Advent is here, and the Poinsettia is getting ready!

Advent begins today! When I was a kid, there was Thanks giving dinner, followed by the Thanks- giving parade and downtown decoration lighting on the Friday afterwards that brought Santa to town, and a month of singing Christmas Carols in church and browsing the Western Auto catalog and making out my Christmas list. I knew that out of my list of 6 to 10 wishes I would actually get three presents.... the ones that Santa had in his workshop and could fit in his sleigh. There was also the Christmas concert by the grade school choir (where I memorized all of the words to all of the verses of the carols we sang in church) and the school play, usually an adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens--I got to play Fanny, Tiny Tim's sister, one year. And a Christmas pageant at church in which I never got to play Mary--I was either a shepherd (we had a shortage of boys or else we were ahead of the times in bending gender roles) or one of the sheep. So when I first encountered Advent, during my college years, it was new to me. I was excited to learn about this tradition of preparing the heart and spirit for the coming of the Christ child.

In Denver in the 1970s Norm and I acquired an Advent wreath and a booklet with ideas for family reflection. We followed it for years, but then expanded with a bigger wreath and various Advent devotional books, including a series of them written for the three lectionary cycles by our friends the Dixons. For the past three years, our church and another Disciples church in St. Louis have jointly published a booklet of Advent devotions written by elders and other leaders of the respective congregations. (If you are interested, there are links to a PDF version and a Word version on the home page of Affton Christian Church's web site here. You are welcome to download and use them. And yes, Norm and I each wrote one of the meditations!)

So this morning our church observed Advent, and Norm and I were asked to light the first candle, the candle of Hope. How we all need to have hope in times that seem dark and threatening. One of the best signs of hope this morning was a group of eager children who gathered at the front of the sanctuary and helped set up a bare outline of a wooden stable. Then 9 of them, ranging in age from 10 years to 13 months, sat at our pastor's feet while she read them a story about the angel's visit to Mary. Three of the children had just joined the congregation as our student pastor's family had finally been able to move to St. Louis and join him at the seminary. Three were visiting their grandmother. Three were with their mom. Since our church has had a shortage of children in recent years, it was a very positive and hopeful moment in the service.

So what do geraniums and a poinsettia have to do with the first week of Advent? Well, they are in our house, in the sunny upstairs south windows after spending the summer on the porch. The two red geraniums came from the church last spring, when a whole bevy of them decorated the sanctuary on Mother's Day and then members were invited to adopt them. They are still blooming bravely in their new environment and every morning when I get up and walk into that room to do a few simple exercises and say my morning prayers, they greet me. Few things in life are more hopeful than flowers. And the poinsettia was a gift Last Christmas from our friends the Dixons. It was a lovely rich red and had decorated the church where Mike has been preaching. It spent a quiet summer on the porch and the leaves became green and lush. It has been in an upstairs closet window, and since mid-September it has been naturally getting the number of hours of darkness a poinsettia needs to start showing color. Never before have we had this happen, and so to me this, too, is a sign of hope. Maybe sometimes you can use a little darkness to bring forth something of beauty. I don't know how many leaves will turn red of if flower bracts will appear by Christmas, but even if they don't, this reddening blush brightens each day for me.

Of course, all this begs the question: but Judi, where is your Advent Wreath? Well, I am about to go get it out of the back closet and tomorrow I'll try to find some new candles. I may have to settle for semi-traditional blue if I can't find traditional purple and pink, but it will be out very soon. It has to be: the prayer shawl ministry group is meeting at our house this Thursday!