Tag: Gayle Boss

A Lenten Devotional (p)review

Lent is just around the corner and that means that though I am profane, most of the time, I hunt for resources to augment my devotional life, as I journey with Jesus on the road to the cross. Paraclete Press reliably carries some wonderful offerings. For this Lent, they have three new books which I will be using this year.

Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing by Gayle Boss

The first one, my whole family is particularly excited about: Gayle Boss’s Wild Hope: Stories from the Vanishing. Four years ago, we read together her Advent devotional, All Creation Waits which inhabits the waiting of animals through midwinter (in the American Midwest). We have read it, or parts of that devotional every year since. This year, I didn’t unearth our copy until half way through Advent, but we still had to read through the Christmas morning reading after the stockings on Christmas day.

Boss returns to the Wild to find more teachers for Lent. While her Advent animals taught us about the experience of waiting, these animals inhabit a season of suffering. The subtitle, ‘Stories for Lent from the Vanishing’ alludes to the fact that animals are now vanishing from our planet at a faster rate than at any other time in earth’s history. Boss explores the lives of these animals, with awe and wonder, and sadness for what they are made to suffer by human hands. The animals are grouped by week throughout Lent. Boss explores the animals that are hungry, sick, homeless, poisoned, hunted, and (for Holy Week) desecrated.

As with All Creation Waits, Boss’s reflections are accompanied by the stunning wood cuts of Illustrator David Klein. Unlike her Advent devotional, this is not quite a daily reader. There is an Ash Wednesday entry and then four readings for each of the weeks of Lent and Holy Week (only Ash Wednesday, and days in Holy Week, have day specific readings). I am really interested in how my children will respond to these readings. They care deeply about creation and are often sad about the ways we people have failed to care for the environment. I am eager to explore these stories with Boss, and hear about not just animal suffering, but about a pernicious and wild hope.

Let Me Go There: The Spirit of Lent by Paula Gooder

The next Lenten offering comes from Anglican theologian and Chancellor of St. Paul’s Cathederal, London, Paula Gooder. Let Me Go There: The Spirit of Lent, follows Jesus through the 40 days of Lent, as the Spirit beckons him into the wilderness. Following six Lenten themes (wilderness, journey, fasting, taking up your cross, discipleship, prayer, and temptation). There are 34 readings designed to take you up to Holy Week, on the grounds that you will probably by then be wanting to turn your attention, reflections and devotions on to Jesus’ death and resurrection,” (8). That is 6 or 5 readings a week, until Holy Week, so you can miss a day or two of each week and not have to play catch up.

Gooder, is a New Testament scholar, and a favorite author of Rowan Williams and others. I am excited to dip into this one, as I journey with her through the wilderness of Lent.

Lead us Not into Temptation by Martin Shannon, CJ

Finally, Martin Shannon, CJ’s Lead Us Not into Temptation is designed to take us from Ash Wednesday to Holy Thursday, exploring how to deal with, you guessed it, temptation. Shannon is an Episcopal priest, liturgist and a devotional writer. He is part of the Community of Jesus in Cape Cod, MA (the community which operates Paraclete Press). I have read and reviewed his devotionals in the past, including another Lenten devotional, According to Your Mercy (which explored praying the Psalms through Lent).

This devotional came out of a weeklong retreat that Shannon attended before Ash Wednesday 2019, with other members of the Community of Jesus (5). At that retreat, Shannon felt led to write a daily devotional on dealing with temptation for their community, and now they are offering it to the world. Shannon is a perceptive spiritual writer who reads scripture attentively. Each daily reading closes with a quotation from Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall, and Temptation.

Ash Wednesday is coming up, so order copies today (follow the links to the publisher website, or order from Amazon or wherever fine books are sold).

Notice of material connection: Paraclete Press provided me with copies to review.

Preparing for Advent with Paraclete Press: Part 1 (Family Edition)

Advent is almost here and if you are hunting for Advent devotionals, Paraclete Press have some great ones. In fact, for the past few years, Paraclete has been my go-to publisher for books for Advent and Lent.  They are the  publishing arm of the Community of Jesus, an ecumenical Christian community in the Benedictine monastic tradition. Two family oriented books I’m really excited about are: All Creation Waits and Look!

All Creation Waits

all-creation-waitsFor Advent last year, my family read through Gayle Boss’s All Creation Waits, which counted down the days of December to Christmas with woodland creatures. In the northern hemisphere the days leading up to Christmas are dark and cold. Boss had us look to animals, some asleep, others with only wit and instinct to carry them through lean winter days. From the animals we learn what it means to wait. And Christmas morn we read of Jesus the light come into the world.

All Creation Waits may be my favorite devotional we’ve read as a family. Last year, my wife and I read this with kids (then ages 9,7, 5 and almost 2). The two-year-old paid no attention but the other kids listened with interest, excited to discover how each creature waited out winter. And of course David Klein’s beautiful woodcuts brought each animal story to life (Here is my post about the book from last November). This is a perfect daily reader for the season, and not just great for kids. It helped me see the season a little more and discover how to wait through dark days.

LOOK!

lookA new book I’m excited about is Look!: A Child’s Guide to Advent & Christmas by Laura Alary, Illustrated by Ann Boyajian.  Alary and Boyajian previously collaborated on a similar book for Lent and Easter, Make Room, which my kids also loved (my review of that book is here).

Alary describes the traditions of Advent (e.g. the Jesse Tree, the Advent Wreath) and what the season of Advent means. She explores what it means to wait by inviting us to look back, look around and look ahead. We look back at the people of Israel suffering in oppression but awaiting God’s action on their behalf. We look around, the way John the Baptist watched and waited for the time at hand and saw the Spirit descend like a dove on his Jesus after he baptized Him. We look ahead, the way Mary heard the angels word’s, consented and became pregnant with her savior and lord. And yet nine month she carried him (and 30 years raised him!). With Mary we learn to say yes to the things God may be calling us to.

Alary has practical suggestions of how we can step out and be more kindhearted and generous with others. This is what most excites me about this book. When my kids read Make Room they came away with a new appreciation for the liturgical season and the ways attempt to make more space for God in our lives. This book invites kids to pay attention and I wonder what they will see!

Notice of material connection: I received copies of these books from Paraclete Press in exchange for my honest reviews

 

Celebrating Advent Like a Boss: a book (p)review

Advent is just around the corner and I can’t wait to. . .wait. If you are like me, Ordinary Time felt a little less sacred than normal this year, with the election season overshadowing the liturgical calendar. Its over now but I feel anxious and icky. I pray: even so, come Lord Jesus. 

all-creation-waitsAdvent is the season of waiting for Jesus’ coming. We remember the hopes of the Hebrew prophets, the events leading up to Christ’s nativity. We cry for light to come and shine in our own darkness(es). While the wider culture rushes to Christmas with a consumerist frenzy, the wisdom of the Christian tradition has always said wait.

I’m a father of four, always on the hunt for resources which help my family enter into and appreciate their Christian heritage. We’ve picked up advent calendars with cheap chocolate from the grocery store and Jesus-y ones with printed manger scenes and bible verses behind each door from the Christian bookstore. Gayle Boss’s All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings was birthed as her personal family advent calendar, more than twenty years ago from a similar desire to help her kids enter into this season:

Advent, to the Church Fathers, was the right naming of the season when light and life are fading. They urged the faithful to set aside four weeks to fast, give, and pray—all ways to strip down, to let the bared soul recall what it knows beneath the fear of the dark, to know what Jesus called ” the one thing necessary” : that there is One who comes to be with us and in us, even, especially, in darkness and death. One who brings a new beginning.

This is Christian tradition at its best, moving in step with creation. When the sun’s light and heat wane, the natural world lets lushness fall away. It strips down. All energy is directed to the essentials that ensure survival. Engaging in Advent’s stripping practices—fasting, giving away, praying—we tune into the rhythms humming in the cells of all creatures living in the northern hemisphere. We tune into our own essential rhythms (introduction, xi-xii).

Boss’s eldest child was a toddler and she was pregnant with her second. She made an advent calendar for her family, not with Bible verses and scenes, but with creatures intimately aware of what it means to wait, to hope, and to long. She made a calendar that was “less about Christ’s human birth and more about the need for that birth” (xii). The animals stand in as metaphors and teachers, showing us what it means to wait.

This book is an elaboration of her family’s advent calendar (with some new creatures thrown in), published here with the beautiful illustrations of David G. Klein. There is a painted turtle,  a muskrat, a black bear, birds,a porcupine, a skunk, lake trout and more. Each creature, in their own way says: The dark is not an end, but a door. This is the way the new beginning comes (xiii). The creatures walk us through Dec. 1 to 24th. Jesus, the Christ comes on Christmas Day.

The words and images of this book are simply stunning and I look forward to delving into this with the family during the coming season. Watch the book trailer below to taste and see what sort of Advent reader this is. I give it five stars.

Note: I received this book from Paraclete Press in exchange for my honest (p)review.

All Creation Waits Book Trailer from Hailey Jansson on Vimeo.