Pie and Coffee 
Advent
Hope all the P&C readers out there had a good Christmas.
I’m sure there’s a technical term for how the viewer separates the artwork from the background. I love taking creche photos in part because the background is so often completely inappropriate, and occasionally accidentally appropriate. Here, NO TRESPASSING and BEWARE OF THE DOG are a “No room at the inn” for our time.
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of four weeks of Christian preparation for Christmas.
This year, it also marked the day when American Catholics began using a new translation of the Roman Missal, the first big change in what we say at mass in 40 years.
The rephrasing began with the second response of the mass. The congregation used to say: “And also with you.” Now: “And with your spirit.”
At St. Peter’s I’d say 0 of 200 people (including myself) were following the missal closely enough to override the habit of decades and give the new response. “And with your spirit” popped up throughout the mass. By the end we were at about 50% compliance with the new text.
As part of today’s homily, the priest observed that the spirit of Advent is “To be awake, to be aware.” To a Buddhist sympathizer like me, this sounds like mindfulness. This Advent I’ll be giving special attention to silent prayer, perhaps lighting the Advent wreath briefly each day. Since Dorothy Day’s published diaries, The Duty of Delight
“Gandhi Visits Occupy Wall Street”
Annual Agape Advent Evening
Saturday, December 3, 5:30pm
2062 Greenwich Road, Ware, MA
George Pattery, SJ, a Jesuit from Calcutta, will speak. He is currently teaching a course on Gandhi and Religion at Holy Cross.
(This event conflicts with the Stone Soup anniversary party, unfortunately.)
If you only see one Christmas pageant this year, make it the one at Pleasant Street Baptist Church: 5pm, Sunday, December 12, Pleasant and Ashland, Worcester, Massachusetts.
Starring Bruce “Snow Ghost” Russell as “a wise man—or a wise guy.”
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of four weeks of Christian preparation for Christmas.
Most Catholics I know have some sort of wreath, with purple, pink, and white candles. (Today we lit a purple candle.) Those with kids usually have an Advent calendar as well.
The US Bishops have some online Advent prayers and resources. This year, with barely any time between Thanksgiving travels and Advent, we improvised a bit more than usual, and used an Advent “psalm” from a book that was handy, Fr. Edward Hays’s Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim.
Advent is one of those times, like Lent, when we laypeople are especially encouraged to receive the sacrament of Reconciliation; my Advents are usually not heavy on penitence, but I’m considering making that a focus this year. For the first Advent in many years, I was a lector in my parish, and the Second Reading (Rom 13:11-14) got me examining my conscience.
. . . not in orgies and drunkenness . . .
Doing good on these counts.
. . . not in rivalry and jealousy . . .
Here, not so much.
Msgr. Scollen, in his homily, noted that the First Reading was about “nonviolence,” the second, “personal lifestyle.” I’ll be meditating on them more this week and discerning the steps I should take this Advent.
We’ve been using a booklet of Henri Nouwen meditations this Advent. He often counsels that we stay in the moment, and today, the fourth Sunday of Advent, Greyhound is doing their bit to keep me where I am both mentally and physically by cancelling bus service to Worcester due to snow. (I am in no hurry to ride on icy roads after my Christmas wreck last year.)
Today we celebrated the season by Christmas carolling at a local nursing home and at the homes of neighbors and friends.
I also wanted to share photos of a homemade Advent wreath and a sort of “Advent board” tracing the lineage of Jesus, based on a design by legendary Catholic Worker artist Ade Bethune.
Hope you all have a wonderful, safe week!
This week: the 508 Christmas Spectacular! The panel is Julius Jones and Mr. Brendan Melican. Theme song: “If I Had One Christmas Wish.” Words by Bruce “Snow Ghost” Russell, music by Mike Benedetti.
Audio: mp3 link, other formats, feed
Video: Downloads and other formats
Buddha Hut buffet Saturday; Stone Soup party Friday; Winter Mystery Band signups happening now.
The NYT is not selling the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Top suggestions for the T&G: stop running the internet poll on the front page, because you’re deceiving people who don’t realize it’s a phony poll, and you look bad to people who know what’s going on; create an RSS feed for Worcester news; make use of the <title> element so it will be easier to Google T&G articles; add features to the comment system to filter out noise.
Julius, who helps run the Regional Environmental Council’s gardening program, talks about the local green economy, or lack thereof.
Holiday gift guide:
Nicole has posted an experimental Virtual Assignment Desk; Jeff Barnard highlights Bill Randell’s reporting on low-income housing financing.
You should wear a hat to stay warm! I’m told Lutheran Social Services has classes for recent immigrants to help them dress appropriately for the (bad) weather.
Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the four-week period of preparation for Christmas.
Advent isn’t as project-oriented as Lent, but there are many more popular rituals to mark this season. Notably, each Sunday you light candles around a wreath while praying. Today we light a purple candle, next week two, the next week we add a pink candle, then another purple, finally lighting all four plus a white candle for Christmas.
If there are children in the house, you probably have an Advent calendar with little pieces of candy attached to each day, a clever incentive for the children to remind you of the daily Advent prayer. The U.S. Bishops’ Advent website contains a simulated calendar with prayers instead of snacks.
Every year I also like caroling with friends and watching It’s a Wonderful Life with Bruce; one of my goals this Advent is to integrate them into these daily and weekly practices.
Most of all, this year I’m looking forward to sharing these traditions with a non-Catholic Christian friend who knows very little about this stuff, and hoping to gain a deeper appreciation of Advent in so sharing.
Ebenezer Scrooge was a businessman whose single employee, Bob Cratchit, a married father of four, worked for starvation wages. In the opening pages of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, we learn that Scrooge believes he is overtaxed by the government and “cannot afford to make others merry.” He doesn’t see himself as a miser, but as a victim of a bad economy. When Cratchit makes even the most modest suggestion of better working conditions (an extra lump of coal on the fire, a single day off a year), Scrooge threatens him with unemployment.
On November 6, 2009, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the unemployment rate had climbed to 10.2%, representing 16.4 million Americans, double the number of jobless when the recession began in December 2007. The government also reported that an additional 808,000 people had become “discouraged workers,” those “not looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them.” Perhaps most alarming in terms of race relations and future prospects, the unemployment rates for blacks was 15.4% and 25.7% for all teenagers.
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At the risk of obsessively praying about waste and recycling, I have this prayer to offer, which I trust to be sensibly Trinitarian.
(John Calvin was wrong. The Purgatory does exist. I have seen it with my own eyes, at the Redbridge recycling station.)
God our Creator, in your mercy:
Help us to learn how to live in Paradise, where nothing is wasted,
where we walk or cycle with you as you intended.
Bless the workers who sort our recycling,
who, as befit people created in your image, re-create order out of chaos.
Christ our Saviour, in your mercy:
Remove us from the flashy sports cars and the 4×4s (SUVs)
which only speed us to the incinerating Armageddon.
Remind us of your crown, when we see the thornbushes growing over the landfill.
Remind us of your Cross, whenever we see smokestacks or wind turbines on the hill.
Remind us of your Passion and your Resurrection.
Χριστὲ ἐλέησον.
Holy Spirit our Advocate and Comforter, in your mercy:
Guard us on our bus route for the recycling centre.
Purge us of our sins of pride and greed.
Blow your wind on us and drive us in your dynamic,
as on the wind turbines, and as on Pentecost.
Bless with your wordless prayer
everything that has a recycling symbol.
Κύριε ἐλέησον.
Amen.
(By the way, Chris Goodall’s second book is out: Ten Technologies to Save the Planet.)
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