A Pause In Advent

Joining in with Floss in France who has offered to sponsor a Christmas Blogger Event Termed "A Pause in Advent," where we stop a moment and reflect on the spiritual season, this article from the late 1980's gave me pause to think about a different turn on Christmas. Perhaps you will like it too.  An excerpt...

I direct a Christian theater company and this Christmas season we have a play running called "0, Little Town of Bagels, Tea Cakes and Hamburger Buns." The play is about the contemporary experience of Christmas based on the fact that the people to whom Christ came that first Christmas are the same kinds of people that we are today. Bethlehem means "house of bread." Bread means bagels, tea cakes and hamburger buns. Christmas is not a remote event. It is not a memo tucked away in a history book and forgotten. It is a celebration for right now — for the people who are now, as were the people who were then — some of them hurting, some of them alone, some of them angry, some of them tired, some of them separated from their family, some of them ill. Unto those people, God sent his Christmas card.

Click on the highlighted title to read the entire essay O Little Town of Bagels, Tea Cakes and Hamburger Buns by Jeanette Clift George.  It is a thoughtful writing.

You can read others' Pauses in Advent here.

source

click here to join in the pause

Silk Painting: Poppies

A few hours to make the correctly sized frame to hold the fabric taut, two weeks to paint, a bit of a mess in the kitchen, two hours to steam the painting, and meticulous ironing of the silk resulted in this painting:

Dimensions: 33" X 22"

Close up of the flower in left upper corner

I am pleased with the results and learned more about using the gutta resist. This will go to our local frame shop (today?) to be protected by some sort of plastic overlay.

Thanks to the husband for finding the wood for the frame and for putting up with me in the kitchen while completing this project.  He still managed to make some wonderful meals while working around the paints on the counter tops.

Prior posts on my silk paintings can be found here and here.

Angels and Oranges

Be it a spiritual angel,

source

or referring to fun in the snow

source

or thinking about the most important event in the realm of Christianity as relating to Jesus' birth when the Angel Gabriel announced to Mary:

Luke 1:26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

source

we are all somehow linked into God's kingdom.  And I believe angels do guide and protect me while in a state of grace.  (More about this here on guidance and protection.)

A few angels from my Christmas display collection:

See the angel furthermost to the left in the picture above?  My mother had that easel angel for many years.  She usually displayed it right beneath a pot of ivy.  I think she must have connected to her heavenly roots each time she gazed on that angel.  Stair-stepping up from the left is a contemporary angel my sister Pam gave me several years ago. I asked for it; wasn't that greedy?  But she willingly complied...I just wanted an angel from her!  Then the angel at the center-most top of the photograph was given to me by my friend Francis eleven years ago before she died that following summer.  I always think of Fran and the good times we had painting together when I hold that fragile pink glass angel. The white angel above was given to me by my friend Carol about 15 years ago.  We met in the early '70's when our husbands were in graduate school in Michigan, and we still keep in touch.

Linking to Inspiration Avenue and the Theme of the Week: Angels

  also linking to Mandarin Orange Monday with a bowl of tangelos and orange squash