer and more symbolic understanding of Mary. They call her theotokos, Mother of God, God-bearer. She is the symbol of humanity itself, fallen but willingly entering into a restored relationship with God through her “yes” to the angel’s proclamation that she would be the mother of the Messiah….

By bearing in her womb the Son of God, Mary makes possible the Incarnation and, thus, later, the crucifixion and resurrection. In so doing, she turns the mourning of our fallenness into the rejoicing of our redemption. It is God who does these great things, to be sure, as Mary herself proclaims, but how great a God we serve, that he would allow us, invite us, long for us to participate in his redeeming work in the world….

During Advent, we are to be like Mary, waiting actively, joyfully, and expectantly for the new life that has been and will be born into the world. And also like Mary, we are to be agents of this birthing. We are to bring the Light of the world into the world.

From Kimberlee Conway Ireton, The Circle of Seasons: Meeting God in the Church Year (InterVarsity Press, 2008), p 21-23.

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Taproot Theatre Blogathon Update: Thanks to the generosity of Scott Cummins and Tiffany Werner, each comment will raise $3 for Taproot’s reconstruction efforts after the fire. If you haven’t yet, please go leave a comment on the blogathon post.