the gift of a story - for you

I'm re-posting this from last year because this is still exactly how I feel, and I couldn't say it any better. Hope you all had a lovely Christmas!

The year I turned eight was a complicated year. There were conflicts and ructions and strange goings-on in my family, and underneath the surface I wasn't a happy girl. There's a photo of me on my birthday, kneeling beside the coffee table laid out with my birthday presents. I was wearing one of them, a new flannelet nightie, but the best present of all was a small, burgundy book, a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

In a year of complications and unhappiness, that book was one of the best gifts I could have been given. I read those stories over and over. My favourite was "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and in reading that story I dreamt I was one of them. I dreamt of escaping to another world, a world where I was beautiful and free. I still love that story. It speaks to me of a world beyond what I know, of possibilities yet-to-be-imagined. It satisfies the longing still in me to be beautiful and free.

Stories have been doing that very thing since the beginning. Stories teach us, comfort us, prepare us for the future, explain the past, and hold the threads of family and society together. Stories leave a legacy long after government policy has been phased out and scientific research is disproved. Stories live lives of their own, far beyond the lives of the story-tellers. A good story can comfort grief, facilitate healing, and soften tragedy. Every culture and age has its own stories. Every family and community has them. We live off stories.

And yet when it comes to the Christmas Story, we say "oh it's just a story." Somehow the insistence from Christians that we read this story as gospel makes us recoil in distaste. We reject the facts, and in doing so, reject the story. I'm a Christian who reads this story as more truth than fable, yet I read it with an open mind. In my reading I'm aware that some of the details may have been lost or changed in its two thousand years of re-telling, but for me, this story is not in the details.

I hate the commercialism of Christmas. I tried really hard this month to keep the Christmas Story at the forefront of our minds. For us, celebrating Advent was the perfect way to take our focus off presents and shopping and stuff and keep our hearts turned towards the baby at the centre of it all. I've written a fair bit about Advent in the last few weeks, and if you didn't get it then, now you know why. Advent was our panacea for greed and consumption. It saved me from despairing over plastic and shopping malls.

Advent gave us our most special moment of all, on Christmas Eve, when Mary and Joseph finally reached the end of their long journey and arrived at the stable. Baby Jesus was brought out of his hiding place and the Holy Family was united. We lit five candles. We danced and sang to"O Come all ye Faithful". Our hearts were bursting. The Christmas Story was a gift to us this Christmas, far better than all the gifts, as lovely as they were, that came on Christmas Day.

You don't have to be a card-carrying Christian to enjoy the gift of the Christmas Story.  You might be uncomfortable with a literal reading but that doesn't mean you need to reject any reading at all. This is a story that has been celebrated, remembered, and re-told for two thousand years. It's a story that gives us hope, inspires us to give, and connects us with the divine. In this age where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is only widening, and when we face news of tragedy and disaster on a daily basis, we need all the hope we can get.

In light of this, Santa just doesn't cut it. I'm not anti-Santa, and Santa is not banished from our house, but if our narrative-diet at Christmas was Santa and only Santa, we would be desperately lacking. Santa is the sweets and chocolate of Christmas. Treats taste good and are lots of fun, and for children who are fortunate enough to receive them they are anticipated with excitement. But they don't last. The same goes for many of the presents unwrapped on Christmas Day.

I'm sitting here writing this on the day after Boxing Day and by now the excitement of Christmas and new things has waned. Adults everywhere are regretting their over-indulgences and avoiding their bank statements, and children are in that tired, irritable post-Christmas funk, disappointed with broken toys and whining for more chocolate. That one anticipated day went all too quickly.

But the story remains. The story doesn't get boring and it can't be broken. It doesn't plunder our bank accounts, require weeks of late-night shopping, or cause stress and traffic jams. It doesn't trigger family bickering, engender competition, or result in inevitable disappointment.

I had one other special moment this Christmas. It was last week as I was madly trying to get our Christmas shopping done. As a result of a seemingly random series of events I ended up in the middle of a busy mall, standing outside The Warehouse, face to face with a ChildFund table laid out with packs advertising children who needed sponsoring.

It was such a contrast to the crazy bustle of the store I'd come out of, and took me so completely by surprise, that I started crying! The girl managing the table was surprised and concerned. I tried to wipe back the tears, embarrassed, but really I just wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for all the people so busy in their Christmas shopping that they walked past this stand without even seeing it. I wanted to cry for all the children whose faces were in front of me, desperate to be noticed. I wanted to cry for myself, that I so often let overwhelming need paralyse me from doing anything.

Then my dear sister turned up unexpectedly beside me, again by a seemingly random series of events. I was so relieved to see her that I wrapped my arms around her.  I explained myself tearfully, and we laughed. Then between the two of us we sponsored three children. Three girls who live so far from the greed and excess I've witnessed in the last few weeks, and for whom life from now on will be just that little bit easier.

Santa has got nothing for those girls. Those girls and millions of other children like them are outsiders to the world of Santa. But the Christmas Story is different. The Christmas Story is about a baby who grew up to be a man who noticed the needy and made friends with outsiders. The Christmas Story, however you read it, inspires compassion and charity. It celebrates the wonder of life and the hope of redemption. This is what we need, more than new things and over-full stomachs. We need a gift that satisfies our inner longings, a gift that won't wear out or be easily forgotten. We need a story.

how it is in december

It rained nearly all of last week. We started wondering whether summer was really coming. But it did. It's been mostly sunny and warm since Monday. The rain hasn't really bothered us that much, but it was funny having to hang out washing inside the week before Christmas. 

We had our Christmas service at church and the kids all got up and did a kiwi rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It was pretty cute and they had a lot of fun. Back at home we finally got our Christmas tree up. And then came the lights. According to my husband, you can't get lights that don't flash anymore. The Christmas tree flashes red and green, and the lights around the french doors do a rolling medley of flashing so fast it should have a health warning for epileptics. It's lucky we found our old fairy lights which are strung up around some of the windows. They are small and still, just how I like them. I actually got a bit grumpy about all the flashing lights, as my family will tell you readily. It wasn't just that they were flashing, it was that they outshone my advent candles. I got beeswax tea light candles especially, but next time I'll find the biggest candles I can. Christmas is not the season for subtlety, obviously. 

It's not just the lights I've been grumpy about either. During the last week of school the girls couldn't stop talking about Santa. We've never been anti-Santa, but neither of us has ever had the energy or enthusiasm to support the fantasy either. So the girls figured things out pretty quickly, and up until this year have never shown much interest in Santa at all. This year was different. Greer's been singing Christmas songs about Santa at the top of her voice, and under the christmas tree is a creation made of blocks and wooden trees which is apparently "Santa's Grotto." Sure, whatever. But the last straw was when I heard Isobella tell Greer she wasn't going to make her a Christmas present because she "hadn't been nice." Just in the same way we hear everywhere that Santa only brings presents to children who have been good. At that point I told the girls that I was grumpy with Santa and that I didn't want to hear any more about him! For a few days afterwards they'd ask me every so often if I'd "stopped being grumpy with Santa." Eventually they stopped asking!

I know I probably sound like the Grinch. If you know me, you'll know I really am not like the Grinch at all. But I hate the "you'll get presents if you're good" thing.  It's manipulative, untrue, and quite frankly a bit low. I love my kids, we all do, and that's why we give them gifts. Our love is not conditional, so why would our gift giving be? And Santa? Does he actually love anyone?

Anyway, I am actually really happy about Christmas. I love looking at my diary for this week. Every day is covered with lists and scribbles, except for Sunday. Sunday is completely blank. Sunday will be lovely. Mum will probably take the kids to church while I stay home and cook the turkey. Then we'll sit at our enormous table, us, Mum, and my sister and her family, and we'll eat and talk and enjoy each other's company. Later my Dad and step-mum and sister will probably come around, and we'll eat and talk some more. We're pretty traditional around here, as far as Christmas goes, so it won't matter if it rains. We've never had any urges to go to the beach or have a BBQ; turkey and pavlova make us all very happy.

St Nicholas and everything else

  

We started a new tradition this week. I invited my friend Liz and her kids around after school on Tuesday and we celebrated St Nicholas Day. We made this cake, I printed out some colour-in pages from here, and I got a picture book from the library called "Saint Nicholas: The story of the real Santa Claus" by Mary Joslin and read it to the kids. We even tucked a small present into their shoes when they weren't looking. "Saint Nicholas has come! Saint Nicholas has come!" they yelled at the top of their voices when they found the gifts.

I didn't know very much about Saint Nicholas myself until this week. I didn't know the story about the gold coins being thrown down the chimney to the family in need, and the coins landing in the shoes and stockings that were drying by the fire. I didn't know that in Holland, where the children all put their shoes out ready for a present to be delivered by St Nick on the night of the fifth, the Dutch word for Saint Nicholas is "Sinter Klaas." It's not that I didn't know all of this... in a vague sort of way... but I'd never actually put it all together.

So it made me very happy to have another story to layer over the Santa story and the piped christmas music. Especially this week, when Greer had a lovely carol singing morning at school, accompanied by flashing lights, reindeer, a gingerbread house, no sign of a manger anywhere, and no "real" christmas carols.  And especially when this is the time I start to get a bit grumpy and overwhelmed by all the money and activity that the Christmas season seems to require.

But I'm not here to complain. The fact of the matter is that this week was actually very complicated, for all sorts of reasons. As I wrote to you last time, I am trying to achieve a kind of "zen" purposefulness about our Christmas preparations. But I keep being thwarted. I keep crying for children without families, and getting emails from World Vision in my inbox warning me in no uncertain terms that a "hunger crisis is looming" in West Africa.

And so what do I do? I buy more Christmas decorations.

celebrating Advent as myself

Today is Annunciation Sunday, the first Sunday in Advent. Yesterday the girls and their cousins went treasure-hunting for leaves and flowers to use as the backdrop for our nativity scene. I found the closest thing I could to a purple or blue piece of fabric, laid it over the top of the writing desk that sits in our dining room, and then created a backdrop for the figures that will be added as the weeks go by. It's looking lovely and simple now, but it won't stay that way for ever. By the time Christmas comes it will most likely have plenty more greenery, plus a full menagerie of animals and figures from our nativity set. This will all lead up to the arrival of baby Jesus on Christmas Eve, who will be very comfy and warm on that manger Isobella created over a cut stone.

Today at church our Pastor spoke about the Annunciation. The moment right at the beginning of the Christmas Story where the angel Gabriel visits Mary and tells her she is going to give birth to Jesus. This story has always been meaningful to me. I am in awe of Mary's willingness. Her initial incredulity at the angel's words melts into obedience. Be it unto me according to your word, she says. There is no passivity here, her vow must have come from a steely resolve she somehow found within her. I want that. A selection of paintings of the Annunciation were shown, and some of them were beautiful. But none of them moved me like this one I found tonight in this post about preparing for Advent.

The Annunciation by Henry Ossawa Tanner, 1859-1937

Here there is no hiding from the reality; Mary was so young and vulnerable. There she is, having been woken from sleep, disheveled, unsure, amazed. It's easy to read the story without really considering what this moment must have been like for her. Was she afraid? At first, yes. In shock? Probably. Completely taken by surprise? Absolutely. And yet something within her must have understood. Something within her must have been ready to be willing. Just a girl. Yet so ready.

Last year I bumbled my way through Advent, thrilled to have found an antidote to the commercialism of Christmas, but a complete novice. This year I'm still making it up as I go along, but I feel like I'm being re-united with an old friend, one who I liked the instant we met, and who I'm chuffed to be seeing again. I'm having fun discovering and creating traditions that are uniquely "us." The girls are so excited about Advent. We lit our first candle tonight, read the story of the Annunciation from Luke, and wrote some prayers together. It took us to way past a reasonable bedtime, which meant that it was growing dark. I walked into the dining room after tucking the girls in and the glow of one small candle changed everything.

But I've found myself not just thinking of our family traditions, but myself, and what I want to get out of this season. Karen Edmisten, in the post I linked to above, writes, As Advent unfolds, you're savouring the liturgical season, you're teaching your children about watching, waiting, and preparing for the Lord. But what are you doing for yourself? Her words challenged me to ask myself the same question. What do I want to ponder on as I wait? How will I contemplate what is to come? What will my priorities be in this potentially crazy season?

I don't think this kind of reflection is only for the religiously-minded. Anyone that wants to avoid a Christmas that's filled with stress and exhaustion would do well to pause and consider what lies ahead. Or else, as my pastor said today, you end up with another "Groundhog Christmas." I've had enough of those.

I've been writing nearly every morning since I told you I was doing NaNoWriMo and trying to write 50,000 words. I've been getting up at 5am, or as close to that as I can manage, and I've never been more content. I feel like I'm finally doing what I was made to do. I've been working on the novel that's been hanging around for almost forever, and I'm making writing a feature of my day. I feel like I've found the life I searched for desperately, knowing it was out there, but never quite found. I won't get to 50,000 words by Tuesday, but I've written 9,000. That's 9,000 more than zero.

What I'm trying to say is that I feel like myself. I'm living my life, not a version of it. Writing, in the active sense, influences my decisions, my priorities, and how I spend my time. It's the thing that makes me me. This all causes me wonder what shape Advent and Christmas will take now that I'm writing. I have a feeling that if I can keep this living-as-myself thing up, everything else will fall into place.

the gift of a story

The year I turned eight was a complicated year. There were conflicts and ructions and strange goings-on in my family, and underneath the surface I wasn't a happy girl. There's a photo of me on my birthday, kneeling beside the coffee table laid out with my birthday presents. I was wearing one of them, a new flannelet nightie, but the best present of all was a small, burgundy book, a collection of Grimm's Fairy Tales.

In a year of complications and unhappiness, that book was one of the best gifts I could have been given. I read those stories over and over. My favourite was "The Twelve Dancing Princesses," and in reading that story I dreamt I was one of them. I dreamt of escaping to another world, a world where I was beautiful and free. I still love that story. It speaks to me of a world beyond what I know, of possibilities yet-to-be-imagined. It satisfies the longing still in me to be beautiful and free.

Stories have been doing that very thing since the beginning. Stories teach us, comfort us, prepare us for the future, explain the past, and hold the threads of family and society together. Stories leave a legacy long after government policy has been phased out and scientific research is disproved. Stories live lives of their own, far beyond the lives of the story-tellers. A good story can comfort grief, facilitate healing, and soften tragedy. Every culture and age has its own stories. Every family and community has them. We live off stories.

And yet when it comes to the Christmas Story, we say "oh it's just a story." Somehow the insistence from Christians that we read this story as gospel makes us recoil in distaste. We reject the facts, and in doing so, reject the story. I'm a Christian who reads this story as more truth than fable, yet I read it with an open mind. In my reading I'm aware that some of the details may have been lost or changed in its two thousand years of re-telling, but for me, this story is not in the details.

I hate the commercialism of Christmas. I tried really hard this month to keep the Christmas Story at the forefront of our minds. For us, celebrating Advent was the perfect way to take our focus off presents and shopping and stuff and keep our hearts turned towards the baby at the centre of it all. I've written a fair bit about Advent in the last few weeks, and if you didn't get it then, now you know why. Advent was our panacea for greed and consumption. It saved me from despairing over plastic and shopping malls.

Advent gave us our most special moment of all, on Christmas Eve, when Mary and Joseph finally reached the end of their long journey and arrived at the stable. Baby Jesus was brought out of his hiding place and the Holy Family was united. We lit five candles. We danced and sang to"O Come all ye Faithful". Our hearts were bursting. The Christmas Story was a gift to us this Christmas, far better than all the gifts, as lovely as they were, that came on Christmas Day.

You don't have to be a card-carrying Christian to enjoy the gift of the Christmas Story.  You might be uncomfortable with a literal reading but that doesn't mean you need to reject any reading at all. This is a story that has been celebrated, remembered, and re-told for two thousand years. It's a story that gives us hope, inspires us to give, and connects us with the divine. In this age where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is only widening, and when we face news of tragedy and disaster on a daily basis, we need all the hope we can get.

In light of this, Santa just doesn't cut it. I'm not anti-Santa, and Santa is not banished from our house, but if our narrative-diet at Christmas was Santa and only Santa, we would be desperately lacking. Santa is the sweets and chocolate of Christmas. Treats taste good and are lots of fun, and for children who are fortunate enough to receive them they are anticipated with excitement. But they don't last. The same goes for many of the presents unwrapped on Christmas Day.

I'm sitting here writing this on the day after Boxing Day and by now the excitement of Christmas and new things has waned. Adults everywhere are regretting their over-indulgences and avoiding their bank statements, and children are in that tired, irritable post-Christmas funk, disappointed with broken toys and whining for more chocolate. That one anticipated day went all too quickly.

But the story remains. The story doesn't get boring and it can't be broken. It doesn't plunder our bank accounts, require weeks of late-night shopping, or cause stress and traffic jams. It doesn't trigger family bickering, engender competition, or result in inevitable disappointment.

I had one other special moment this Christmas. It was last week as I was madly trying to get our Christmas shopping done. As a result of a seemingly random series of events I ended up in the middle of a busy mall, standing outside The Warehouse, face to face with a ChildFund table laid out with packs advertising children who needed sponsoring.

It was such a contrast to the crazy bustle of the store I'd come out of, and took me so completely by surprise, that I started crying! The girl managing the table was surprised and concerned. I tried to wipe back the tears, embarrassed, but really I just wanted to cry. I wanted to cry for all the people so busy in their Christmas shopping that they walked past this stand without even seeing it. I wanted to cry for all the children whose faces were in front of me, desperate to be noticed. I wanted to cry for myself, that I so often let overwhelming need paralyse me from doing anything.

Then my dear sister turned up unexpectedly beside me, again by a seemingly random series of events. I was so relieved to see her that I wrapped my arms around her.  I explained myself tearfully, and we laughed. Then between the two of us we sponsored three children. Three girls who live so far from the greed and excess I've witnessed in the last few weeks, and for whom life from now on will be just that little bit easier.

Santa has got nothing for those girls. Those girls and millions of other children like them are outsiders to the world of Santa. But the Christmas Story is different. The Christmas Story is about a baby who grew up to be a man who noticed the needy and made friends with outsiders. The Christmas Story, however you read it, inspires compassion and charity. It celebrates the wonder of life and the hope of redemption. This is what we need, more than new things and over-full stomachs. We need a gift that satisfies our inner longings, a gift that won't wear out or be easily forgotten. We need a story.

Fourth Sunday in Advent

The girls dressed up as angels this morning, getting ready for our church Christmas Service.

All of the children sang two Christmas songs as part of the service.

There was party food and fun for them afterwards!

Paddy's mum Mary gave up Mass to be with us - lovely.

I conquered one of my fears this afternoon and tried a recipe from one of those blogs that leaves me feeling wide-eyed and inadequate. This is Peppermint Bark, just before I cut it. I'd call mine the slightly deconstructed/lazy version ;)  It is very yummy, although as you might notice when I took the photo it was sweating already - today was so humid. I'm too scared to take this out of the fridge now, not sure how I'm going to get it to Paddy's sisters' place an hour away on Christmas Day! Mmm... maybe this is a better gift for a winter Christmas?!!

This is where the Christmas Tree would be if I could be bothered getting it down. So far, no one has complained about its absence. The girls have set up their own manger scene complete with attending animals and three presents labelled appropriately. We were given a paper tree which is on top of the fire and is getting decorated randomly. Our kids' bible is open at the Christmas Story on the music stand. This is all their own doing, and better than a tree, if you ask me. (Mostly because the tree is going to require a lot of baby-training to stop Abigail pulling it down on top of herself!!) 

The girls read Christmas stories listening to Melanie's favourite Christmas songs.

We lit candles and talked about the special day which is so near.

And now I'm going to do the dishes.

trees, advent, and rain

Seven in the morning and it's raining right now, for the first time in weeks. I just went out onto the deck in my dressing gown and moved the girls' bikes under the eaves. I'd be quite happy to be out walking in this rain. It has been so humid. The garden is very dry. Our friends who have a farm are worried about drought. I hope this rain stays with us for a while, and I hope it's raining other places too, not just here on this suburban street with the cars driving up and down the road on the way to work. I love watching the rain.

I especially love watching the rain coming down over all the green I see from here. I've been thinking about trees lately, because a week or so ago our neighbours had several trees majorly trimmed and a couple cut down. We were sad and happy at the same time. We lost a beautiful Pohutukawa that was just outside our kitchen window. We loved watching the birds come to suck the nectar out of the gorgeous red blooms, and we loved how it hid the neighbours' roof from view. Now we can see their roof clearly. We like our neighbours a lot, but a roof just a roof, if you know what I mean, it's certainly not a tree.

But the view from here at our dining table is so much better now. The trees on the boundary between them and us were pretty overgrown, and they blocked out a fair bit of our outlook. Now sitting here I can see all the way around. A wide view over our street and up to the houses and bush on the ridge above us. We have more view out the back too. Whereas before there was a thick flank of leaves blocking the sky, now there are open spaces, openness we can see through past the High School next door out to far off into the distance.

This is something I love. I love views from high places. I love seeing forever. I love looking out over layers, seeing past our neighbours to the houses and trees beyond. It does my soul good. I'm not entirely sure why, but I think it's something about perspective. And right now perspective is exactly what I need.  It's amazing what we humans can withstand if we have some perspective. It might be simply knowing that the season we are in has an end date, or it might be knowing that what we are doing is a job that will be finished... eventually. Or it might be knowing that there are other, more serious things going on beyond our own small world, and that we are not alone. Or it might be an other-worldly perspective we need, a somehow knowing that what we are going through will one day be a blink, not even a blink, when viewed from that unimaginable eternity. I don't know which of those perspectives I need most, but I'll take any of them. And right now, looking out at the grey rain drizzling down over green trees is good for my soul.

Actually, now I think about it, Advent is all about perspective. Advent is a reminder, if we let it be, that there is something, or someone, at the end of all our waiting. For all our longing for something better than we have, for that feeling we just can't shake that there must be more, for all our dissatisfactions and frustrations, all our cynicism and disbelief, Advent tells us there is something we are waiting for, something worth hoping for.

At church on Sunday I had the privelege of sharing some thoughts about Advent, and these were my words:

"Advent didn’t mean much to me until a year ago. And even then, my understanding was limited. This year somehow I’m starting to get it. Advent as the season, the five precious Sundays, the time of waiting expectantly, of preparing our homes and preparing our hearts. And Advent as a mirror into the future. Showing us that the waiting and preparing we do now, in this one tiny moment of now, is a reflection of the waiting and preparing we will do all our lives, in waiting for the greatest, most holy, most unimaginable Advent to come. The Advent we are all yearning for, groaning for even, as Romans 8 reminds us.

That's why I don't think there's any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times. The created world itself can hardly wait for what's coming next. Everything in creation is being more or less held back. God reins it in until both creation and all the creatures are ready and can be released at the same moment into the glorious times ahead. Meanwhile, the joyful anticipation deepens.
All around us we observe a pregnant creation. The difficult times of pain throughout the world are simply birth pangs. But it's not only around us; it's within us. The Spirit of God is arousing us within. We're also feeling the birth pangs. These sterile and barren bodies of ours are yearning for full deliverance. That is why waiting does not diminish us, any more than waiting diminishes a pregnant mother. We are enlarged in the waiting. We, of course, don't see what is enlarging us. But the longer we wait, the larger we become, and the more joyful our expectancy. (Romans 8:18-25 The Message)

And so the obvious question now is simple. What are we waiting for? Last week we were given an image, a glimpse of what we are waiting for in the sense of the great Advent to come. But we don’t always know what we are waiting for in the now either. Are waiting for the craziness to be over? Are we waiting to eat turkey and open presents? Are we waiting for our summer holiday? And yet we know that is not what Christmas means to us. We know that it’s Jesus we are waiting for. We are waiting to celebrate his arrival. God’s arrival. That mind-blowing moment when our very creator and sustainer bursts onto the stage of our world and into our homes and hearts, as a baby. We are waiting for a baby!

This is how Catholic author and blogger Amy Welborn describes it.

“How can you prepare for that?

...The only way we can - the way that we’ve been given, the way that we live in a finite world aching for the infinite.
…Prepare to hold a baby.
Not in a closed room but in one with the windows and doors flung wide open so the mystery of God and His rising collapsing binding loosening transformed and transforming creation courses through and becomes the place you live with the One who made it all and made you to live there.
…Prepare to hold a baby.”

Most of us know about preparing for a baby. If we haven’t done it ourselves we’ve seen others around us planning, purchasing, gathering together all the paraphanalia that seems to go with a newborn. And we’ve caught their expectation, we’ve witnessed their growing excitement. And when that baby is due, when it’s “any day now” we don’t need to hear words to know how that pregnant woman is feeling. We can see it in her tired eyes, and in the unbelieveable hugeness of her aching, stretched belly. We think, she can’t possibly get any bigger, that baby has to come!

And even if you haven’t held a newborn of your own in your arms, you’ve seen one, you’ve held one awkwardly not sure if you might break it, you’ve held it in wonder, looking down at the tiniest nose and darkest eyes and been amazed that there in this bundle of warm skin, is an entire person.

And so it was with Jesus. Mary held her baby. And in her baby, in that tiny, fragile bundle of skin, was God.

What are we waiting for?

We are waiting for a baby."

And today I remind myself that. I give myself that perspective. There is so much more to my life than what I can see with my own eyes. This one moment I am in will pass. There is something coming that is better, more perfect, more beautiful than anything I can imagine... something worth waiting for, worth hoping in. I watch the rain still persisting down, softening the hard and cracked ground, and I feel it raining inside me, softening my heart, turning all my dry despondency into hope.

advent update

Things are pretty busy around here. We had a wedding last weekend, the girls were flower girls and I was a bridesmaid, and it was wonderful (more about that to come.) This weekend we have friends coming over for a BBQ, and so in between the two events I'm trying to get the house in order, finish all the big jobs we started when we thought we might be putting the house on the market (like putting mulch on the garden and cleaning the windows!) and do a bit of Christmas shopping. I don't want the rest of this month too feel so busy, and yet it is all good and important.

And then, in the midst of all that, it's Advent, and we are trying not to lose sight of it. Our Advent calendar gets opened pretty much every other day, and the girls are loving that. We've got the nativity scene Paddy's mum gave us on the piano. Mary and Joseph are making their long journey up and down the piles of books on top of the piano towards the stable. The figures get moved around every now and then by little fingers, but we're trying to stick to a "only on Advent Sundays" rule for re-arranging the scene owing to their break-ability. It kind of works. The stable has already been decorated with pink ribbon, as you can see, which when you are a six-year old girl, is entirely appropriate. We have a stocking "for Jesus" which holds the notes of gratitude we are writing and which will be opened and read sometime on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. (I can't remember where I got that idea from.) We've got a small pile of Christmas story books in the lounge and we've been reading them at bedtime.

I'd thought we might light candles at dinner time. I read about a family who have a candle-lit dinner every evening during Advent, which I thought was a lovely idea, until I remembered that we are in day-light savings here, and it doesn't get dark until 9pm! So we've had candles at dinner times on Advent Sundays,  but that's all.  I really understand Christmas in winter now. It's nothing to do with snow! It's the fact that you can have candle-light dinners. Light means so much more when it is dark all around. I've been wondering why we love light. Candles, Christmas lights, Christmas light displays.... we love them. Is it because they sparkle and glitter? Or is it because there is something inherently satisfying about seeing light in the midst of darkness? I have to admit that for the first time I've been a bit jealous of those of you who get Christmas in winter. It's so easy to celebrate light when it's winter. Light in winter is warm, hopeful and a longed-for refuge from the cold darkness all around.

Then yesterday I was sitting on our bed working on some thoughts for the Advent talk at church on Sunday. I looked from our bed out over the deck and onto the garden. It was late afternoon and the deck was half in shade. The other half, the half the drying rack filled with washing was on, was in full sunlight. Out in the garden the trees were swishing and swaying in the wind, lit up, glowing in their new green. At the end of the garden, underneath the huge pine tree that hangs over our back fence, were the spidery lines and patches of shade and dappled light where the sunlight hit the trees and spread itself out. Everywhere I looked I saw a story of light and dark, of dark and light. And I realised that light in the midst of darkness isn't the only story to celebrate. Christmas in summer is another story completely, and just as special. We get the sun at its best. We get to see trees glowing green, and intense blue skies. This is the light we celebrate. Blinding, glorious. The light of the world.

Advent 101

Before you read any further you need to understand two things. One is that I don't take myself too seriously, and the other is that I sometimes think I know what I'm talking about, sound like I know what I'm talking about, but actually have no clue!

That important point out of the way, let's talk about Advent. Last year for the first time I realised that I wanted to make Christmas a more meaningful season, rather than one special day preceded by a month of crazy busy-ness and stressful shopping experiences.  Advent wasn't part of our family Christmas tradition, other than the advent calendar we always had, and it wasn't really talked about in the church I grew up in. I remember loving our Advent calendars though, the thrill of opening each tiny door and the uncontainable excitement that grew and grew as we got closer to Christmas Day.  A couple of years ago I started reading quite a few lovely Catholic blogs (like this one, this one, and this one.) and found that for these families Advent was really important and very special. I liked what I was reading, and last year I decided to try and incorporate some of these ideas into our own celebration of the Christmas season. But I didn't know much about Advent really, and with the busy-ness of the lead-up to Christmas my good intentions faded almost to nothing.

This year, somehow, I feel like I know a bit more. I managed to realise ahead of time that there are four Sundays in Advent (that was a good start!), today being the first, and I've been thinking all week about Advent and how we could celebrate it. I've been looking on a church supplies website at Advent wreaths, and talking to Paddy (who grew up catholic) about Advent. I found a really nice, plain circular wreath online, and showed it to him. I liked that particular one because it had an inscription around the base about light. I love the Advent idea about Christ being the light, and anticipating the coming light. That really means a lot to me. We looked through the other wreaths together, there were more simple ones I liked, but they had "hope, peace, love and joy" as the inscription around the base. "That's just not very advent-y" I said.

Well, my husband looked at me and roared with laughter. "You have no idea about Advent!" he said laughing, and then he laughed some more. I tried not to look silly. "But I thought Advent was about the Christ being the light" I said in my defence. More laughter. And then he (who was once an altar boy) proceeded to educate me.

So that is why I need Advent 101. I have no clue. At least I've figured out what the each of the Sundays in Advent are about now (today is Hope, then Peace, Love and the last Sunday is Joy, funny that...) and I think we'll do something together as a family around dinner time on each of the four Sundays. What we'll actually do I'm not too sure, I've got a few ideas, but I'm kind of making it up as we go along. Here are a few links if you're interested:

First up is Karen Edmisten's No-Panic Advent series
This post has plenty of ideas about Advent Calendars and Wreaths
This is a really lovely piece about Welcoming Baby Jesus
there are some beautifully simple ideas here
and this link is to a selection of basic kids colour-in pages relating to Advent. I'm going to print some of them out and make them into Advent colouring in books for the girls.

I think it's fair to say that we'll definitely be doing a low-church version of Advent, and I think that's quite appropriate given my complete ignorance! But I'm really looking forward to celebrating Jesus now, not just on Christmas day. In fact, I can feel it in my stomach as I write, a happy butterfly expectation, a bubbling waiting to burst. You might have noticed I don't write about my faith all the time here, but in truth I am a religious nutter... in the best possible sense. You have been warned!