advent – Mama Needs Coffee

advent, Catholic Spirituality, christmas, decluttering, ditching my smartphone, feast days, minimalism

A minimalist guide to the last week of Advent

December 17, 2018

Today marks the beginning of my absolute favorite period of time of the whole year: the O Antiphons. It’s the beginning of the end, the final countdown till Christmas. Advent’s last hurrah.

I have not strictly observed the Advent action items – or inaction items, as it were – which I laid out for myself back in November. I never did quite get up the self discipline to cut off the Christmas tunes in the car, so we’ve been thrilling in hope and wearily rejoicing all these past long weeks. I did limit our options to the Christian station and the 24 hour Christmas station, so we were at least constantly being filled up with positive noise, if indeed we had the radio on at all.

It has been glorious. No toggling between NPR and catchy-yet-slutty pop music that my kids probably don’t understand yet, but that I honestly shouldn’t even be listening to myself. No negativity streaming into my ears from another breaking news world report detailing some heinous atrocity half a world away.

I’ve also been steadfastly abstinent from social media, save for a brief click on Facebook to drop a link to a new piece of writing I’ve published, or to highlight some truly interesting and important bit of information.

I don’t flop down at the end of a long weekday of mothering and writing depleted beyond all recognition, capable only of streaming and scrolling. I’m still very tired, but it’s the normal kind of tired from caring for people and performing the day’s labors. I’m not overstimulated and hyperactive, looking to my teeny screen for my next dopamine hit.

So if I could make any sort of suggestion for you, gentle readers, as we cruise into this last week of Advent and preparation for Christmas day, it would mostly revolve around reducing your screen time.

Leave your phone plugged in on the counter at night. Crawl into bed with a book – electronic or otherwise – and leave the notifications and blue light downstairs/in the kitchen/far from your sleeping quarters.

Turn off the radio in the car, or, if you must drown out the ambient noise of screaming children (and I must) turn it to K-love or pop in a Christmas CD. Matt Maher’s new Advent album is phenomenal. These two tracks in particular.

Take a fast from social media from now until December 26th. Nothing bad will happen. You will not miss anything. Anyone who desperately needs to get ahold of you already knows how to do so, using the numbers connected to that tiny screen in your pocket that you’re going to plug in downstairs tonight.

I have missed literally zero important things in my month and some change fast from Instagram and Twitter. I’m more present to my family, have enjoyed connecting intentionally with friends and neighbors, and have been forced to confront some lazy habits which were preventing me from investing in relationships with people in my immediate physical proximity.

I’ll never abandon Voxer and the digital connection it allows me to enjoy with far flung friends and relatives, but social media is only a one-dimensional substitute for real connection. Anyone who has ever had a heartbreaking conversation with a friend and then experienced the cognitive dissonance of scrolling through their cheery Instagram feed later that day knows exactly what I mean here: social media only tells one side of the story, and a curated side at that.

Pull away from the 24 hour news cycle. If you absolutely must stay up to date for your job’s sake, then pick one or two trusted sources and go directly to their homepages to check the news, once a day. Declutter the dozens of apps and any and all push notifications. You do not need to know when a new related story pops up, or be alerted every time you receive a text message. If someone needs you badly enough, they will call you. Obviously work is work, but the average Joe or Jane probably doesn’t need to be 24/7 available and plugged in. Be honest with yourself in this regard.

Commit to a nightly family rosary/decade/reading of the scriptures associated with that day’s O Antiphon with your family or roommate(s). The Hallmark movies you haven’t watched yet will still be there when you’re finished. Dim the lights, light some candles, and make space for quiet reflection in defiance of our frenetic culture.

Stop buying stuff. Seriously. You probably have enough gifts for everyone in your life already. Your teachers/principals/service workers/coworkers/neighbors/distant acquaintances don’t need anything from you that you can find on Amazon. If gift giving is your love language and you are horrified by this suggestion, then go to Trader Joe’s and buy some nice dark chocolate and a few mid range bottles of wine and pass them out. Nobody needs another cheap (insert item here) in their home. They just don’t. Give a bottle of wine, a nice chocolate bar, some homemade cookies, a coffee gift card, or a great hug. Let each other off the hook to partake in the frantic consumption cycle. Make a donation to a morally sound and meaningful charity in someone’s honor. Pray a rosary for someone and present them with a beautiful hand-lettered card letting them know about it. It is so good for our hearts to stop shopping before Christmas. (And I’ve never met a teacher who didn’t want a bottle of wine or a gift card for coffee or burritos.)

If you’re still really itching to shop, try a decluttering spree instead. Grab a couple trash bags or discarded Amazon boxes and fill them with broken toys to recycle or toss and gently loved or new toys + clothes to donate. It never ceases to amaze me how similar the surge of happiness is between buying and giving away. It’s the novelty that fires the good feelings, I’m sure of it. Plus you’ll have a beautifully pared down playroom/basement/garage/living room come Christmas morning.

Give something up for this final week of Advent. Maybe it’s chocolate. Maybe it’s wine. Maybe it’s one of the above mentioned practices. Make a little space in the inn of your heart for the baby savior by pushing something aside, even – and maybe especially, a good something. The king is coming. He is coming to personally enter into each of our hearts, and He will come again in glory at the end of time, when we won’t have the luxury of a season of preparation to ready ourselves.

He is coming.

abuse, advent, Catholic Spirituality, Culture of Death, current events

The “smaller church” is already here

November 30, 2018

Yesterday morning over coffee I sat down and read a news analysis piece published on our site, and a report from the National Catholic Register.

Both left me with a roiling stomach and an aching head. I fired off a message to a coworker thanking him for his excellent reporting and also confessing that I would very much like to commit murder after reading it.

Just when I think I can’t be shocked any further by the level of depravity and corruption within some leaders of the institutional Church – within the human soul – I am naively shocked anew.

I was raging about this to my husband this morning at the breakfast table and he asked me, kindly but frankly, “did you really not think this existed? Does this really surprise you?”

No. And yes.

And each time I read about another child’s life destroyed and another diocese or parish deceived by and forced to endure a predator in their midst, the rage bubbles up anew.

“You have to understand,” I began frustratedly, “that for an almost pathologically self-disclosing choleric like me, this level of duplicity is unfathomable.” I made the point that to live a similar level of deception would involve, for example, my obtaining regular secret abortions and having an IUD while continuing to publicly blog about the sanctity of life and the immorality of contraception.

“Give me,” I said dramatically, “all the gay pride marchers in the Tenderloin over a single, closeted gay bishop committing child abuse or sodomizing seminarians. At least they’re living in reality.”

How someone can preach the Gospel on Sunday and destroy a young boy’s life on Monday is beyond comprehension. I feel such impotent maternal rage. Dave made the comparison to Mary Magdalene; I snapped back that she wasn’t masquerading as a Pharisee while making her living as a prostitute.

Give me all the St. Mary Magdalenes throughout all of history over a single Judas. (Also, aren’t you glad you’re not living in a household headed by two adults who both work for or around the Church right now?)

I have no idea the point I’m making here, just that every time I read a new report or hear about another facet of the scandal, the rage boils anew. I made my long-suffering husband list off with me the number of good and holy bishops we knew personally. Maybe there are lots more, we don’t know all that many in the larger scheme of things. It was a modest list.

For all my adult life I’ve imagined that then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s infamous line about “a smaller, holier Church” would involve social collapse and government persecution. Now I feel quite certain that here, in the US at least, the smaller Church has already arrived.

It consists of Catholics who profess, believe, and live out the teachings of the Catholic Church. And who get their asses to Confession when they fall short, again and again. Clergy and laity alike.

It’s tempting to stay here, in a self righteous pique of rage. Every time I read another story of a cover up, a failure to act, a man who was entrusted with representing the fatherhood of God acting like another satan instead, I want to throw in the towel.

I won’t.

Especially considering this: that even within the embrace of holy Mother Church, I am still basically a miserable human being. I would be dead without the grace of the Sacraments. Spiritually, yes, but possibly physically too. I was reflecting on this as I was alone in my car yesterday afternoon, a rare moment of solitude. I turned off the radio and forced myself to reflect in the silence; there is precious little of it in my life in this present season.

I’m being a hypocrite. I was Catholic in name only in college. I was a miserable, wretched, pharisaical sinner.

I’m still a sinner. But back then, if somebody held me and my selfish, sinful, degenerate lifestyle up as a model of what Christians are like, my God, they’d lose their faith in an instant.

It’s not a perfect comparison. I never took vows of chastity or poverty or obedience. I wasn’t presenting myself as the public face of the Church. Not institutionally, at least. But I was, just the same, a public witness to the person of Christ.

What would someone who encountered Jenny of 2003 think of Catholicism? Of Jesus? Of His Church? It makes me acutely nauseous to consider.

And yet in my wretched poverty, He didn’t turn His back on me.

People within the Church who were pursuing lives of holiness and integrity welcomed me with open arms and refused to be scandalized by my sin.

Who am I to judge now, then? (And I’m not saying that the sinful and illegal actions in each of these cases should not be judged and prosecuted when they do come to light – just that perhaps it’s not my particular job to do so.)

I have to put aside my natural rage and the deep, deep desire for justice to be served and submit these impulses over and over again to Christ. Everything I’ve dragged to the confessional for months now has been this, and almost only this: that I cannot stomach another abuse report, cannot stand to read about one more instance of inaction from Rome, struggle mightily to rein in my imagination from making leaps to judgement.

But I must not leave. We must stand firm no matter how dark the days become. And I do believe they will become much, much darker.

I read this piece from Elizabeth Scalia this morning with tears springing to my eyes in public, hardly caring if the guy on the treadmill next to me saw.

Yes, Lord. It felt like I was reading words from the depths of my own heart, spilled out in someone else’s words.

Strengthen my faith, Lord. Don’t let me turn away when it becomes even darker.

Maranatha, Lord Jesus.

About Me, advent, birth story, Catholic Spirituality, pregnancy, Suffering

Am I not she who is your mother?

December 12, 2017

I will never forget my labor with Genevieve, thus far my only daughter (though that title may be ceded in mere weeks now.) Partly because it was drawn out over 3 agonizingly long days of prodromal labor – not hideously painful, but hugely exhausting – and partly because she was the only baby whose sex we found out ahead of time, so we knew “who” we were waiting on in a more personal way.

I remember feeling very connected to Our Lady being pregnant with Evie during the Advent season, and with an estimated due date of Christmas Day, I allowed my imagination to carry me along on the long journey towards Bethlehem, comforting myself with the notion that even if I were averaging 4 hours of sleep each night with contractions coming almost unrelentingly (but non-productively) around the clock for days on end, at least I wasn’t on a donkey.

The evening of December 12th, 2013, the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, found me once again hunched over the bathroom counter in pain, timing contractions that both I and my iPhone app knew were not going to amount to a pattern worthy of hospital admission. Dave knocked on the bathroom door, having returned from a late night grocery run, and handed me a beautiful bouquet of roses.

They were wrapped in cellophane and still bearing the store logo, but there on the crinkly plastic was an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the very same image supernaturally imposed on St. Juan Diego’s tilma on the hill at Teypeyac more than 500 years ago.

The roses eventually found their way to water. As I was balling up the wrappings and clippings to toss out, I impulsively grabbed some kitchen scissors and cut the image of Our Lady out of the plastic, fashioning a little 8 inch high icon of crinkly plastic which I taped to the bathroom mirror.

I spent a lot of time looking to Mary over the next 72 hours, bracing my hands on either side of the sink and looking into her delicate brown face. I reminded myself in between the waves of seemingly inefficient and interminable contractions that she too was a mother, that she too had done this. I fixed my eyes on the black sash draped around her waist, whose imagery symbolizes pregnancy.

That’s right, Mary is actually pregnant in the image seared into the fibers of Juan Diego’s tilma.

It was, at turns, comforting and confounding to think of God putting His own Mother through this – though the jury is still out on what, precisely, Mary’s physical experience of childbirth entailed. Various Church Fathers have weighed in on the matter, one the Church allows to exist shrouded in no small amount of mystery. We know that Mary physically carried the Christ child in her womb and that she mysteriously and miraculously maintained even the physical aspects of her virginity upon His birth, but beyond that, God has not chosen to reveal specific details about what birth was “like” for she who was conceived without sin.

Still, as I hunched over that sink and raised my eyes to the filmy plastic icon of the Mother of God, I took comfort in the slight swelling apparent in her midsection, wondering if she had experienced round ligament pain or pubic symphysis dysfunction or sciatica – I doubted you could ride a donkey many miles at any stage of pregnancy and escape unscathed, ergonomically speaking.

I wondered over Mary’s experience of Jesus’ tiny – and then not so tiny – kicks under her ribcage. The in-utero hiccups that rattle the whole belly, the improbable acrobatics that accompany those final few weeks of stretched-outness and can’t do this another day-ness.

When it was finally – finally – time to go to the hospital and stay at the hospital, I ducked into the bathroom and grabbed the piece of plastic off the mirror. I wanted her with me still, epidural or no.

It turns out she wanted to be with me, too. The nurse who checked me upon arrival announced a triumphant “5 cm, you’re staying!” and escorted us from triage to the delivery room, where I could have and might have wept in relief. 3 days of little sleep and contractions 15 minutes apart around the clock; I sank exhausted into the hospital bed, nodding enthusiastically that yes, I did want them to call anesthesia right away.

As I settled into a blissful and exhausted sleep, I remember the nurse commenting that she thought it would be 3 hours, maybe less. She was right, because after a brief and glorious nap, I was complete and ready to push.

Our doctor arrived a little after I’d woken from augmented reality nap time and started setting up his equipment. He paused before he gowned up, reaching into his bag and sliding out a wooden icon, which he propped against the wall opposite the foot of my bed.

I gasped in delight because it was her – a beautiful image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, larger and far more saturated than my grocery store wrapper.

I laughed and told him she’d been following me throughout labor, and he cocked his head and told me “it’s strange, but I lost my usual icon of Our Lady of Lourdes somehow at my last birth, so this is her replacement. And it’s actually the first time I’ve brought this new one along.”

And so mine was to be the first birth attended by this particular image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I’ve since delivered one more child under her watchful maternal gaze, and I look forward to her presence in my hospital room this go round, too.

It is comforting to have a God who is not unfamiliar with our human condition. And it reflects such careful attention to detail and such compassion that He would entrust us with a mother who is herself intimately acquainted with the seasons and stages of our lives as women.

There is a beautiful quote from Our Lady of Guadalupe to St. Juan Diego, her “smallest son,” which resonates deeply with me as being applicable to any hardship or physical suffering we might endure in this life, but perhaps most particularly, in facing birth:

“Listen, and let it penetrate your heart … do not fear any illness or vexation, any anxiety or pain. Am I not here who am your Mother?”

Because I am afraid.

I do fear the pain, and the anxiety of past memories and experiences of delivery can wash over me and overwhelm me at a moment’s notice if I allow them to take hold.

In these final few weeks as I prepare mentally, physically and spiritually to bring a tiny new life into the outside world, I find myself wanting to be folded more deeply into Her mantle, begging for the comfort that only a mother can offer to a small, anxious child.

Because it is coming, and it will hurt. And I will not be alone.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the unborn, pray for us.

advent, Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, feast days, liturgical living

An Advent bucket list for busy (tired) Catholic families

December 7, 2017

We try to communicate the “not-yet-ness” of Advent to our kids without totally squelching the pleasant, anticipatory joy of Christmas on the near horizon, and I think we’ve achieved a moderately sane balance, though I’m sure we come across as too grinch for some and gluttonously liturgically abusive to others. Which is why the Church doesn’t actually mandate “how to Advent,” apart from encouraging voluntary penance and reflection and continued adherence to meatless Fridays (or some alternative penitential act of the believer’s own choosing). So that’s good news if you’re Elf incarnate and had your tree up on Black Friday, and it’s good news if you’re St. Benedicta of the Barren Pine Branch and no morsel of Christmas fudge shall passeth your lips until midnight on December 24th.

It’s a big Church.

Here are a few ways we’re trying to keep the both/and of the season at hand. Maybe some ideas will jump out as possibly useful in your own little domestic church.

Celebrating major December feast days and solemnities (Nicholas, Guadalupe, Immaculate Conception, Lucy, Juan Diego, etc.) by driving around looking at Christmas lights, blasting Christmas music, drinking hot chocolate, and generally abandoning ourselves entirely to the wildly premature indulgence of secular “advent.” We try to really go all out for feast days, and this is a cheap thrill that we can probably manage to do once or twice during this year’s highly abbreviated Advent.
Making blessing bags for our local homeless. We drive into Denver proper to take our kids to school, and we generally pass at least a panhandler or two going each way. Our oldest is particularly concerned when he sees anyone standing in the median with a sign, so at his urging we’ve started keeping gallon-sized ziplock bags in the trunk stocked with beef jerky, granola bars, chapstick, deodorant, gum, socks, gloves, vaseline, canned soup, (all of which are available at the Dollar Tree) and maybe a McDonald’s gift card, etc. Sometimes people are super receptive and sometimes they’d really rather not be handed anything other than cash, but we like to be able to offer something along with our prayers. Our kids get that *this* is St. Nicholas’ main gig, and it helps them connect with the historical person of the saint and not get totally bogged down in the more, ah, magical details of his life.
Go to confession as a family at least once during Advent. So far this only applies to adults in our crew, and we’re spoiled with great confession times at our parish, so we trade kids and allow each other to switch off going on subsequent Sundays – or sometimes both get in on the same day.
Bake something for the neighbors. I actually hate baking, so this is an act of penance for me. Maybe it’s a celebratory thing for you? Whatever the case, the kids get a kick out of ringing doorbells and passing out loaves of “homemade” Trader Joe’s gf pumpkin bread from a box mix. Win/win.
Buy an extra toy or bag of groceries for a toy or food drive and take the cost of it out of your family’s budget for either groceries or Christmas. In years past we’ve adopted a whole family through our parish’s giving tree program, but this year, being a little tighter, we’re scaling back a bit. (Bonus: this is a really good way to cut off the “I wants” when entering any retail establishment with children this time of year, redirecting their attention and energy towards blessing someone else.)
Watch a favorite Christmas movie (the original Grinch, Home Alone, It’s a Wonderful Life, Nicholas: the Boy who Became Santa) with the fireplace turned on and hot cocoa or cider in hand. We try to save this as a treat for either feast days or Sundays, but I’m super pregnant and Netflix is actually mothering my children as I sit and type this list, so maybe we’ll have a few more Advent movie nights than we would typically accrue.
Slowly deck the halls. Our fake tree is already up and lit, loud and proud, but is otherwise naked. We’ll probably let them start throwing some ornaments on the branches this Sunday or next, kind of drawing out the expectant longing of Advent. We used to be super hardcore and leave the lights turned off until the week of Christmas, but then we had a seven year old whose actual nickname is Kringle, and I got too big and too tired to fight him on it. Blaze on, Christmas lights. Blaze on.
Light the Advent candle every night at dinner, and singing one verse of “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” (0r forcing your family to listen to the Pentatonix version over and over and over…)
Buy a coffee (or a sandwich, or an order of fries, or…) for someone in line behind you. Even more surprising when it’s just a random day in December and not actually the 24th or 25th.
Pray for the Lord to reveal a concrete and specific need of someone in your immediate (or virtual) community, and then act on it. One year I was sure that God was nudging me to send a moderate sum of money to a friend across the country and so we consulted our budget, pulled a few strings, and fired off an Amazon gift card in the determined amount. Not only was it gratefully received, but it was also apparently the exact amount this family was in need of for something. It’s fun to be involved in God’s generosity.
Make a construction paper Advent chain with one link for each day of the season (and it’s fine to jump in now, just count how many days are left!) and write a fun treat/sacrifice/good deed on each link. Let kids take turns tearing one off each day and also point to its when they ask “how many more days till Christmas?” (cut up purple and pink strips of construction paper, tape together in a chain, write stuff on) <— #shescrafty
Go visit Santa/St. Nick. Be sure your kids tell him they’re praying for him when they finish the visit, and he might just shock you by bowing his head and praying a quick prayer with them before they hop down. (Local peeps: Southglenn Santa is the real deal).
Bring your pastor a six pack of fancy beer/bottle of scotch/a nice red wine. They get a lot of sugar during the season, but maybe what they could really use after back to back to back liturgies and tons of hospital visits and hours in the confessional is a stiff drink.
Inquire whether there might be an elderly member at your church who is far from family and will be spending Christmas alone. Consider inviting them to go to church with you this year, or to come for a meal or dessert. Christmas can be hard for the elderly and the lonely.
Pray a rosary – either alone or as a family – for someone who has lost a loved one this past year. Christmas can be a complicated time for someone who is grieving.
Make a meal – or order some takeout – for a family with a new baby. It can be tough to have a new baby during the season when everyone else is gearing up for a big party about … a new baby. Maybe offer to help the mom wrap presents, or offer to have her ship her Amazon orders straight to your house and offer your elf-ing services, complete with drop off.
Pick something quiet and simple to fast from, either for all of Advent or each week. Maybe one week it’s Christmas music in the car, maybe the second week it’s chocolate. Do something that helps you internally recollect your heart even when the rest of the world is already deep into party mode.
Remember that even if you don’t finish the shopping, don’t get the cards out, don’t plan the perfect menu and can’t afford the big toy, you’ve got 12 whole days – including December 25th – to celebrate Christmas. And that it’s really all about a teeny little baby, His Mother’s magnificent “yes,” and the unfathomable gift of our salvation.

advent, Catholic Spirituality, Family Life, feast days, liturgical living

Have yourself a very little Advent

November 29, 2017

In past years, in my enthusiasm to be liturgically aware and impart said knowledge to my offspring, I think perhaps I’ve been a little intense in the Advent department. We had a rigorous (laughs softly and stares vacantly into space) tree-decorating schedule involving the procurement of a real!fresh! evergreen on the first Sunday of Advent, followed by lights on the second Sunday, ornaments on the third, and the tree topper on the fourth, and a complicated formula for when Christmas music was appropriate on the radio (feast days, but only major feast days, you know? Also, do you hate younger me a little bit yet?)

This year, too swollen and too tired to fight inertia, the (fake) tree has been erected, entirely without my assistance, and is strung with scraggly leftover colored lights from our exterior decorating efforts of last weekend. They are too few in number to be considered appropriately festive, but sufficient to keep the kids enthralled. My attention to said tree involves mainly yelling at the two year old to stop unplugging it and trying vainly to communicate the dangers of live electricity to his toddler brain. Gone is the liturgically-nuanced schedule of only lighting the thing on feast days until Christmas truly begins.

My kids still know whether it’s a feast day or not, however, since this time of year that’s the one sure way to get “dessert:” a mouthful of mini marshmallows after dinner. Somebody pretended he was very, very devoted to St. Catherine Laboure last night around 7 pm and earnestly implored me to impart the story of the Miraculous Medal to him while stuffing his cheeks with pillows of high fructose corn syrup.

Anyone who tries to dissuade you from motivating your kids with sugar is just trying to make life unnecessarily difficult, I can assure you.

Outside, the strings of light are burning well into the evening hours, though we’re still 4 days away from the actual, well, advent of Advent. I’ve made vague threats about cutting off the constant stream of Kosi 101 Christmas classics on the minivan sound system once we’re firmly out of ordinary time, but we all know I’m bluffing, just like we all know dinner this evening is going to be rice + some frozen veggie + any defrosted meat for the 5th night in a row.

I came across this beautiful reflection by Michelle Chronister last night and exhaled a big, heavy sigh of relief, and maybe shed a tear or two. Because of course Advent is a time of preparation and mild penance: we’re awaiting the end of a pregnancy.

It’s joyful, it’s a little frustrating, it’s soon-but-not-yet, and there are moments when it’s really, really hard. When the rest of the world is spinning frantically into premature celebration – not unlike watching all of your pregnant friends give birth and still hanging out in third-trimesterville – it can be a little deflating.

Here are some things I’m doing to survive the intensely historically accurate Advent we’ll be experiencing in our home this year (minus the prenatal donkey ride).

A minimalist Advent bucket list of sorts:

Confession. If I do nothing else, I’m at least going to try showing up for Mass 15 or 20 minutes early one Sunday and getting in line. Our parish has wonderfully convenient confession times, and there’s nothing better than heading into the Christmas season with a clean conscience and an invigorating infusion of grace.
Decluttering + giving away excess toys and clothes. We started this on Black Friday (instead of doing any shopping, which was oddly satisfying) and the kids got really into it, though I later discovered their enthusiasm was partially motivated by a (false) belief that all donated toys would be replaced with newer and more desirable models. Whatever our personal motivations are, we’re bagging up excess as a family and making space in our home – literally – which feels very right as we await a season of more. Plus, the house already looks sparser and more subdued, scrappy Christmas lights and all. It feels good to make space and let go of excess.
Small acts of charity. Whether they be for neighbors, strangers, or each other, we’re trying to focus on being generous in small things, like clearing away your brother’s dinner plate, or bringing mommy a diaper, or pulling in the neighbor’s trash can. We have the little manger filled with last year’s straw, but it’s unlikely I’ll get my act together enough to empty the thing out and refill a fresh box of straw for good deeds. It seems sufficient to wave a vaguely sausage-shaped finger at the little crèche when I catch someone being generous, doling out verbal attaboys to kids caught being good.
St. Nicholas will come on the 6th, and he’ll collect our Santa letters and maybe even the bags of clothes and toys we’ve bagged up to donate, if I don’t drop them at Arc before he rolls up in his sleigh. I am hoping to emphasize charity and generosity over “I want I want I want” this year, especially as we’re planning on the leanest of gift exchanges.
Koslig. Or Hygge. Whichever Scandinavian term you prefer. I’m lighting all the candles and cranking on the fireplace in the evenings and playing soft Advent carols (and okay, okay, Christmas music already, too) and pulling little people close to me on the couch even though the house is trashed and I’m so, so tired. I want to emphasize to them that waiting in expectant hope is more important than frantically rushing around the house wrapping and decorating and getting ready. Plus, I only have energy to do that like one out of every seven days. Coziness and lots of candles and blankets and pillows and a general slowing down of our usual evening routine will (hopefully) emphasize to our kids that this is a special time of year, and that anticipation can be delightful. Plus, I’m way too tired to do a Jesse tree.

That’s it. That’s our simple Advent plan this year. The presents are few and mostly purchased, the tiny diapers are stacked in a closet awaiting a little person to swaddle, and we’re settling in for a somewhat restless season of waiting, watching in the dim candlelight for the brighter light that is to come.

May it be enough.