First Week of Advent

Cherish and care for the earth.

Advent is important to me, and I have so many ideas to share. This week most of my projects are ways to "Cherish and care for the earth" - my theme for the week:

• Spend time outdoors to get in touch with the season and climate. Walk or bike to get places. Visit a wild area. Rake leaves, or turn the compost.
• Pay attention to the weather, the outdoor temperature, the birds, the sky, the leaves, the moon cycle.
• Learn more about the wildlife that lives in our area in the winter; find out what they eat. Learn the names of the trees in the neighborhood. Learn the names of the clouds.
• Give care to the plants and animals. Feed the wild birds.
• Bring nature indoors- collect greens, pine cones, straw, and other natural materials. Use natural materials to make gifts and decorations.

As we approach the Solstice, the days get shorter and the nights longer. This cold, wet season puts limits on our lives; it's natural to slow down, keep warm, be content at home, stay quiet, and sleep well. 

Luckily, advent is four weeks long, allowing us to grow slowly and steadily towards the light. Let yourself go inward now, at the start of advent; be like the bear in her cave, saving your strength and relishing the darkness. Don't celebrate Christmas too soon; allow yourself to experience the darkness of winter, against which it shines. 

Agenda This Week:

1. Make Luminaries:

One way to experience the darkness of the season is to go without electric lights as much as possible. Use candlelight or one small electric light in the evening. Light a single luminary outside to be a beacon in the night.

Later on in the Advent season, we will add Christmas tree lights and more candles around the house to symbolically experience the growth into light.




Supplies:

• glass jar with straight sides- peanut butter jars work well
• scraps of tissue paper in many colors
• watered white glue or acrylic medium (I used acrylic medium because I had a big bottle of it.)
• glue brush
• waxed paper or freezer paper

1. Tear the tissue paper into the shapes you want. I used strips.

2. Set your jar on waxed paper so it won't stick. Brush glue in one area and cover with tissue. Leave a bit of tissue at the top to fold over the rim. 

Keep brushing more glue and adding more strips, overlapping each by a little, and folding the tops over the rim. (This is a good chance to talk about additive color, since the two colors that overlap will create a third color.)




3. Gently brush more glue over the top of the tissue. Don't worry about the extra at the bottom- you can trim that off later.











4. Let the glue dry, and add a tea light or a small candle, using melted wax to stand it up in the bottom of the jar.

5. Evening Meditation: Light your luminary candle and set it outside, where you can see it from a window. Settle into silence, and focus your attention on the darkness and the small flickering light.

• Breath in the calm darkness from the depth of the earth. 
• Breath out the rainbow light of the Spirit of Love.

2. Plant paper white bulbs:
Seeds and bulbs are a fitting symbol of expectant waiting at Advent. Like the bulbs in the ground and all of nature in the winter, let your energy grow gradually within you so it may be born anew when the time is right.

Plant paper white bulbs now to (hopefully) bloom indoors at Christmas (about 4-6 weeks), another way to witness the nurturing darkness:

Supplies:

• pretty rocks and glass pebbles
• a glass or pottery bowl
• paper white bulbs
• paper bag

1. Collect pretty rocks and glass pebbles of different sizes, and clean them.

2. Fill a bowl partway with the rocks, and nestle the bulbs on top, close together but not touching each other. Wedge more rocks in around them to hold them in place.

3. Add water to the bowl, up to the bottom of the bulbs. Wrap the bowl in newspapers and place in a brown paper bag.

4. Put the bag in a dark, cold place, like the cellar or refrigerator. Water the bulbs every week if needed, and check for top growth.

5. When the roots begin to take hold and the shoots are 2 to 4 inches tall ( in 2-3 weeks), take the bowl into a cool room with indirect light.

6. When the leaves are well formed and the flower buds are showing, move the bowl to a warm, brightly lit room to encourage the buds to open.

3. Journal:

What are the most wasteful things I do at advent?
What can I change to show solidarity with the poor, respect for the earth, and a desire to live more simply?

My aim this advent is to celebrate simply and consume less. The modern way of observing the winter holidays supports an increase in waste; one statistic says that Americans throw away 25% more trash– an additional 5 million tons- between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve. A fun holiday season doesn't have to be a wasteful one!

Simple Holiday Tips:

• Simplify my expectations. Think about which traditions are most important to me. Find meaning and fulfillment in spirituality, and my relationships with my family and friends.
• Be frugal and spend less money this year; reduce my purchasing of wants.
• Make my own gifts or buy simple, durable gifts; avoid the latest fad; buy gifts made locally and made from recycled materials.
• Use cloth napkins and reusable plates and cups for holiday parties.
• Make reusable bags out of pretty fabric to use as gift-wraps for family; they can save the bags to wrap their own gifts next year. Make tags from last year’s Christmas cards.

4. Make fabric bags:

Each year I make a few more reusable fabric bags to hold gifts. I think everyone appreciates my wish to conserve paper, and they can save the bags to wrap their own gifts next year.

I've been using a stockpile of Christmas fabric I found at our local recycled art supplies store, but any pretty cloth will do.

Materials:

• colorful 1/2” ribbon
• pretty fabric scraps

1. Fold a piece of fabric in half, and cut it so that it‘s the size you want, plus 1-inch on all sides for the hem. (For example, for a 12” x 12” bag, cut fabric to 14”x 26”.)





2. Hem the top and bottom edge of the bag, either by hand or with a sewing machine.

3. Fold the good side of the fabric to the inside, and pin the edges. Stitch the two side seams and turn right-side out.














4. Cut a ribbon at least 12" long. Stitch the middle of the ribbon to the bag at the seam, about four or five inches from the bag opening.

5. Bird food pine cones:
Right now, because of the cold, the wild birds are looking for high energy foods. Peanut butter is high in fat and full of protein, and could be considered the perfect bird food. Be sure to get natural, no-sugar peanut butter, or use vegetable shortening as an alternative.












Supplies:

• 1 c. peanut butter or shortening, or a combination
• 1 c. oatmeal or cornmeal
• pine cones
• bird seed
• yarn or string

Yield: Makes 2 bird cones-

1- Mix equal parts peanut butter or shortening with oatmeal or cornmeal until well blended. (I used half a cup of each and it just covered this one medium-sized cone.)



2- Choose a pine cone. Cut a long length of string to hang the bird feeder, and tie around the pine cone near the top (about 3 sections down).

3- Use a butter knife to spread peanut butter inside the pine cone and around the edges.

4- Fill a pie plate with birdseed. Roll the pine cone in the birdseed. 

Go out and hang it in a tree where you can watch from a window.

6. Go for a longer walk:
I walk a mile or more every day, but this week I have challenged myself to walk further, and especially to visit the creek path to watch for birds.

First Advent Sunday

Today is the first Sunday of Advent!

ad•vent (ad’ vent) n. The coming or arrival, especially of something extremely important.

The advent season is a time of expectant waiting. I wait for the return of longer days after the solstice; I look forward with excitement to our celebration of Christmas; and I wait expectantly for the arrival of grace in my heart.

Grace is a state of being- at peace, free, filled with love & light. Advent is a time set aside each year to come into intimate contact with my own need for grace. I ask "What is it I long for now? For what am I waiting?" The more I carry these questions and let them penetrate through the layers of distraction and self-protection, the more powerfully I will experience Advent.

I fill the days of advent with decorating, baking, buying gifts, and singing songs, but enfolding the busyness is simple, deep peace. I wait, anticipate, and learn again that transformation is a slow process.

Agenda:
1. Journal:
What am I waiting for this advent?
What is my biggest need for grace?
What is this emptiness I am trying to feed?
Where do I need balance and greater peace?

2. Advent wreath ceremony:
When my kids were young, I wrote short advent prayers for each week- with themes that were meaningful for us- to say as we lit the candles. We have used these same prayers ever since. 

Tonight we will light the first advent candle (the green one, for the earth) before dinner and say the first prayer:

“We light the first candle for the earth, which sustains us. May we cherish and care for it.”

Each night this week, we will let this first candle burn while we eat dinner.

3. Plan activities:
My theme for this first week of advent is to cherish and care for the earth, and I have planned activities throughout the week to reaffirm my unity with nature. Generally, I do this by giving attention to nature, and by remembering to find joy and fulfillment in simply being alive, instead of in an excess of buying, using, and wasting.

Things to do this week to express unity with nature:

• Spend time outdoors to get in touch with the season and climate. Walk or bike to get places. Visit a wild area. Rake leaves, or turn the compost.
• Pay attention to the weather, the outdoor temperature, the birds, the sky, the leaves, the moon cycle.
• Learn more about the wildlife that lives in our area in the winter; find out what they eat. Learn the names of the trees in the neighborhood. Learn the names of the clouds.
• Give care to the plants and animals. Feed the wild birds.
• Bring nature indoors- collect greens, pine cones, straw, and other natural materials. Use natural materials to make gifts and decorations.

Prepare for Advent

Tomorrow is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is a time of expectant waiting, and today I will actively prepare to wait. 

I have many tasks to do at this time of year, but my most important task is to get in touch with my heart. This is a time of emotional complexity, with all of the expectations and challenges of family and relationships. So, my heart is a bit tender, and perhaps a bit armored.

Today I open to the expectation of love. When my heart is open to love, my hands are open to accept unexpected gifts, and my ears are open to hear a message of peace, then I am ready to begin Advent.

Agenda:
1. Open-Heart Meditation:
Sit still, put a hand on my heart, and feel my heartbeat. Let that feeling resonate out to the rest of my ribcage, to the peripheries of my body, through my spine, my arms and legs. Feel my heart expand with each in breath, and open a bit with each exhalation.

2. Journal:
List the themes and values I want to dedicate this season to, so I can celebrate intentionally, and with greater meaning.

From my journal: My traditional themes at advent are care for the earth, unity with all people, love for friends and family, and openness to the Light of God. This year I want to especially find ways to be in unity with those who are suffering with war and homelessness.

3. Space clearing:
Clear off shelves and counters, dust, and make space for later decorating.

4. Simplify & slow down:
Clear space in my life as well, to make time for the peace of the season. Plan time for morning meditations, and plenty of time for peaceful gift-making and card-writing.

5. Gift List:
Brainstorm and begin to plan the gifts I will make and buy for others.

6. Make an Advent Wreath:

The advent wreath custom began in Germany in the 1600’s, but the symbols of the advent wreath are powerful and ancient.

• The wreath reminds us that the year is round and whole, and that we are all a part of the never-ending circle of life. 
• The evergreens symbolize eternal life and remind us that we will make it through the cold of winter. 
• The candles represent the light inside that will guide us even on the darkest nights. 

I have seen many creative ideas for making advent wreaths. The only requirement, in my mind, is that it is round, that it has some evergreens, and that it has four candles in safe candle holders, for the four weeks of advent.

Supplies:

• evergreens
• clippers
• wire wreath form
• 4 candle holders
• 4 candles

1. Collect greens. This year I found some fresh Douglas fir branches at the park, and then clipped a few branches from my pine tree.







2. I made a base many, many years ago, by cutting a donut shape from a piece of plywood, gluing 4 candle holders onto it, and mounting a simple wire wreath form around them. I added some white chains so I can hang it if I want. 

3. Now all I need to do each year is cut up my evergreens and stick them into place. 

I put a few large branches on the bottom, then fill in around, and pinch the wires of the frame together to hold everything in place.

4. Add four new candles, and it's all ready.

Simple Gifts for Black Friday

Black Friday sales are an abomination! All I want to do on the day after Thanksgiving is eat pie and whip cream, and think about Advent. I make most of my holiday gifts, and usually spend this free time at home, working on projects.

This year I offered a Black Friday gift-making class, so this afternoon I get to play with other people's kids, and make candy and simple gifts with them- what could be better?

Agenda:
1. Compile a family wish list:
It's a family tradition that we make a list on the day after Thanksgiving of what we want for Christmas. (Why is it so hard to get men to tell you what they want?)

2. Make peanut brittle:
Ingredients:

• 2 c. white sugar
• 1 c. light corn syrup
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 2 c. unroasted peanuts
• 4 Tbsp. softened butter
• 2 tsp. baking soda

1- Grease 2 large cookie sheets. Set aside.

2- Combine sugar, corn syrup, salt, and 1/2 c. water in a heavy 2-quart saucepan. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Stir until sugar is dissolved. 

3- Stir in peanuts. Set candy thermometer in place, and continue cooking, stirring frequently.

4- Measure the butter and baking soda. When temperature reaches 300ºF (hard ball stage) remove candy from heat and immediately stir in butter and baking soda; pour out onto the prepared cookie sheets.

5- With 2 forks, lift and pull peanut mixture into thin sheets. Cool, then snap candy into pieces and store.

3. Make soap balls:
We will make soap balls with bouncy balls in the center- an easy and fun gift to make.

Supplies:

• white castile or clear glycerine soap
• soap colorants
• grater
• small toys (optional)
• warm water
• a plate

1- Grate soap into shavings. (I have used white castile soap in the past, but this year I have a lot of glycerine soap that someone gave me.)

2- Add a small amount of coloring to the soap shavings and stir with a fork, then add a small amount of warm water and work the color in with your fingers.

3- Begin to mold the soap around a toy until you have a nice snowball shape, adding more shavings or water as needed.

4- Place soaps somewhere where they can dry, then wrap in plastic.

4. Make hot pads: 

Also, we will each make a hotpad using old sweaters.