The is a #CelticAdvent calendar here if you would find it interesting or helpful - it's both light-hearted and liturgically sesnitive.

There are now oodles of opportunities to do a #ReverseAdventCalendar where you collect an item a day, package it into a hamper and deliver it to the cause of your choice in time for Christmas delivery.  Check your favourite search engine for details of local projects.  It's good to start now, as most charities are closed on Christmas Eve - and you really want your gift to reach its recipient by then! Last year the kitties did one for Cats Protection.

If you donate to food banks, how about you pop in a chocolate Advent calendar, some chocolate coins or the odd selection box in the next couple of weeks, which will bring a smile to someone who wouldn't otherwise have such a treat.  If you want to be more 'holy', then the Meaningful Chocolate People have a real advent calendar

Whatever you do, or don't do, may your advent bring you hope, love, joy and peace.

Communal discernment, Celtic style!  The story of Brendan, who set out on a voyage to the west (the Americas) is a story of someone with a passionate desire.  It is also a story of communal discernment - he took time to reflect with his brother monks in community, and also time to pray together with them, and privately,  to help him discern whether or not this was 'of God.'

A healthy trinity of individual desire, communal discernment and divine calling.  It all feels very 'Baptist' to me.

Whilst I cannot say I have any burning desires or strong passions to do something new or exciting at this point in time, it is healthy and helpful to pause and reflect on what it is God might just be saying to us.

The prayer from the book -

Gracious God, thank you forgiving me the passion to do great things.  Thank you that you desire for me to follow your will.  In all that lies before me in the fuutre, in all that excites me, cause me to pause to check that the path I am about to step upon is the one you lay before me.  Surround me with those who will give wise counsel, and may I be drawn into great things for you.  Amen.

Yesterday's walk was in the evening, just as the light was fading.  I took a number of photos, each of which seemed to connect with the same word - 'resilience.'

A leaf, blowing in the wind, and tenaciously clinging to the tree that gave it birth

A rose, blooming in mid-November, gentle peach-colour against the greying day

A pillar box, stark red in the growing gloom

Resilience - one of the characteristics of love I spoke about on Tuesday, which may explain why the word was near the 'top' of my subconscious.

Resilience - the light that shine in the darkness and refuses to be extinguished.

Advent, a journey into the growing darkness at the end of the year, with the resilient hope that believes light will come again.

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.

This morning was my second 'dog collar' activity this week, as I was visiting the care home where I offer very part time chaplaincy.  The nature of the place is that I seldom see people more than once, but there are few I am slowly starting to know. 

What struck me this morning, as I prayed with a free presbystrian-cum-pentecostal, an Italian Roman Catholic, and assorted others in between, was that every one of them reached out and took my hand.  In an age when we hear so much about unwanted and inappropriate touch, when we are, rightly, cautious and aware of misunderstanding, it is the more precious when someone reaches out a hand seeking the comfort of your own.

It also struck me, as I walked home, that I really ought to take with me a supply of holding crosses and rosary beads which can be offered to those who would find comfort in them (and I also need to re-learn the rosary prayers so I can do them with the Catholics)

I find this chaplaincy role challenging, not my natural 'thing' at all, yet for all that, there are the moments, precious moments, when it feels that maybe what I am, and what I offer, is enough.  The dying person, the angry person, the fearful person, the lonely person... all reaching out, and all finding some comfort in the holding of hands.  Hmmm...