keeping advent

Picture Books + Poems for the New Year

6 January 2019 by Kortney

We started back to school last week, but we waited until Epiphany to fully leave behind our Advent memory work. We’ve still been singing “Joy to the World” and reciting most of Luke 2. But tomorrow we’ll start a new cycle including Robert Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

At the library I found a picture book version of the poem illustrated by Susan Jeffers. The wintery world of the poem is punctuated with small bits of vibrant, almost glowing, color. The man with the wondering horse is out to bring nuts and berries to the forest creatures–very much still the work of the Christmas season! The dust jacket includes a piece of vellum that slips over the scene. It makes it harder to see and more mysterious. I told the kids that if this book was all I showed them all year long, it would be a good year!

We’ll be pairing this with a new biographical picture book called Papa Is a Poet. It tells about Robert Frost’s early poetic career from the point of view of his children. The book includes a large selection of poems, including “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” We learned this by heart during our Fall Co-op. Joseph, the 5 year old, declared it too rhyme-y! I wonder what he’ll think of the rhymes in “Stopping by Woods”? In fact, my own distaste for rhyme is part of the reason I chose these poems. Frost still moves me even though I don’t care for rhyme. I’ve got a Joseph Brodsky essay on Frost at the top of my stack of books, right next to his Nativity Poems.

So, this New Year looks like it might be a good one for poems. If only the weather would turn and we’d get some snow!

Here’s a printable version of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “Nothing Gold Can Stay” with illustrations by Gertrud Mueller Nelson in case you need some poems for Monday’s Circle Time!

Open Advent :: Making Room

19 December 2018 by Kortney

Let everyone who is thirsty come

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. –Revelation 22.17

The days are growing short. The Long Night’s Moon is growing full, and Solstice will be here soon. But there’s still time to make a little room for the baby who is coming! We can turn our attention to three areas that will open up a little space.

Physical

Attending to our physical spaces can work as a threshold, a way to access what’s most true. Tonight after dinner light a candle. Then you can do the dishes–not as a chore but as a gift.

Calendar

Can you block off a day or two or even an afternoon between now and the end of the year when there’s nothing to do? Can you make intentional space to read aloud or work on a puzzle or color together? These quiet, reflective practices give us new eyes to see.

Spirit

Especially during these holy days, the pressure to feel a certain way can weigh on us. Maybe this year we aren’t feeling connected or full of hope or at peace. But it’s in this practicing, in this lowly, daily tending that we make room for the holy to come.

Open Advent :: Jesse Tree

30 November 2018 by Kortney

Let everyone who is thirsty come

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. –Revelation 22.17

Walter Brueggemann says that hope is rooted in memory. God has been faithful in the past and so will be faithful in the future–our hope is built on nothing less. Listen to the beautiful symmetry that flows from this couplet in Psalm 63:

Because thou hast been my help,

therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

If I had to choose just one practice to keep Advent, I’d choose Jesse tree coloring. (And lighting all the candles and baskets of picture books and fir trees brought inside. Don’t make me pick!) The Jesse Tree invites us to step into the strange river of God’s faithfulness. We follow the winding water courses until we all finally end up at an outbuilding in Bethlehem.

One Practice to Rule Them All

But who exactly is Jesse, and what’s he doing in a tree? In the opening chapter of Matthew, the lineage of Jesus is recounted. The practice follows those stories hinted at in Matthew and takes it’s name from a line in Isaiah’s prophetic poetry:

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots.

Our practice centers on reading and contemplative coloring. Each day during Advent, we read a story from scripture and color a simple image. The materials aren’t complicated or messy as long as your printer has ink! Sarah Mackenzie says that reading aloud together can slow down this sometimes frantic season. Coloring just gives us an excuse to linger just a little longer, to let the stories do their work on us.

I favor this Jesse Tree collection because it includes the woman/outsider stories of Rahab and Ruth. But the images from Paper Dali are so lovely! We also have this embroidery collection because handwork is a perfect accompaniment to winter evenings. But we are taking things very slowly! This will be our third year working on it, and we’ve competed 5 ornaments.

How has reading about the ancestors of Jesus shaped you?

….and this is the introduction to the series, Rest in Advent

Rest in Advent

26 November 2018 by Kortney

Let everyone who is thirsty come

Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift. –Revelation 22.17

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Well, on the beach in late July celebrating my birthday is pretty wonderful too. But really? It’s hard to beat carols and twinkle lights and trees inside your house all to celebrate a baby being born!

This season also comes with a good bit of pressure to make things magical. But what if the magic and wonder are a part of the deal? It’s not something we can make or will to happen. What if the magic of Christmas is something to receive?

Lower Your Expectations

William Stafford says that if you’re writing and you get stuck, lower your expectations and keep going. Keep going. Everything in our culture tries to ratchet up our expectations. If you feel you aren’t measuring up, they can sell you something! But if the magic of the season isn’t dependent on us, things don’t have to be perfect to make a memory. Ma Ingalls says that enough is as good as a feast. What if your Advent celebrations were enough? What would it look like for you to lower your expectations in anticipation of receiving the gifts of the season?

Take Your Time

The world is full to bursting with beautiful, worthy, life-giving Advent practices. There’s Jesse Trees, saint days, Advent wreaths, and picture books everyday! But you can’t cram any of these into an already full day. Something has to go. Make room in the school schedule. Plan less than you think you need–good opportunities will present themselves! In our homeschool, we put our history and science spines on hold until the new year. It changes our routine and makes space for the extras that aren’t really extras. You have almost the entire month of December. Take it slow.

Prepare

Even if you are lowering your expectations and taking your time, there’s still plenty to do to get ready! What if you took this coming week to do a little prep work? Clear out the library basket so there’s a place to put seasonal books. Double a meal or two this week. You can eat one, and stash the other in the freezer for a busy night later in the month. Declutter or spend 15 minutes each day working down the list from Apartment Therapy. You can’t do all these things–remember we’re taking our time and lowering our expectations! Take a deep breath, get quiet, and think about which one will make the most difference?

Look for a new series called Open Advent coming during each week of December. And in the meantime, a few favorites from the archives.

:: Creating Space for Advent :: How Do You Want Advent to Feel? ::

:: Keeping Advent–a free ebook for you ::

Picture Books + Poems for the New Year