November 19th, 2021

The Art of Advent

Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving 🦃!! I fully intended to write about my practice of giving thanks during November in keeping with the Holiday we celebrate. But alas, that did not happen. I believe I wrote last time about some changes that are happening personally. Those changes have kept me super busy and I have let a few things drop-like this blog/newsletter. I will write more about these big changes as they draw nearer, but for now-let’s focus on the present.

As we celebrate next Thursday with thankful hearts, we also enter into the season of Advent. I grew up in a church that did not follow the “liturgical” calendar. My search for a deeper experience of God has led me to different places and shown me other ways to enter into Gods story. One path that has opened to me has been the church calendar and the meaning and depth of the story we can experience by entering into it’s practices and traditions. Advent is one of those traditions that has enriched the meaning and my experience of Christ during the Christmas season.

For those not familiar, Advent begins on the Sunday four weeks before Christmas. Each Sunday, the tradition in the early church was to light a candle, one each week, and enter into a time of prayer and reflection on the themes of the season. The themes vary by denomination, but they all focus around the scripture story of the birth of Christ. As I’ve embraced the traditions of the early church, I see its wisdom. The church calendar helps us to celebrate and honor the God of the Bible in much the same way God instructed the Jews to feast and celebrate Him in the Old Testament. In the wisdom of the early church and its practices we can find a depth of meaning we might otherwise miss in all the hustle and bustle of daily life. Especially the frantic pace of the Christmas season. I encourage you to think about beginning and Advent tradition if you don’t already have one.

As I’ve been led in my life and art to deeper communion with the Creator and lover of my soul, I’ve been committed to helping others do the same. So I offer you a way to enter into Advent in maybe a new way, by joining with Art and Soul Ministries for the 2021 Advent Artists Series. I’ve gathered a collective of four talented artists and four gifted writers to create artwork for Visio Divina and a written devotion for each of the four themes of Advent. Each artist contemplated the theme for the week and created around that. As I put it together, I prayed over the work. I said prayers for each soul that reads it, that they would find a deeper meaning and experience God in greater measure this season. May we enter in even deeper ways, the story of the birth of our Savior.

I would love it if you would join us each week to come before God with our Art and Soul! You can find us on Art and Soul’s social media pages as well as the website. Or click here- Advent 2021
Have a blesses Advent season and ss always, thank you for your interest in Art and Soul Ministries!!!
​I pray it blesses your Art and Soul! 😉