Trisha had an early Christmas present today. After returning home from some last minute shopping and a quick trip to the grocery store, there, sitting in front of the garage door, was a big square box--addressed to Trisha and from The Liturgical Press. Inside, after a ceremony of opening, were 20 author's copies of her new book. It is now on the market and places such as Amazon.com are promising a December 28th mailing date.

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The Ceremony of Opening

Advent Wreath

A recent post about holiday rituals in my friend Linda’s Blog, Each Little World, has prompted me to share one of my favorite family traditions: our Advent Wreath Ceremony. We’ve been doing this for over thirty years, having started when our sons were little boys and used to fidget and fight with each other over which one of them got to blow out the candles.

Every year in late November I take down the dusty box containing our Advent wreath, and every year I notice it seems to be looking even shabbier than the year before. But I can’t bring myself to replace it. Even though I’ve modified the wording of our little ritual and selected new poems and readings to go with it, the Advent Wreath itself is the same one we’ve been using for years. It’s far too precious to replace.

When the kids were little, we used to be fairly disciplined about taking a few minutes out of our hectic schedules to gather together in the living room to light the appropriate number of candles and go through the short little ceremony I’d put together. We always ended by turning off the lights and sitting quietly (that was the hard part with fidgety little boys) to listen to a Christmas carol we took turns picking out ahead of time. Those days it was probably the only time I had to slow down long enough to pay attention to the importance of the season. Oddly enough, now that I have more time for doing that, the Advent Wreath candles sometimes go unlit in the evenings. But I can’t imagine doing away with this tradition entirely. It’s far too important a symbol of what matters to me about my life and my family. And that, after all, is what traditions are all about.

Our Advent Wreath Ritual:

Reader:

LET EVENING COME

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let the dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don’t
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.
-- Jane Kenyon

Leader:
We gather around our Advent Wreath to spend a few quiet moments together during these busy weeks before Christmas. For we have discovered that the true joy of the season is found in moments like these and in all the special times we share together with family and friends.

Reader:
Our Advent Wreath symbolizes our life together and the values and traditions we cherish -- including our memories of the past and hopes for the future. Its greens, berries and pine cones represent the beauty of our world. They serve to remind us that our lives have been blessed with an abundance of things to be grateful for.

Reader:
The candles symbolize our need to reflect on what is sacred and significant about life. They help us speak of our profound realization that in the midst of everything we have come to know and experience in this world, there is something far greater than what we will ever be able to comprehend or explain.

Leader:
The first candle stands for the importance of Preparing ourselves to meet the choices and circumstances that are part of life. It reminds us of the need to be patient with ourselves and others in order to pay attention and respond to that which gives our lives meaning and perspective. As we light this candle, let us reflect on how we can be prepared to recognize the significance of our ordinary lives.

Reader:

The life we want is not merely the one we have chosen and made; it is the one we must be choosing and making. To keep it alive we must be perpetually choosing it and making its difference from among all contrary and alternative possibilities. We must accept the pain and labor of that, or we lose its satisfactions and its joy. Only by risking it, offering it freely to its possibilities, can we keep it.
-- Wendell Berry

Leader:
The second candle represents Hope. It is a reminder of our need to be open to the changes that occur throughout our lives – especially those that involve doing things differently - so we may look to the future with confidence even in times of doubt and uncertainty. As we light this candle let us reflect on how to respond to the changes and challenges that are part of living by nurturing the seeds of hope that lie within us.


Reader:

Hope is the presentiment that the imagination is more real, and reality less real, than we had thought. It is the sensation that the last word does not belong to the brutality of facts with their oppression and repression. It is the suspicion that reality is far more complex than realism would have us believe, the frontiers of the possible are not determined by the limits of the present, and that miraculously and surprisingly, life is readying the creative event that will open the way to freedom and resurrection
-- Ruben Alves

Leader:
The third candle represents Faith. It is a symbol of what we have come to believe about the source and sustenance of life as well as a reminder of all that is mysterious and inexplicable about living. As we light this candle let us be mindful of how our personal beliefs help us deal with that which is beyond our comprehension and ability to understand.


Reader:

Life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by laws we only half understand. We find that the lesson we learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness. Some uncomprehended law holds us at a point of contradiction where we have no choice, where we do not like that which we love, where good and bad are inseparable partners impossible to tell apart, and where we -- heart-broken and ecstatic, can only resolve the conflict by blindly taking it into our hearts. This used to be called being in the hands of God. Has anyone any better words to describe it?
-- Florida Scott-Maxwell

Leader:
The fourth candle symbolizes the deep yearning for love we all feel not only during this season but all throughout our lives. It represents our hope that kindness and compassion will overcome the violence and suffering that threatens our world. As we light this candle let us remember our own responsibilities to be active participants in working for peace, justice and harmony -- in our homes, workplaces, community, and our world.


Reader:

In spite of the tensions and uncertainties of our age something profoundly meaningful has begun. Old systems of exploitation and oppression are passing away and new systems of justice and equality are being born. In a real sense ours is a great time which to be alive. Therefore I am not discouraged about the future. ...Granted that we face a world crises which often leaves us standing amid the surging murmur of life=s restless sea. But every crisis has both its danger and its opportunities. Each can spell either salvation or doom. In a dark, confused world the spirit of God may yet reign supreme.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

Leader:
In keeping with our Advent custom, this is a time to pause for a few moments and listen to some music, bringing to mind that which makes this season most meaningful and significant for us as a family.

O! Ce veste minunata! (Arr. Robin Smith)
Roberto Alagna, tenor, and the Choir of St. John's * the New London Children's Choir * the London Oratory School Choir * the Smithillis School Junior Choir
(Christmas Round the World, Deutsche Grammophon)

Reader:
GOING TO BED

I check the locks on the front door
and the side door,
make sure the windows are closed
and the heat dialed down.
I switch off the computer,
turn off the living room lights.

I let in the cats.

Reverently, I unplug the Christmas tree,
leaving Christ and the little animals
in the dark.

The last thing I do
is step out to the back yard
for a quick look at the Milky Way.

The stars are halogen-blue.
The constellations, whose names
I have long since forgotten,
look down anonymously,
and the whole galaxy
is cartwheeling in silence through the night.

Everything seems to be ok.
-- George Bilgere

Leader:
As we conclude our Advent Ritual this evening, may we remember that the love and joy of this season are always with us to be cherished and shared with one another all throughout the year; and it is this certainty that gives our lives depth and assurance.

Courage....

We tend to associate it with the spectacular and newsworthy – rescuing children from burning buildings, struggling to survive earthquakes, floods and all sorts of other natural disasters, fighting for freedom. It all takes courage. But so does much of what needs to be faced about the ordinary business of living a life. And at age 91, my mother-in-law is a good example. It takes courage to accept the difficult limitations that come with old age. It takes courage to face up to the fact that she simply can’t look after herself the way she has done all her life. It takes courage to leave the home where she’s lived for the past 46 years and move into a much smaller space in an assisted living facility. And it takes a lot of courage to come to that decision by herself, thus sparing us the heart-wrenching task of having to do it for her – the way so many adult children of aging parents must do.

Nora made the decision on her own a little over a month ago, and then she told us she wanted to move as quickly as arrangements could be made. Fortunately there was an apartment available in an assisted living complex nearby and so for the last couple of weeks we have been helping her move in. It’s a lovely place with lots of amenities, staffed by genuinely caring professionals. Her new apartment - consisting of a kitchenette/living room, a bedroom and a large bathroom - is roomy enough for many of her favorite pieces of furniture. And we were able to have the pretty living room drapes she was so fond of altered to fit beautifully on her living room windows.


We brought over as many of her treasured possessions as we could, spending a fair amount of time hanging pictures, arranging photographs, and finding places to display the little knick-knacks she’s accumulated over the years. We even managed to deck out her bathroom the way she wanted it – with lots and lots of purple accents!


But as charming and cozy as her new apartment is, I know it’s not going to be easy for her to settle into living there. As much as we would like to think that she is happy and content living in her new place, I wonder if it is really fair of us to expect her to be. We have no experience with the kind of leave-taking that she has had to go through these past few weeks as she prepared to walk away from the home she and her husband built and raised their family in. Each and everything she left behind was attached to a memory. Leaving it all behind must surely have been an ordeal.

Nor do we have a clue about how stressful it is trying to adjust to an entirely new lifestyle at the age of 91, or the inconvenience of no longer being able to live according to her own schedule as she has for such a long time, or the annoyances that go along with being surrounded by other people she doesn’t know all that well (and may not even care to.) And above all, we know absolutely nothing about what it’s like to recognize deep in our heart that we can no longer be the independent, energetic, capable and confident person we’ve been all our lives, adept at doing all the hundreds of little things we have gotten used to doing for ourselves ever since we became adults.

I think it takes a great deal of courage to bear the difficult burden that comes with extreme old age. It’s the kind of courage that Nora has demonstrated ever since she made the decision to move out of her home and into assisted living. Despite how comfortable and attractive her new apartment may be, it will never replace what home has meant to her. Hers is the kind of courage I may someday need to have myself. And if and when that time comes, I hope I will be able to remember the example she has set for me.