by Christie Purifoy | Dec 9, 2013 | Advent, Books, God, Jesus, Poetry, Uncategorized
I’ve mentioned this book before. I’m keeping it close this Advent season.
I find it incredible how an old, old form can open my eyes to everything New.
Here is a poem for this, the second Monday of Advent.
O Emmanuel
O come, O come, and be our God-with-us,
O long-sought with-ness for a world without,
O secret seed, O hidden spring of light.
Come to us Wisdom, come unspoken Name,
Come Root, and Key, and King, and holy Flame,
O quickened little wick so tightly curled,
Be folded with us into time and place,
Unfold for us the mystery of grace
And make a womb of all this wounded world.
O heart of heaven beating in the earth,
O tiny hope within our hopelessness,
Come to be born, to bear us to our birth,
To touch a dying world with new-made hands
And make these rags of time our swaddling bands.
– Malcolm Guite, from Sounding the Seasons
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 8, 2013 | Advent, Food, prayer, Uncategorized
The word for this second week of Advent is … prepare.
Let the master of the house wash your feet and hands. Let him wrap you in fine clothes.
He has invited us to feast.
A prayer for the second Sunday of Advent:
Most merciful Lord, your love compels us to come in.
Our hands were unclean, our hearts were unprepared;
we were not fit even to eat the crumbs from under your table.
But you, Lord, are the God of our salvation,
and share your bread with sinners.
So cleanse and feed us with the precious body and blood of your Son,
that he may live in us and we in him;
and that we, with the whole company of Christ,
may sit and eat in your kingdom.
Amen.
(a traditional Anglican prayer)
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 7, 2013 | Advent, Books, Family, Uncategorized
Saturdays are reserved for a peek at the bookshelves which fill so many rooms in this old farmhouse. Books live everywhere here.
This month, this Advent month, I’ll be sharing some of our favorite books for the season. Advent books. Christmas books. Wintery and snowy books. These are books that live most of the year in two big boxes in a third-floor closet. I lug these boxes down two flights of stairs before I ever even look for the Christmas decor.
Mostly, these are books for kids. Or the kid in each of us (a self we simply must indulge this time of year, in my opinion). Quite possibly, these books are loved more by me than by any child in my house. Although, considering the state of it, Jan Brett’s Gingerbread Baby
is well loved by all.
(You can find my full series of book recommendations here, including more information about my personal book review policy and a disclaimer about affiliate links.)
I love Luci Shaw’s Accompanied by Angels: Poems of the Incarnation
year round. I love it especially at Advent.
Shaw’s poems hit that magic mark for me. They are conversational yet lyrical. They are accessible, but they do not give up all of their secrets with one reading. These are poems to return to year after year.
This is a season of serial visions, and a bodily God, / and a sword in the heart. – Luci Shaw
Astrid Lindgren is the Swedish writer best known for her books featuring Pippi Longstocking. Christmas in Noisy Village (Picture Puffin)
, part of a series of picture books about the “noisy children,” is a family favorite. Really, this is the Holy Grail of children’s literature: a book that pleases parents, toddlers, early readers … even my soon-to-be “tween.”
This is a fairly straightforward telling of a child’s Christmas in rural Sweden, but there is magic in realism like this. Gingersnap pigs, an early-morning sleigh ride to church, and gifts of skis and skates.
We have bigger books, funnier books, more spiritual books, but, this time of year, we probably read this book more times than any other. (Bonus recommendation: Lindgren’s The Tomten
is a wintery classic. One of our all-time family favorites.)
‘Everything is so beautiful and Christmasy that it gives me a stomach-ache,’ said Anna.
I’m sad to see that this third recommendation appears to be out-of-print. However, it looks like you should be able to track down a copy without too much trouble. Little One, We Knew You’d Come
is a sentimental favorite of mine. This is the story of the nativity, yes, but it is also a lullaby and a love song for every parent and child.
Sally Lloyd-Jones is well known for The Jesus Storybook Bible: Every Story Whispers His Name
. This is a quieter, more poetic take on the story of Jesus. I’m not sure my children even know it is a book about Jesus. They each think it’s a book about them. And they are right.
Lloyd-Jones beautifully captures the longing and love parents feel for their children. It is the longing felt by all creation for her redeemer.
And every year, we remember you, / Our miracle child, our dreams come true. / Oh, how we thank Heaven for you, / And the day that you were born. – Sally Lloyd-Jones
Lastly, I have one bonus recommendation: Sounding the Seasons
by Malcolm Guite. I’ve mentioned my love for these poems before, but, if possible, I love them even more this time of year.
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 5, 2013 | Advent, God, Music, Uncategorized
A hymn for this, the first Thursday.
“See the Lord of earth and skies; / Humbled to the dust … .”
GLORY be to God on high,
And peace on earth descend!
God comes down, he bows the sky,
And shows himself our friend:
God the invisible appears!
God, the blest, the great I AM,
Sojourns in this vale of tears,
And Jesus is his name.
Him the angels all adored,
Their Maker and their King.
Tidings of their humbled Lord
They now to mortals bring.
Emptied of his majesty,
Of his dazzling glories shorn,
Being’s source begins to be,
And God himself is born!
See the eternal Son of God
A mortal Son of man;
Dwelling in an earthly clod,
Whom heaven cannot contain!
Stand amazed, ye heavens, at this!
See the Lord of earth and skies;
Humbled to the dust he is,
And in a manger lies.
We, the sons of men, rejoice,
The Prince of peace proclaim;
With heaven’s host lift up our voice,
And shout Immanuel’s name:
Knees and hearts to him we bow;
Of our flesh and of our bone,
Jesus is our brother now,
And God is all our own.
– by Charles Wesley
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 4, 2013 | Advent, children, Faith, grief, Jesus, Uncategorized
“… the weary world rejoices …”
We are baking together, the little boy and I, but I am also listening to the radio.
It is 75 years since the kindertransport brought German Jewish refugee children to England. An elderly man is speaking. He was only seven when he boarded that train. Only seven when his mother and father made a promise they would not be able to keep. They promised they would join him.
He still has the small hairbrush his mother tucked into his case.
I am listening to the refined voice of this now elderly man, but I am seeing the face of my own seven-year-old son. I do not think I can bear it.
What are Christmas candies and frosted cookies to a world with so much pain?
“Fall on your knees! O hear the angel voices! ”
Some of the old maple trees that gave this home its name are waving pink, plastic ribbons. They are marked for removal. This week the tree man will come with heavy machinery and sharp blades, and we will say goodbye.
I will find it easy to say goodbye to the headless trunk covered in poison ivy vines. I will not find it so easy to witness the fall of the other tree. This tree is crowned with green leaves in summer, yellow leaves in fall, but it is hollow. Standing in front of it, I can see blue sky through a hole that is shaped just like a child’s drawing of a heart.
I feel a kinship with this tree. I know this is what love does. It rips you right open.
We are discussing Christmas gift ideas when my friend suddenly confesses that she can’t stop imagining the loss of her two-year-old daughter, her much-loved only daughter. I tell her I understand. This pain is love’s shadow.
It sends us to our knees.
I am blessed with four children. Which means I have been on my knees for a very long time. It isn’t such a bad place. There are angel voices here.
“Behold your King! Before Him lowly bend!”
The shrieking radio, that bearer of bad news, is on again, and my daughter says, “More war? Why is there always more war?”
She places her frosted angel back on the table. I lay my own sugared bell beside it.
I think about that interview. How the little boy grew up. How he visited a Holocaust museum in Israel. There, on the wall, he found a photograph of prisoners in a concentration camp. Among those gaunt, wounded faces he discovered the face of his own father. A man he had not seen since that day when promises were made.
It occurs to me only now that my Father is also among the wounded. I can’t seem to articulate to my daughter why it matters. Why it makes such a difference.
I only know that it does.
Ours is a world of violence and loss. It is also a world of small hairbrushes packed with love. A world of Christmas cookies baked with love.
A world being healed by the wounds of a king.
“And in his name all oppression shall cease.”
by Christie Purifoy | Dec 3, 2013 | Advent, Dreams, Grateful, Home, motherhood, Uncategorized
On Thursday, we said thank you around the table.
We passed the big bowl with potatoes like mountain peaks. We passed the medium-sized bowl with its cranberry jewels. We passed the tiny, wooden bowl. Three times we passed that particular bowl, and three times we tipped in our little kernels of corn. With each kernel came a thank you.
I said thank you for friends, and books, and old maple trees. The little boy said thank you for toys. The bigger boy said thank you for Jesus.
And so we entered Advent on a tidal wave of gratitude, every thank you deeply meant.
But now it is so dark, and gratitude has slipped through my fingers.
Every good gift from this past year seems to have its tarnished edge, and I am weary. Weary of sifting good from bad, blessing from burden.
This old farmhouse is a promise fulfilled. We wandered, but He brought us home. But … the pipes leak, too many old maples were lost in a storm, and this is farming country – some days I can’t breathe for the manure in the air.
The baby is a good and perfect gift. Beautiful. Much loved. With her came depression. Two months of panic and tears. Now I tremble remembering those days and pray God, don’t let that darkness ever come back. And my heart is broken for all who live within that fog for years.
So many dreams are coming true, but they are being realized in dust and dirt and darkness. And some part of me knows the bigger story. It begins in a stable but ends with streets of gold.
There are no streets of gold in my neighborhood. There’s a diaper pail. A filthy chicken coop. Kitchen scraps left to rot.
But I am done with sifting.
Done trying to untangle the knots of good and bad, done naming one thing a gift, another a curse.
I am dust myself, but I breathe with God’s own breath, and I am using that breath to say thank you.
Thank you for all of it.
The mess. The smell. The compost under my nails, and the dishes in the sink.
I say thank you because our God has never despised the dirt, and he once wrapped himself in dust.
He is our God with dirt under his nails, and he is near.
God with us.
