by Christie Purifoy | Dec 8, 2014 | Advent, guest post, Jesus, Uncategorized
Kris Camealy is an encourager with a gift for friendship. Though we have yet to meet in person, I am already blessed to call her friend.
Also, this lady knows how to get things done. At least, that’s how it looks from where I sit. I have no idea how she manages to write and create and teach and organize (and cook!) the way she does, but she inspires me.
I think her reflection will inspire you, too, though it is her vulnerability, even her weakness, that shines so beautifully in this piece.
Enjoy.
Stay Awake
In the middle of the busiest shopping weekend of the year, with the steady lure of distractions and temptations streaming into my inbox, I fight to be present—to pay attention.
The Saturday before Advent, I listen to a scripture reading on my phone while warming Thanksgiving leftovers for dinner. The recorded voice reads a passage from the 13th chapter of the book of Mark. As I listen to Jesus’s words to his disciples urging them to “stay awake,” I am struck by the insistence with which He speaks this message.
“Be on guard,” He says. “Stay Awake.”
Meanwhile all I can think about is how tired I am. I turn the page on the calendar; how is it December already? I seem to enter the season of Advent every year like this — unprepared, tired, and teetering on anxious. The sun slips away by five pm, and the premature darkness leaves me sagging well before dinner. I shuffle through the evening routine with one eye on the clock, anticipating crawling into bed.
Stay awake, Christ urges. For you do not know when the master of the house will come…lest he come suddenly and find you asleep (Mark 13:36).
Advent comes with an unbearable weight bearing down, the expectation of Christ coming. I wonder if Mary was able to stay awake in the waiting? How long a journey it was to Bethlehem, to stable, to the floor of a crude barn, where she spilled the Glory of the World into the soiled hay at the feet of livestock.
Stay awake — five days after hearing them, these words refuse to leave me. Advent comes every year at a pre-determined time, marked on virtually every calendar available. I know exactly when it will begin. I know when it will end. But Christ’s urgency to his disciples reminds me that I don’t really know what I think I know.
The season of Advent offers an opportunity to learn to prepare, to remain awake, even when the temptation to hibernate presses in. Wakefulness requires a conscious effort to be present, even in my weariness.
After dinner I close up the kitchen. I’ve scuttled the kids all off to their beds. I find a quiet spot at the edge of the sofa and sit for the first time in a couple of hours. I light the candle on the table beside me and sit still in the dim, flickering light while the dishwasher hums busy in the background.
Recounting Mary’s journey to the stable, in the dark of a waiting world, Advent invites me to hold on. I’m reminded to ready my heart for the King’s coming.
Stay awake, He urges. Pay attention. Be present.
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As a sequin-wearing, homeschooling mother of four, Kris is passionate about Jesus, people and words. Her heart beats to share the hard but glorious truth about life in Christ. She’s been known to take gratuitous pictures of her culinary creations, causing mouths to water all across Instagram. Once upon a time, she ran 10 miles for Compassion International, a ministry for which she serves as an advocate. Kris is the author of Holey, Wholly, Holy: A Lenten Journey of Refinement and the follow up Companion Workbook.
You can read more from Kris at kriscamealy.com.
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by Christie Purifoy | Dec 6, 2014 | Advent, Blog, Books, Food, Uncategorized
It’s Saturday. Let’s have a little fun, shall we?
In addition to another installment of my Saturday series of book recommendations, I am inviting you to enter a fabulous foodie-themed prize giveaway organized by some of my favorite writers and a few new friends.
Let’s take a look:
I’m giving away a copy of one of my favorite cookbooks (a book I’ve recommended before), The Homemade Pantry by Alana Chernila, and a box of the magic white powder that changed my life. Seriously.
With Pomona’s Pectin you can make jam without any added sugar. Unlike every other pectin you’ll find on your grocery-store shelves that require equal (horrifying) amounts of sugar and fruit, with Pomona’s you can make your jam with fruit only, with a little honey, with fruit juice, with maple syrup, just however you like it. And jam-making (especially freezer-jam making) is one of the easiest, most satisfying things you can do in the kitchen.
Life-changing stuff, I tell you.
Cara Meredith is a writer, speaker and musician from the greater San Francisco bay area. She is passionate about theology and books, her family, meals around the table, and finding Beauty in the most unlikely of places. A seven on the Enneagram, she also can’t help but try to laugh and smile at the ordinary everyday. You can connect with her on her blog, Facebook, and Twitter.
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Erin S. Lane is author of Lessons in Belonging from a Church-Going Commitment Phobe (forthcoming, February 2015) and co-editor of Talking Taboo, an anthology of writing by young Christian women on the intersection of faith and gender. Confirmed Catholic, raised Charismatic, and married to a Methodist, she blogs about faith, feminism, and, yes, cupcakes on her blog, Holy Hellions. You can also connect with her on Twitter.
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Rachel Marie Stone is a writer living near Philadelphia. In the past eight years, she has lived in four countries and two states, and will gladly tell you about the various kinds of pizza she ate (or didn’t eat) in each place. Her book, Eat With Joy, won the Christianity Today Book Award for Christian Living. You can connect with her further on her blog, Twitter, andFacebook.
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Carina is an etsy shop owner, writes when she can, works with Noonday to advocate for women around the world, and loves food. Preparing it, consuming it, sitting together around a table filled with friends and family enjoying it. She lives in Seattle, WA with her five lively children and one awesome husband, and drinks way too much coffee. You can connect with her on her blog, etsy shop, and Instagram(among other places).
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Cara Strickland is a writer, editor, and food critic in Spokane, Washington. She writes about singleness, food, feminism, and the way faith intersects life (among other things) on her blog Little Did She Know. Come say hi to her on Twitter or Facebook. She likes making new friends.
If you’re reading this post in an email or a reader, you’ll need to click over to enter.
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Good luck!
And now – books!
This week I picked up an old favorite and remembered why I love it so much. We may already be a few days into Advent, but this little gem can be enjoyed here and there as you make the time. The readings are diverse, all wonderful, and you never know what you might discover on a given day. It’s Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas
While preparing this post I noticed that the paperback copy I own is no longer available. I am actually glad about that. This book deserves a hard cover, especially since, like me, you’ll be pulling it out year after year.
Winter Solstice
by Rosamunde Pilcher is the perfect, cozy novel to reread each Advent season. I’m about to begin rereading it myself.
I say cozy, which it is, but I think this cozy is a cut above your typical holiday movie. This novel is thoughtful, sweet, never too sweet, atmospheric. It takes place in Scotland. Need I say more? This is one for reading by a twinkling Christmas tree.
I think books make the best Christmas gifts, and I especially love to give beautiful editions of classic favorites.
Of course, the problem with beautiful books is that I really just want them for myself. These new editions of the classic L.M. Montgomery series are lovely: Emily of New Moon: A Virago Modern Classic (Emily Trilogy).
Happy Advent, my friends.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 5, 2014 | Uncategorized
Ring the bells that still can ring / Forget your perfect offering / There is a crack, a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in. – Leonard Cohen
We fall into Advent days like falling into some emptiness. There is a fissure in time, and we, for a time, are lost in it.
How long, Lord, how long? The cry of Advent reaches backwards and forwards. And it covers everything – everything we believe to be true and everything too good to be true. Everything that is broken and everything we hope has been healed.
It is a cry for ourselves. It is a cry for our country. This week, I can’t forget that it is a cry for Americans of color, our neighbors who have carried a weight of injustice for too long.
How long, Lord, how long?
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The only stories I can rightly tell are my own, but I struggle even to tell my own stories. One of the hardest to tell has long been the story of our son’s health. What he suffers is his to suffer, I suffer only on the margins of his story. Perhaps I do not suffer at all, but am only inconvenienced. Yet the view from here is only sometimes ugly. Mostly … mostly, it is beautiful.
And that is why I struggle to tell it. How is it that the most terrible things, the hardest things, might also be blessings? And how do I tell those stories without glossing over all that remains deeply wrong? Deeply unfair?
Of course, I’m talking about my little boy and about our growing epidemic of severe food allergies. Why, Lord, are our children endangered by their food?
And, of course, I’m talking about Advent. About the impossibility, the wrongness of our God made so small and so vulnerable, and how it is also the very greatest rightness. The most right and wonderful thing in the world.
And I am talking about Michael Brown, and I am talking about Eric Garner, and all the terrible things that can and should be set to right.
And I am talking about hope. Which is the light that shines with such surprising strength in all the cracks and broken places.
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There is a wonderful new website dedicated to stories of hospitality. I am telling my own small story there today. It’s about the crack in our kitchen table. It’s about the crack in our life as a family.
I didn’t think it was about Advent when I wrote it. Now I am not so sure.
Also, there’s a recipe. Our family’s very favorite holiday treat. I really hope you’ll click over and check it out.
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P.S. I’ve got something fun planned for the blog tomorrow. Here’s a hint.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 4, 2014 | Advent, Christmas, Deeper Story, Seasons, Uncategorized
There is no one right way to do this season. Whether you observe a strict Advent, Christmas only, or some mish-mash of the two, we all celebrate in our own ways.
We do it just the way our own parents did, or we do it just the opposite. We did it one way before our marriage and something else again now. We do it differently every year depending on someone’s health or who might be just the age for grabbing ornaments off the tree.
There are so many ways to celebrate well.
There are so many ways to live well.
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I have always loved anticipation. I have always been the quiet, watchful sort. Though I wasn’t raised with Advent, my years of Advent observance now seem inevitable. The season fits me like a glove.
In some ways it also fits the life of my family like a glove. Our church is liturgical. On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the first Sunday of Advent this year, our church had no poinsettias. No Christmas trees or twinkly lights. It had a deep purple altar cloth. It had an Advent wreath. These are almost the same decorations we have right now in our home, though we trade the altar cloth for white twinkly lights on our banister.
There is an ease between church and home which may explain why my children have not yet asked for a tree or for stockings on the mantel. But, in other ways, there is no ease during Advent. There is no fit like a glove.
Advent is irrational, as Madeleine L’Engle described it so well. A comfortable society, a society focused on buying and selling and consuming, doesn’t know what to make of Advent. Jingle Bells and buying gifts, sure. But Mary’s song? She sang of the rich being turned away empty, of the proud being scattered.
During Advent, we remember Mary’s prophetic words, and we remember that it is the humble and the hungry who receive.
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Each month I contribute a story over at A Deeper Story. I don’t normally link to those posts here, though I do always share them on facebook and twitter. But my story this month is about Advent, this disjointed season. It is about remembering how wide is the gap, how ill the fit between us and the world.
I hope you’ll click over to read my story there. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 3, 2014 | Advent, guest post, Uncategorized
I can no longer remember how I first found Tresta Payne’s blog, but I know I have appreciated her quiet, wise stories for a long time. We’ve never met, and our homes are separated by too many miles, but what I glimpse in her stories is a vision of a life well lived. I don’t mean that her life seems perfect or even that she seems perfect. Only that the thoughtfulness and attentiveness with which she lives her daily life inspires me. And this Advent reflection? It’s a song of hope calling each of us out into the wild world beyond even our imaginations. To the place where God, in all his fullness, dwells.
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At the dawn of first light, the Very First Light, there was a song about a savior coming. At Joseph’s court, on Moses’ long trek, at Nehemiah’s return – all through there was a hint of coming, of reigning, of redeeming forever.
I imagine God, like Aslan, singing the world into being and singing the first sunrise up with hope.
You will mess up.
You will fall short.
You will despise Me and think you’ve gone as far away as you can, but I’m making a way back.
Because you will want to return.
I need to imagine it like this, like Lewis did in The Magician’s Nephew. I need to imagine more about God than I think is possible, because my finite brain is tied to my eternal soul and both need more of who God is, less of who I keep being.
I am hopeful against the odds.
There was a message at church a month ago about hope. Our pastor was reminding us of personal revival in a time when the whole world seems a wreck and we so easily lose hope for it. He was encouraging us to think more about God, to remember that He does and is beyond all that we could ask or imagine.
I was challenged to think more of God. Not just to think of God more often – definitely that. But mostly, to think MORE of Him than my logic can fathom, and so to stretch beyond my mind’s small and logical borders.
I want to think the grandest thoughts I can about God, about His plans for good, and about His kingdom in me and you and the one to come. And then, when I’ve thought the best thoughts I can muster, I am challenged to believe that it’s even better than that.
Even better.
The imagination doesn’t stretch beyond the natural order of things very well, especially if it’s been stifled by years of common sense and religion. But yet, what is natural if not God?
Bring back the imagination, I say. Bring back the awe of God and the understanding that we simply cannot grasp Him, but He wants us to try and keep trying, seek and keep seeking, believe and keep believing.
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Before that Baby broke the thin skin between heaven and earth, landing in the rough hands of a carpenter, the world logically understood how babies were born. Mom + Dad = Baby. Of course. So logically, Mary was lying.
I wonder if she spent any time at all defending the truth she knew in her heart, but no one could fathom in their minds? How frustrating, to know the truth about God in a way no one else would believe.
She tucked things away in her heart, like moms do, and I suppose she also learned to think more about God, even more than a virgin birth and God-made-man.
The song was carried by angels that first night of Christ’s incarnation and they sang what they didn’t fully understand. God is too much for even the heavenly hosts to grasp.
Novatian says that if God were to be understood fully, He couldn’t be God. If our human understanding could box Him up all tidy (like we try to) then God would be a god of our making, a god of small minds and little imagination, bound by human experience.
But God is before, and God is behind, and He has to be more than our language can express. He has to be outside of every means we have to fully describe Him or know Him or experience Him.
Yet He placed Himself in us, bound up in the same minerals He spoke into existence.
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Voices from the past keep reminding us and I know I don’t quite get it yet. Do you ever feel like you are on the edge of something, about to take a huge leap in understanding or faith or imagination towards God? It’s a good place to be, but it’s not the finale.
There’s always, endlessly, forever and ever, more.
The hope of revival and the revival of hope in me, and the strain to hear that song – it’s Christmas’ reminder. It’s the only fitting thing for a weary world to rejoice in.
He’s coming and we hear the music and we imagine so much more than is possible, so much more than what the pull of this earth allows us.
He’s coming, and that’s enough and altogether too much for us.
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Tresta lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and 4 kids, surrounded by mountains and rivers and the best little community one could ask for. Her days are filled with homeschooling, laundry, and trying to find truth, goodness, and beauty in the middle of chaos. Any remaining brain cells are used to put words together at sharppaynes.com.
