A flurry of preparations

So Advent is the season of preparation for Christmas, or, in Godly Play language, the time of getting ready to enter the mystery of Christmas. The church focus is that it's a time of reflection, quiet, simplicity. A sort of "clearing the decks" for the celebration of Christ coming as a human to be among us. For me this year that apparently means that I don't do any Christmas preparations!

Well, not quite, but I did realize yesterday that my reluctance to get the Christmas stuff out is because I have to declutter in order to add Stuff. OUT! go the magazines I've been meaning to recycle. OUT! go the newspapers that have piled up. PUT AWAY! go the various things that have found a resting place in the living room but really belong elsewhere. BACK! to the library go the neglected and finished books (to be replaced with fresh library book and our collection of books for and about Advent, Las Posadas, Christmas, Three Kings, and Epiphany). AWAY! go the papers to be filed. I also swept every nook and cranny, and will probably have the boys dustmop and also dust with our fun static dusters. AWAY! will also go the contents of some boxes I've been ignoring.

Then I'll be ready to put out various Christmas and winter decorations, and pin the stockings to the bedroom doors -- just like my parents did when I was little. Put the electric candles in the windows. Fix up the strands of multicolored lights along the tops of the kitchen cupboards (they're soooo pretty at night, lighting the lower edge of the cathedral ceiling that lifts away from the kitchen end of the main living area). Tomorrow we'll buy our tree, just a couple of days later than usual, and put it up on Sunday.

Right now, though, it's time to check on the bread I'm making for our parish Advent Quiet Day soup-and-bread lunch today. Most of today will be devoted to dropping in on the meditations, attending the Eucharist and lunch, taking Son2 to school a couple of blocks away, and returning for prayer stations based on the Great O Antiphons of Advent, and the final meditation time. A still, quiet break in the midst of busy-ness and deadlines (gotta order those gifts for the nieces and nephews TODAY) (gotta address the Christmas cards and make a decision on whether to write a Christmas letter) (etc.). Stillness. Quiet. Maybe the contrast is enough to be my Advent season.