Today is the first day of the Celtic Advent, a forty day period of prayer and preparation for the Christmas season.  Celtic Christians, it seems, were wont to commit to forty-day periods of prayer and fasting before major decisions as well as major religious festivals.

This year, I've decided to give it a go.  Fasting, as in eating no food, or no food during the hours of daylight, isn't a safe option for me, I have medication that has to be taken 'with or after food' and more than once a day.  But I can be more intentional about food, and have decided to cut out sweet treats and savoury snacks from now until Christmas.  Fasting, as in abstention from something in order to do something or take up something for a season, is, for me, a more helpful definition.  My life is ludicrously full at the moment, so part of my 'fasting' will be a commitment to take an hour out, every day, and, rain or shine, to go for a walk, and then to post a photo of something I saw as I did so... And now I've said it, you can hold me to it!

I am using a book called (unspectacularly) Celtic Advent by David Cole and will post here each day (or as close to each day as I can manage) a very short thought based on what I have read, as well as citing the prayer the book offers.

Today we are at the very start of the journey, and we are invited to take a moment to pause and reflect not on the practicalities of how we will travel, what we will do, where we will go, but instead on why we are setting out - what is the purpose of this journey, this forty day sojourn en route to Christmas?  Just before we hurtle headlong into buying and sending, eating and partying, and goodness knows what else, to ask ourselves, 'to what purpose this endeavour.'

And a prayer from the book:

God of all gods, today I beghin these 40 days of preparation, I commit my life to you.  I commit the path ahead to you.  I commit myself to be open to whatever change you call me to make.  Amen.