Friends, bloggies, countrywomen, I am curled up on the green sofa here feeling deeply deeply grateful for the grace of our year that turns and turns again time after time, bringing us back to the same gentle points of pause. The places where, no matter what that year has brought or wrought or wrangled, you can start again. Happy First Sunday in Advent.
I love November. I say this every year! I love November. It has no agenda for us in our house - no birthdays, no big events, no demands. It has become my time to marvel at the big, bare, bleak skies and just breathe. However - this year I have noticed with awe the colour of it all.
We have had spectacular sunrises and sunsets in this northern part of our northern Ireland. Mind you, maybe we always did and I didn't notice because I wasn't spending as much time down on the shore and beyond. So, here is my rather fanciful idea for the start of my Advent...
I wonder if the vibrant, glowing, sky-illuminating colours of this November's skies could paint all the emotions of the last year - all the joys and all the pain and all the hope and all the persecution. It could all be written on the clouds, laid out, inspected, recognised, declared. And even if some of the beauty was a terrible beauty, too much of a beauty to take in, it was still beautiful.
And haven't the skies been recognised as declarations for so many generations of thinkers? A young man who achieved great things after years tormented and chased and abused could still say, " The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim the work of his hands." (Psalm 19)
The week after Jolly was here I spent a lot of time wondering why I had used the word "command" when I was describing our dusk walk down at the shore. At the time I hesitated over it and couldn't explain to myself why it was nonetheless the only word that I knew I needed to choose. I decided eventually that the closest I could get came from a passage that our assistant minister had talked about earlier in the Autumn. "But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. "
I think that the command for me recently has come from my November skies and I'm taking it as my Advent word this year. I'm going to try to let all those colours of the year settle as I make some attempt to take stock. I'm going to heed the instruction to take "a long thoughtful look" at what is over my head, and in it. I'll declare all those emotions as the skies declare their Creator God, and we'll finish another year together, He and I.
Happy First Sunday in Advent x
(Apologies for my generally depressed and depressing thoughts! It's been a tough old time here, and I do know that I really need to get over it all! And you know that the Bible bits are from Psalm 19 and the Message version of the first chapter of the letter that Paul wrote to early Christians in Rome. And I'm also still sorry for the rubbish pictures from my phone which is still all cracked and still held together with sticky tape!!)
I forgot that last weekend was Hurricane Tree update weekend. It was completely bare at the start of November so it's still waving gloriously naked branches to the thrill of the cold air, and will be doing just that for quite some merry time. We've been doing much the same thing in our swimming group, and will be doing just that for quite some merry time! My house has to go into sELF isolation for two weeks over Christmas and the New Year before a little hospital thing I have to do, so that could be the end of my winter sea adventures - not sure my courage will survive so much de-acclimatisation!
So what I'm doing does still involve as much swimming as I can fit in. Yes, it's really cold now! But the exhilaration is more than worth it. The loving acceptance of this group is pretty huge too. That has quite unexpectedly become as important as the swimming.
What I'm also doing is being utterly absorbed in the world of sons. Their difficulties at school are myriad this year, and thankfully they are coping valiantly, most of the time. I'm finding that my coping strategies are as simple as they are difficult. Remembering to breathe very deeply at difficult times, making myself get outside to walk, and praying. Also, deliberately finding things in which to rejoice and for which to be thankful.
I was "chatting" virtually to two very good friends last week about how you can get through most days by just doing the next thing. But, and this is my tenuous link to today's Gaudete Sunday, life is so much better if I can make the next thing, the simplest possible next thing, as beautiful and enjoyable and joyful as I can. And we've had a gorgeous weekend, with lots of simple joys. Gingerbread and candles have dominated today!
So that's what I'm doing in December: swimming for the next two weeks, finding joy in the small things, and praying as thankfully as this small human mind can. Waving my bare branches with as much exhilaration as I can!
Here's the maple that was still so gloriously clothed in at the start of November. What I'm reading, just to keep my little archive is Ali Smith's Winter (have just finished Autumn), the annual Christmas Mystery, a wee Agatha Christie sneeky short story from Mattman's Midwinter Murders anthology when he's not looking, and I'll be escaping into Winter Solstice anytime soon! Getting to the end of the Psalms. I'll miss them.
And what I'm making is still Cushla's Comfort Blanket, though it definitely at least feels like a blanket now. I'll miss it too when it's done! I gave up on the baubles for work colleagues - I'm leaving a box of oranges with a chocolate orange on the staff table instead! And I finally made the two zipped pouches - hoorah! They are all bagged up ready for my Santa run this week. I'm going to deliver everything I need to this week so that we can have our hibernation with all jobs done.
I do hope you've all seen our Emmanuel God and his hope, peace and joy in this Advent. And I wish you all great love as our journey to Bethlehem gets closer to its destination. Exciting! And just because our Advent season seems to be all about the videos this year, here's one I was asked to do for church!
At our Hookery Zoom last night (doesn't that have speedy and artisan connotations? Balls of yarn flying with abandon through the cold dark skies) we were making plans for our virtual Christmas party on 23rd December. Which turns out to be the night before the night before Christmas, or Christmas Eve Eve, or Christmas Adam (because Adam came before Eve*) or in fact Little Christmas, if you live in Denmark! Which we don't. Although the joys of Zoom do allow us to be in Newtownabbey and Glasgow all at the same time.
So, Sun One came along just as I was Googling a nice picture to go alongside the Hookery facebook invitation to our Little Christmas Party (you can see how we love a pun), and to my wonder and astonishment he had never heard of hygge. What have we been doing in this house? Half an hour later, after hundreds of unbearably beautiful Scandi images, he decided that it was a middle-aged woman thing, based loosely on gnomes. I was appalled. Thankfully, as we went through the front door this morning and I declared that no, hygge wasn't a thing like the windowsill tomte or the door wreath, he did manage to grasp the abstract noun idea of a feeling or a lifestyle. Why didn't you just say that last night, he asked. I'm pretty sure I did.
All this to explain why I came across this hygge webpage this afternoon - Christmas hygge being still in the search bar and dinner being not quite ready to be cooked. It is the opening quote that I'm really very struck by this evening:
“I hope you find some time this week to get really, really quiet. To curl up in a big cozy chair and watch a movie you’ve seen a million times before. To hug people you love. To wrap up in a warm blanket and read a good book. To drink hot cocoa from a Christmas mug. To stand outside in the crisp night air and marvel at the stars. I hope you find the time this week to sit silently in front of your life and contemplate how magical it really is, before we turn the page and greet a New Year.” – Mandy Hale
What a wonderful thing to stop and sit silently and contemplate the magic of our lives. To find joy in the small things, and the big. And to be thankful. I seem to be spending weeks drifting from one thing to the next, but I'm going to stop now, and sit silently. Just as soon as dinner is cooked...
*All credit to Hookery Miranda for the Christmas Adam. She's very clever!
These first two Sundays in Advent, hope and peace, I know that they should lead on to each other, the first enabling the second. But these last weeks have been difficult where we are, and I spend a lot of time trying to still myself at all. There is such beauty in the November skies, such colour some evenings this week. There is such stark loveliness in the seed heads in the garden. There is such comfort in home and the lights and the warmth. There is such startling vitality in the skin's reaction to the Lough's now burningly cold waters! But hope and peace? I'm finding the word "faith" to be my focus this year.
Our church has folk reading a sort of advent calendar every day. (Not at all like The Christmas Mystery though!) A major character from the narrative of the Bible from Adam all the way to Christmas. Prince Charming read on 2nd December: Noah and his big boat. It was such a comforting account of the story. Noah gathering his family safely aboard and out of the way of the mean people around. If only we could do exactly that. Sail forty days and forty nights on dark waters, and send out our hope to the skies at the end. Maybe that's what this time will be this year. Battening our doors against the dangers outside, a microcosm of all we are and all we have. (A noisy and smelly microcosm - with two teenage boys this is probably accurate enough.)
Every now and again I go on to Instagram to check in on my sons' virtual worlds! I had a browse this afternoon, pretending to myself that I was putting parenting before dishes and not just surfing the waves of procrastination. One of them had posted a picture of our Christmas tree, stating the location as Lapland, North Pole, and announcing, "Here we go again!" I'm not sure if that was typed in a tone of excitement or resignation, but I'm hoping it was more enthusiastic than prematurely cynical! I'm too afraid to ask him.
Now, I know that we have always been very strict about 1st December being the only acceptable first mention of all things Christmas related. This year, however, we have been switching the lights on for days. I think the whole nation feels the need to be at least bright, if jolly is too ambitious.
We went ahead with our Preparing for Advent morning on Saturday. We put the usual reflection and cookery on to this youtube playlist, but kind and talented folk also gave us musical and skincare videos, and the schools SU worker for our area made us a video about her work. And then we zoomed. Are you feeling jaded with zoom? I don't do more than one a week usually, so the opportunity to connect is still manageable. I was still amazed by this zoom though. Everyone was so open and honest that it felt as if we nearly were all sitting in our circle, listening supportively. It was such a blessing.
We're not trying to find new ways to do many other traditional things at all. We are going to take a year off planning and parties and panic, and sit as quietly and attentively as we can in this Advent journey to a Covid Christmas. We're grateful for the hope of a vaccine that could mean that it will be just this one bare year. This is the video that I put up. Dedicated to Mary Kathryn, to whom I always mean to send my little Northern Irish accent!
We're having a relatively balmy Christmas this week, as opposed to just a while ago when these pictures were taken! How we loved our first heavy snowfall in this house. Earth really did stand hard as iron after a two day freeze, and the snowman stood as high as the boys for quite some time after.
A prayer from one of my reflections last week said, "Pour down, oh heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness." I smiled as I listened, and replaced rain with snow- let the skies snow down righteousness. This struck me as beautifully apt, standing only because I know that God sees me clothed in Jesus, as bright and shining as my muddy garden clothed in pure snow.
This morning I was reading the end of Romans 16, marvelling at a terrestrial night when the celestial mystery of Jesus could break through. Merry Christmas, bloggistes, and a mysterious one too x
This is our Advent calendar. For the last few years we have filled each pocket with both a sweet and a challenge. The latter are vaguely along the lines of random acts of kindness: so far I have had to feed the birds, give my teacher the sweet and wish her happy Advent, and phone someone who lives far away.
Earlier this week Jo's challenge was to write a Christmas poem, so without further ado, here is our strawberry reflection for this week. (He also bakes!)
Dear Baby Jesus,
I know that I keep you small and baby-like in my life. Swaddled in a corner with my dusty Bible amid the novels that I do get on and read. My babies cried for attention, and they cry less now, but it's all attention anyway. Attention to meal-times and homeworks and this week's exam revision, and bathtimes and bedtimes and fall asleep on the sofa after times. Attention to school runs and hospital appointments and dentist appointments and all the things that fill a diary without even thinking about the special events of this month. Into all this attention, please be bigger than the space I give you,
O come, o come, Emmanuel.
Dear Boy Jesus,
You honoured Mary and Joseph, but kept your eye on your Father. You knew His business; you knew His place. This sandwich generation thing goes up a gear when it's a turkey sandwich generation thing, organising two houses for food and presents and cards. But more than that, wanting two homes to be filled with joy of the season, joy of lights and warmth and fun. Wanting the ones who have given everything to you at all times to have everything that makes their Christmas right. Into two homes, with all their expectations, spoken or barely acknowledged, with all your pointing to our Father,
O come, o come, Emmanuel.
Dear Man Jesus,
It was always going to involve death. It wasn't all about the death; there was the resurrection after that changes everything, but you knew there had to be a death. This Advent you know the ones who are waiting but not for Christmas Day, the ones for whom Christmas Day will never be the same again, because that's the season she left them, for an earthly time. Into the places where grief sings louder than the carols and the Pogues,
O come, o come, Emmanuel.
Dear Jesus,
I don't know how this happened, this all-consuming focus on being ready, this year round. Ready for what? I'm usually all about the making space for Advent, the taking of the time to celebrate presence, that doesn't come in an Amazon box. I haven't time for that this year, haven't thoughts for that this year. Must be ready, must write my lists. Ready for one day? Have I really fallen prey? Into this lamentable state of affairs, my Jesus,
The Ophelia tree-gauge is now well and truly bare. I see her every day through the kitchen window, and she makes me think. I was watching her today as I listened to the devotional app I use quite often. Today, as I'm sure all of you already knew, was the Feast of Christ the King. Now this immediately made me smile, as we loved and adored, and loved and adored in, the Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King when we were in Liverpool at half-term. So, I decided I needed to know about Christ the King, because we Presbyterians from the frozen North are not entirely renowned for our mutual understanding, and there it was.
The Feast of Christ the King- and I am going with the very rudimentary research I did this afternoon, based on the broadest interpretation I could find- marks the end of Ordinary Time. Now, my app usually talks about such and such a week of ordinary Time, but to be honest I have been hitherto just far too lazy to look it up. When I did today, I was entranced. The first period of Ordinary Time begins just after Epiphany and lasts until the start of Lent. The church then celebrates the whole of the Easter season- right up until Pentecost, when it enters the second period of Ordinary Time, which ends- well, today was the last Sunday of Ordinary Time because next week we will begin our Advent journey.
How wonderful! We live the seasons of ordinary time between Christmas and Easter. Then we live Christ's birth, the Spirit's arriving, Christ's death and His glorious resurrection. We live them every day. I know this. I live this. But today, in this strange last week before It All Begins, I found it profoundly God-full to mark the last Sunday of my year's Ordinary Time. To give thanks for all that I could think of, and to acknowledge that my year is dying as quietly and as darkly as the days. To allow the advent of Advent to stir my soul.
Jo and I studded some past their best clementines with the rest of the jar of cloves. They are hiding at the back of the hotpress now, waiting quietly and darkly to share the perfume of their thoughts when the time is right. I am very excited!
My Advent began with a huge sense of expectation. What did I want God to do for me? Do for me this Advent? That turned into a greater sense of chastising challenge when the nothing transpired within the usual time-frame from an application that I had made. Was God my Father Christmas to deliver a list? I could only offer myself, like Mary, as a servant. Still believing that nothing is impossible for God, but thinking not this time. Then mid-week mid-Advent, an email came, followed by an interview, following by an offer.So, my Advent ending is a happy one, full of wonder that actually God heard the deepest desire of my heart, and blessed me.
This is Prince Charming's favourite Christmas song to sing, and he does sing it beautifully. There is a short burst of him on farcebook! (His band is called North.) I have been crocheting a snowflake for every day in December: some I give away, some I use on present wrapping, the rest are yarnbombing my Jacob's ladder- shall try to get it looking respectable enough to post! Snow is a bit of a theme- all wishful thinking thus far, with crisp frost giving way to cold rain this afternoon!
Meanwhile- may your Advent ending be a happy one, full of wonder and blessing.
It is an odd one, isn't it? Advent starts on the first of the four Sundays before Christmas day, but we get the Advent calendars, and the chocolate, out on 1st December. We do too. We have a fabric calendar, with twenty-four pockets, which are a bit tight for this year's generously proportioned H%r&e$.
We aren't organised, or consistent, enough to sign up for the on-line Advent Challenges, but we do steal their ideas! Last year I wrote out twenty-four challenges and stowed them away with the chocolate. This year I decided that we could jolly well come up with six each. So, on Wednesday night no-one got to leave the dinner table until everyone had written out their challenges. I was impressed! If all goes to plan the gerbils will be too- their care features high on some of the directives, and I didn't even write those!
So far the said gerbils have had half an hour of conversation, everyone in the family has had a great big hug, there is an anonymous Christmas card written and ready to be deposited on a desk in a school tomorrow, and someone has yet to ring the bell to pray at dinner. (We ring a bell to say grace, inspired by the constant thankfulness of the Sandras.) The strawberries take it all in very good heart.
I am taking it all in a very perplexed heart this week. The events of the week have made me think about what I expect when I come to God with answers to his question, "What do you want me to do for you?" Am I really expecting him, like PC and me I suppose at this time of the year, to give his child everything on their Christmas list? Am I really expecting the God of all Creation to be my personal Santa?
Prince Charming is once again leading worship at the cafe church that our church runs for three weeks of Advent.This morning's speaker looked at Mary, and stopped me in my thinking tracks. "'I am the Lord's servant,' Mary answered. 'May it be to me as you have said.'" Nothing is impossible with God.
Prince Charming was also leading carols at our Assembly Buildings at Stormont last night. The benediction was that lovely one, along the lines of wishing for us the unbridled joy of the angels, the perplexed curiosity of the shepherds, the unsettling peace of the Christ-child. PC sang this Ash song as one of his solo pieces- this is a version by Duke Special, a very distinctive Belfast musician, singer, songwriter, and man of faith. It's dedicated to MK, who saw Prince Charming's video on farcebook and wanted a bit more Norn Irish accent!
You might know that every year a few of us organise a Preparing for Advent morning about now. Some craft, some cookery, some reflections- space really, to raise your altar before the madness begins.
Well, this year we are all just a bit wrecked for lots of different reasons, good and bad. The plan was to take a break completely, but the wonderful Catherine, about whom I often eulogise, decided, "Let's make Christmas wreaths. In your house."
So, we did! Just a very few of us. With very little preparation on my part. Actually no preparation on my part. Catherine brought fabulous cinnamon buns, Rosemary brought fabulous poetry, and everyone brought boughs and berries and great generosity of spirit.
It was lovely. Marking the start of the season ready to light the light as each week passes, and the road to Bethlehem winds on.
My Jo nipped in after his two hour revision session with Prince Charming in the room next door. He is my creative guru. These are our Advent wreaths.
I cannot tell you how it pleased my heart when he not only wore Catherine's wreath on demand, but also knew that he looked just like the Ghost of Christmas Present- and he is even wearing that jolly man's green! That tiny baby in the photo behind him is him, nearly exactly twelve years ago.
Jo's sweatshirt says "Adventure begins", and I thought how very appropriate. In the midst of all the stresses and strains to catch the joy in the journey that opens up now. In October I was floored by the last question on our church's retreat day:
I feel today, at the start of this Advent that I will raise Ebenezers this year, remembering all that God has done for me, all that He has done for me, and be bold enough to ask Him for what I want him to do for me again.
There isn't a jot of peace to be had in my world! I got the essay handed in, I got prepared for Preparing for Advent (and it was a lovely evening), I watched the fabulous DVD lent to me by a very long-suffering friend from church. The tree is up, the lights are on, the Amazon order is placed. Lists are written, including Mattman's exam revision timetable which started last night. This all sounds very good and glorious when set down in type.
Along with the chocolates in our Advent calendar this year I have put a challenge a day into the pockets. I stole this idea from Ang. All the best ideas come from Ang, and all you other, better than me folk! Because we take a day each, it means you get four days to complete your challenge. This is just as well as although I gathered together my books to take to the charity shop, they are still here in a pile. Manana. Which is when I will be leaving happy notes for someone to find. I might start under some pillows tonight...
So I suppose in the midst of it all I could sit down and clear my head, but I am afraid to because many sad things are all around us this winter. I fear there is not much peace to be found. Last Thursday night at Preparing for Advent we thought about how we need in this dark world to wage peace, hope, love, joy as assiduously as the world wages war and despair. Admittedly we did end the night with a thought from Rend Collective's blog: "The message of the manger isn’t that we need to make sure everything is right before Jesus comes, it’s that he makes all things right WHEN he comes."
Look at the height of those suns. That's my eye level looking mostly at their eye level. 'Twill soon be Mags in the Land of the Giants as oft I have feared. I realise that you're not looking at their eyes, and that indeed you are looking deliberately at the back of those precious heads. Soon they will be old enough to smear themselves all over the Sinternet, but until then their story is (mostly) safe with me.
Today we were by some stroke of divine humour actually stirring up on Stir Up Sunday. In went the wishes. They were very long wishes. That's a worry! My position for much of today's baking was actually on that there stool in the top corner, with my cup of tea. After the Christmas Cake (not Pudding) was safely concocted Jo made his first entirely single-handed cake. And very fine cake it is too. I sat on that there stool in the corner with my cup of tea and thought things. Mostly to do with boys who get bigger.
Ang at Tracing Rainbows is, as you all know, running another wonderful year of Pause in Advent, when so many wise women of the east, west, north and south of wherever ponder all sorts of things in their hearts. I love Advent!
We've always talked about the Winter Solstice, and indeed the Summer one. It's just that this year I have been more than ever aware of how dark the days have been, how short. The boys and I have marvelled at it over grey breakfasts and dusk-filled school returns. Admittedly this photo has just been taken at 7pm, but it has been this dark since 4pm!
And I feel the darkness now as Advent comes to an end. I don't feel excitement as the days of Christmas approach. As the boys and I often say, Jesus wasn't born on 25th December. I am breeding Scrooges! I feel tired at the thought of all the food organisation, preparation and consumption. I feel defeated by the psychology of family. I am admittedly lying down under a rotten cold this evening in the hope that it will go away and quickly.
Maybe I should lie down in hope under the whole thing. Lie down under a blanket with some paracetamol and the annual reading of Winter Solstice by Rosamunde Pilcher! I'll count how many times she mentions Belfast sinks and be inspired by the glamour of Carrie who sprays her cold-ridden self with sophisticated perfume and opens the door to the possible love of her life. Maybe I'll spray myself with my one small bottle of sophisticated perfume and open the door to Prince Charming and our suns when they get back from the carol service!
Hope. There is my word for the next week. Hope for energy, hope for being organised, hope for celebration- as Gary's post so succintly exhorts. Thank you to Ang for this year's Pause in Advent. It is an integral part of December for me now- and I have loved reading all your wisdoms xx
So, Advent. Every year for six years Catherine and I have been running our Preparing for Advent event, and this year we talked about the things I've put on here for Ang's wonderful Pausing for Advent blogfest. And I'll tell you what our Preparing for Advent has done for me. Gradually. Overwhelmingly.
It has taken away Christmas! Not put the Christ back into Christmas so much as make the whole time a nonsense. A very nice nonsense, mind you. A glittering, funny, food-soaked few days. But to focus so much effort on so few days is now something I do because that's what my family wants. It's either about Jesus or it's not. If it is about Jesus, then it's a spiritual time, and Advent has become a very spiritual journey. If it's not about Jesus, then my next-door neighbour is right and Christmas has lost all its meaning and no amount of shortbread or snow cake will give it sense.
Last Sunday was our annual Mince Pies and Mulled Stuff open house. I
spent all day Saturday baking. Yes, I know that if I was organised the
baking would all be done, but you know me well enough now to know that
this is fraise. So, I spend all day baking, and then all Sunday
afternoon we have a house full of lovely loved and loving friends, new
and old. And at the end I sat down on the stool in the kitchen and looked at all the empty plates and cups.
Then I looked in the drained-dry mull pot. It was rich in everything. Colour, scent, flavour, conversations had, laughter shared. I think that Christmas is for me now the juicy remains from four weeks of listening, searching, remembering. Advent is the thing I need. The mulling pot is where I want to be! Like Mary pondering words in her heart, I want to be mulling darkening skies and bare trees and silent nights. I don't want to focus all my attention on one or two or three days (if you count a Christmas Eve brunch) and then for all it all to be over in a bin load of wrapping paper and envelopes. I want what's left over to be rich: drained dry of expectation and soaked in the glory of God. To paraphrase Scrooge himself, "I will honour Advent in my heart, and try to keep it all the year."
There is a verse I came across when getting ready for my first Advent event in November. I used it briefly there and also at our own morning last week. It's from both Joel 2 and Acts 2, because Peter quotes it at Pentecost. I have always thought of "the last days" as the days just before the end of our times. In the material that I was reading, however, it talked of the last days as all time from now on, and I saw them as these last days of our old year in its last throes.
“‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.
When I got upstairs last night for A Christmas Mystery, Jo was deep in colouring of the Nativity and Matthew was burrowed in deep for the journey! The night before Matt had asked me what my favourite part of Christmas was. I told him it was the lights. He asked what my second favourite part of Christmas was. I said it was Christmas night after everyone had gone home and we could be cosy and quiet just the four of us. Then he asked for my third. I told him then that what I really love at this time of the year is the waiting so hard that you catch the sense of something coming, something quiet but huge in the dark, cold skies. He just sort of sneaked in, didn't he, said Matt.
I think that with young men, you don't have to do much to let them prophesy and envisage. The imagination is all there, the desire for the magic, the thirst for the story, the openess to Spirit. What I am finding harder is the old men dreaming dreams. Maybe they have lived a hard life; maybe they carry the scars of disappointments and fears. Maybe you don't know how to give them dreams to dream.
At the Advent events I looked at the verbs in the verse, which are not inappropriate for the season! We pour lots of delicious things; our children especially make lots of predictions as to what will appear on the day; we are surrounded by visions of sugar plums as we dream of a white Christmas. The point I wanted to make was that, in these last days when all our generations are gathering, the Spirit can pour out on us His activity in the midst of ours. That's really what I'm praying for, most especially because I know that dreams are a gift I can't write on my shopping list!
