mobile podcasts | moot podcast archive | subscribe to podcasts in itunes | subscribing to podcasts through RSS feed | other podcast subscribing | podcast player for your site

As with Lent, I hadn’t really considered Advent very much, growing up in a non-conformist, non-liturgical church.

This year, I’ve found myself learning a few things about advent, almost by accident.

Firstly, I saw a status update on Facebook from Canon Andrew White (“Vicar of Baghdad”) casually mentioning that advent wasn’t about preparing for Christmas, but for the coming again of the messiah. Maybe I’m a bit slow, but I’d never realised this before.

Then, on the day the teachers were striking, I was able to take the kids to a wonderful service at a local Anglican church (St Thomas’s, Telford Ave) called “Prayers & Bears”, aimed specifically for pre-school kids. It included a 1-sentence advent prayer, which we were given on a slip of paper.

Finally, I was preparing an afternoon service for advent, using the Godly Play materials which included the following:

“Purple is the colour of kings and queens. No one could wear purple in those days except royal people. Purple is a serious colour, and something serious is about to happen, A King is coming, but he is not the kind of king that people thought was coming…This King was a baby who was born in a barn.

The King who was coming is still coming. This is full of mystery. A mystery is hard to enter sometimes. That is why this time of Advent is so important. Sometimes people can walk right through a mystery and not even know it is there…We are all getting ready to enter the mystery of  Christmas, so let’s go with the prophets, the Holy Family, the shepherds, the angels, the Magi and all the rest to make the journey that was not just back then. It is also now.”

(see how profound a “kids’” service can be – come on Sunday afternoon for more, with carols thrown in!)

So, I decided that the chocolate advent calendar wasn’t enough any more. We now have a candle, stuck in a wine bottle with the prayer wrapped round it. Every morning, once the chocolate calendar is out of the way, I light the candle and the kids (aged 3 & 6) say the prayer:

Watching, waiting, help me to be ready for you Jesus. Amen

mobile podcasts | moot podcast archive | subscribe to podcasts in itunes | subscribing to podcasts through RSS feed | other podcast subscribing | podcast player for your site

Advent and preparation for Christmas is not any easy time of year.  So rather than getting stressed and over working, we suggest getting to the things that matter, and that is the spiritual significance of the season.  So Moot has provided a number of events to try and help you get beyond the frantic to get to the substance.

1. Drop into St Mary Aldermary to reflect using Art

We have created a booklet and have two piece of art per week (building in number as advent increases), so why not drop in when you can.  The Church is open from 7.3o to 6pm most days. For more information click here

2. Come to our Advent Carols by candlelight at St Mary Aldermary

On Tuesday 13th 6.30pm for refreshments and nibbles 7.15pm start, we have our official St Mary Aldermary Carol Service.  This year we have professional singers, musicians and readers.  So come along… click here for more info.

3. Informal Carols and Christmas Service

On Sunday 18th December 3 for 3.30pm, we have our final service before Christmas.  This will be a time for informal carols around a simple service.  This is aimed to accommodate families, children and everyone, so please do come along. Click here for info at end of page.

As well as the events, there is something quite healthy about having to wait.  We hate it in a consumptive instant culture, but there something about having time to prepare, to seek things out. What are we waiting for?  Well I think it is about getting beyond all the business, to realise that the heart of living is about love, and it is love that lies behind the surface of Advent.  Learning to love ourselves, loving others, and loving God, and to do this we need to get deeper into who we are, and Advent demands that we do… As Thomas Merton Said…

They have reduced themselves to a life lived within the limits of their five senses… but it is not the bodies fault. It is the fault of the person [themself], who consents to the illusion, who finds security in self-deception and will not answer the secret voice of God calling [them] to take a risk and venture by faith outside the reassuring and protective limits of his five senses. (New Seeds, pp. 27-28)] (Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, (New Directions, 1961), pp. 34-35).

So let us get beyond the surface to the heart of the matter as Advent beacons us to do.

mobile podcasts | moot podcast archive | subscribe to podcasts in itunes | subscribing to podcasts through RSS feed | other podcast subscribing | podcast player for your site

mobile podcasts | moot podcast archive | subscribe to podcasts in itunes | subscribing to podcasts through RSS feed | other podcast subscribing | podcast player for your site

From this Sunday 27th November from 6.30pm, we start our Advent time of art and spiritual reflection.  There will be a booklet at the suggested donation of £3 available to help get the benefit of engaging with advent as a spiritual season.  Some information is available through the website section called Advent 2011. This includes content for personal weekly devotional reflection and for mini moots.  Click here and look at the subsections on the left side menu.

On this fourth week of Advent, the Lectionary readings turn to focus on Joseph, and they are extremely relevant in our economic uncertain times.  His betrothed was pregnant not by him, and he felt that God was directing him to marry her, and after the birth he was directed to get out of the area as the King was trying to murder all newly born children.  That’s quite a lot of scandal and uncertainty – who says scandal is a modern thing?

But the texts show a Joseph who is able to live in the present, to cope with uncertainty and the breaking of many social taboos.  He is living life on the edge.  Joseph had very little reason to be happy at that first Christmas. His betrothed could be thought to have betrayed him, he had to travel to Bethlehem with a heavily pregnant woman where progress will have been very slow. Yet because of his faith he is able to bring great good out of the difficulty of the situation.

This Christmas, can we dare to try and be like Joseph? To look whatever chaos or difficulties comes along and still be trusting in God that good will come out of it? Joseph had very little to go on. He was probably surrounded by people who told him to get rid of Mary, that no good could come out of a woman like that. Yet his faith enabled him to see that God comes to us at times when we least expect it and in ways that we least expect.

All around us, every day of our lives we will hear the words of people who see doom and gloom and speak words of hopelessness. We the followers of Christ must be better than that, we have been assured of the future by the God of love who seeks to restore all things back into right relationship with the divine. Christians have a double calling in the now but not fully yet Kingdom of God – we are people who believe in the future, therefore we can live better today. We can see the beginnings of a new life right now, in the face of bay born in Bethlehem.  This as Aaron would say, is a radical calling to live fully in the present for now and the future.

So here’s praying that you have a happy Christmas and a flourishing New Year!!

In this podcast of the Moot Contemplative Service on the Second Sunday of Advent 2010, Vanessa Elston draws on the two lectionary readings of the day (Isaiah 11:1-10 and Matthew 3:1-12) to explore the theme of faith being an invitation to open up the spiritual landscape our lives, led by a loving God.  Vanessa goes further to the challenge of Moot’s Rhythm of Life, Spiritual Practices and Postures as the means by which God is seeking to inspire to digger deeper.

moot podcast archive | subscribe to podcasts in itunes | subscribing to podcasts through RSS feed | other podcast subscribing | podcast player for your site

Well, we are facing a new liturgical year.  From Sunday 24th October, Anglicans shifted gear counting time back from Trinity Sunday, to looking forward to the beginning of Advent.  So yesterday Sunday 7th November is marked as the Third Sunday before Advent, a paradox time, where we shift from the celebration of the Trinity in Summer to the darkness and chill of the autumn and winter of Advent. So for those of you who are confused after the Moot Service on Sunday, Aaron was right as I asked to him to say that we have finished one season, and are in the period facing Advent, and the anticipation of this begins now, and arrives fully with the 1st Sunday of Advent on the 28th November.  So we are in the in-between-time awaiting the season of Advent which is itself a season of waiting and expectancy.

One of the mistakes that many in contemporary culture makes, is that we are building up to Christmas.  For Christians, Advent is about a season of respect for the figure of Mary in obedience to God’s call, and the awe and mystery of God coming in the form of a Human Being to express love and salvation to all humanity.  The meaning of Advent in latin adventus is literally waiting. So this is a time for devotion and exploration of the real meaning of Advent, waiting and absence looking forward to the ultimate presence and love of God. The Season of Christmas does not begin until Christmas Day.

So why is marking time with liturgical seasons important?  I would suggest that it helps us to be more deeply connected to creation and the created order.  If we believe in ecological justice, then our participation and awareness of the seasons are an important part of our lives, that have shaped humanity for centuries, and classically the cycles of life, growth, testing, crucifixion and resurrection.  To be disconnected from is impoverishes our humanity.