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- Herausgeber: IVP Formatio
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
"What can I give him?" Growing up in her native Provence, in southern France, Sylvie Vanhoozer learned about the traditional Provençal crèche. These nativity scenes were peopled by santons—"little saints"—each bringing their unique gifts to the baby Jesus. As her own life took her around the world, to England, Scotland, and the United States, she kept up the tradition of her native crèche in her own home, adding to it souvenirs from each new place where she found herself. In The Art of Living in Season, Vanhoozer invites readers to join this communion of little saints and to follow them not only at Christmas but throughout the whole year. Each chapter introduces a new santon and opens up another aspect of our annual pilgrimage toward Christ. Structured as weekly reflections and illustrated with Vanhoozer's own botanical illustrations, this book invites us to follow Christ in our own places and seasons of life, beginning by keeping in step with the rhythms of nature and the church calendar. The Art of Living in Season is a companion for everyday saints who wonder how they can follow Jesus—and what they can give him—wherever, whenever, and whoever they are.
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Ähnliche
TO KEVIN,
companion pilgrim of forty-three years, and
MARY AND EMMA,
who joined and graced our pilgrimage later on.
For everything there is a season, and a time
for every matter under heaven.
Contents
Foreword
Kevin J. Vanhoozer
The book you are about to read is life-changing, particularly if you have lived with its author for forty years, as I have. I can vouch that she practices what she preaches (and in this book gently, exquisitely preaches her practice). The art of living in season, as a subset of the art of living (l’art de vivre), indirectly addresses life’s biggest questions.
Don’t panic. This is not an academic treatise, but a reflection on lived experience, viewed through a wholly original lens: a southern French Christmas manger scene. To read this book is to enter into a thought experiment: What would it be like to follow the holy family and their entourage out of the manger, into everyday places, through the whole year and the various seasons of life? This is the story of a Christian pilgrim from Provence who does just that. Readers who embark on her journey will find a congenial, insightful, interesting, and enlivening companion along the ways of their own life journeys. I know I have.
I first met Sylvie in the north of France, in a small town outside Paris, but she immediately made it clear that she was from the south (Provence, so named because it was the first Roman province west of the Alps) and that she had no intention of leaving—and, if she did, it would certainly not be with an American tumbleweed. After she finished her studies, she would return to southern France, the better to walk the hills and cultivate her garden.
At the time I didn’t fully appreciate what leaving her homeland would cost her. Well, I did—a little. Even before we were married, as a student in the cloudy north, she would sometimes get homesick. There were lavender-infused fragrances and bath oils labeled “Eau de Provence” that recalled the countryside, but I couldn’t afford those. Instead, I got an empty glass dropper bottle, captioned it “Air de Provence,” and added a label instructing the user to “Sniff twice every four hours when feeling homesick.” We were married a year later. Brilliant!
I relate this story because it provides a crucial backdrop to the present book. Our age is one of increasing displacement, whether chosen, as it was for Sylvie, or forced, as is the case with refugees. Even people who don’t leave their countries leave their homes. Life is a journey through time from place to place. How then should we live in places that are not our true homes? This is one of the central questions of the book.
Sylvie’s willingness to leave everything to be a disciple of Jesus impressed me from the start. After becoming a Christian as an eighteen-year-old, she left home to attend a Bible institute against the wishes of her parents. Then, like Abram, she obeyed an even greater call: “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). It turned out that we had to go, repeatedly, from several countries: the United States, England, and Scotland. Can a disciple ever recover from homesickness? Where, and what, is “home”?
This book stems from Sylvie’s attempts to make herself “at home” abroad. She is hardly the only person who has had to learn to live, perchance to flourish, in a non-native land. How does one do that? I’ll let the following pages speak for themselves. Let me just say that it has to do with attending to, and embracing, your location. Sylvie came to see that the same God who created the hills of Provence made the dales of England and the Midwestern plains. All show signs of divine artistry, even if the style is different. It was through reading novels about life on the prairie and taking classes in botanical art that Sylvie came to see, know, and appreciate the Midwest’s land, people, and flora. Taking time not simply to look at things but to see them is a kind of spiritual discipline.
Sylvie has taught me to pay attention as, together, we pass through the seasons of life, some familiar (spring and autumn), others new (losing one’s parents). Each of us has now written books asking, in our own respective ways, what Christian discipleship means and looks like in the twenty-first century: Who am I, for Christ, today in this place? What can I do to help the people, plants, and communities in my place to flourish? If Jesus came so that we may have life, and that abundantly, what can I say or do here and now to enliven others? Every Christian should consider this question in all seriousness. There is nothing more important than being Christ’s man or woman, a representative of his reign, now, in this place.
“What’s an everyday saint to do?” The question appears as a refrain in every chapter. It is Sylvie’s way of helping readers think about what it means to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matthew 6:33). So come, join the pilgrimage. And as you do, practice the art of living in season. Learn how to be at home, in Christ, in ten thousand places, both strange and familiar.
Introduction
A Seed Is Planted
A Child’s Christmas in Provence
What if the whole of a life (yours,
say, or mine) is simply this—a tiny germ
of wheat sleeping in a bed of soil?
Every year throughout the South of France, in villages set amid hills dotted with olive trees and scented with thyme and juniper, enchanting little parables unfold—part of a unique tradition unknown to most outsiders. At Advent, santons—“little saints”—appear in the shoebox-sized manger scenes, or crèches, that are placed in the dining or living rooms of people’s homes just as they have always done since the nineteenth century. These santons are clay figurines, just three inches tall, painted colorfully in period dress. Each carries a simple gift for the baby Jesus, products from their own terroir, that distinct local place that nurtures their growth. These crèche scenes do not so much represent the story of the Christmas night as restage it, setting the birth of Jesus in the terroir of the people of Provence. This is where my own story starts.
But it is only the beginning. For these little clay figures, which I recall from my own childhood home, have become part of popular culture, so much so that they have come to represent the people of Provence and their way of life. Yet always in the background lies the Christ child. He is an integral part of this scene as well. Many Provençaux may not talk about him, nor know much about him, yet he still belongs to the scene. He is every bit as essential to the crèche as the olive trees and villagers. His quiet presence hallows the land. He is what renders these clay figurines of plain villagers something special: he makes them little saints, set apart to serve him and his story. (For more details on the historical background of the santons—and pictures!—see my website www.theartoflivinginseason.com.)
Unlike other manger scenes, the Provençal crèche does not so much depict a static scene as provide a stage for a Christmas pageant. Action! For these little saints are on a mission, a pilgrimage to Bethlehem (now transported to Provence). A strong desire to see the baby Jesus urges the pilgrims on. They come because they want to present their gifts—not gold, frankincense, and myrrh (those come too, in due course)—but simpler gifts related to their everyday vocations: a baker brings baguettes, a weaver brings wool blankets, a farmer brings produce from his field, and so forth. The songs and stories that accompany these pilgrims make them very human, so like us. Each little saint is cast in a specific role; each has a story of their own, within the greater story of Christmas, and each comes with their own fears and foibles. When they finally find the crèche, they offer Jesus what they have: their gifts, yes, but their fears and foibles too. And they receive something back.
So, perhaps, do the larger saints, the twenty-first century children and adults who keep the crèche—call them everyday saints. For, thanks to this singular custom, Christmas in Provence is a story that involves not simply clay figures, but every son and daughter of Adam, the original clay figure. This is a story that invites ongoing participation, and not just at Advent. This is a story not just to believe in, but to live in, and to live out. To the one with eyes to see, the crèche is an invitation to step into Advent—and perhaps beyond it.
This is why, during my own years of pilgrimage from my homeland of Provence to new lands—California, the Mid-Atlantic, England, Scotland, the Midwest—I began to wonder: What if, once Christmas is over, I continued the pilgrimage, in spiritual company with the santons, through all the seasons of the year? What if I were to follow Jesus outside the crèche in order to keep on doing, throughout the year, what these little saints did in Advent and Christmas? Could I bring an offering to Jesus daily, in my place and time, as the santons did in theirs? Could joining their pilgrimage help me answer the question, “What am I doing here?” Could it help me get out of bed in the morning? It would take intentionality, a discipline of paying attention to the seasons in which I find myself: the seasons of the church that teach us about Christ’s life and ministry, the seasons of nature that reveal the goodness of our Creator, the seasons of life that unfold God’s plan for my story. Could I approach every new season, whether I was in Bethlehem, Provence, or somewhere else, with the wonder and expectation of Advent? If so, what would that look like?
Little did I know, as a child growing up in Provence, how transformative these little clay figures would later become in my life. Their story has become my story, an invitation to “come and see” the Christ child. I came, I saw, I followed. Over the years, I have become not a fixture in the crèche, but an everyday saint. Like the santons, I come to Jesus, and then, inspired by these little figures, I follow Jesus out of the manger, through all the seasons of life.
Unlike Narnia, where it was “always winter and never Christmas,” Christ has come to our world and enters into our lives in every season.1 I have therefore come to believe that it is “never winter, always Advent.” I have learned to anticipate him in every new chapter of my life, so that each season is not only an adventure but, in its own way, Adventish.
The early seeds from my childhood traditions—sown in the crèche with its stories that embraced southern French village life—have finally grown roots in my new land for new generations. There is indeed a precious seed here, the germ of a new kind of life, which is well worth protecting, passing down, and transplanting in different contexts. Perhaps the Jesus who comes to us—in Bethlehem, Provence, or the heartland of America—makes every place and time special, as he makes Christmas special, gracing us again and again with the gift of his presence.
Our culture has trained us always to rush ahead toward the next big thing. But rushing ahead is not how everyday saints learn the art of living in season, the art of appreciating the possibilities of offering gifts to Christ in the particular time and place where God has planted us. I encourage saints on an everyday pilgrimage to relearn how to walk. Walking is wonderful exercise; everyone knows that. It is also the fundamental activity of the Christian pilgrim—a spiritual exercise. I therefore invite readers to walk, not run, through this book as you practice the gentle art of living in season. While I designed it to be used as a companion throughout the year starting at Advent, you can start in any season, or read it all at once, or in whatever way you find most useful.
A seed pod full of promise
My botanical artwork, in watercolor and colored pencils, will accompany us, encouraging the reader to reflect at a walking pace on the change of our natural seasons in the wild and in kitchen gardens. Scattered like seeds among the pages are the fruit of my own efforts at patient observation, a series of botanical illustrations, such as they are (my art, too, is on a pilgrimage). Keeping an artist’s eye on the changing seasons of nature has become, for me, a spiritual discipline: watching and waiting for one advent after another.
As we walk together, each chapter will introduce you to a different santon and show you how each one uses his or her gift in season as an offering to the Lord of all seasons. To encourage you to take the time needed to observe and engage with each season in your place, I have included weekly reflections in each chapter. Think of them as stations in your pilgrimage, opportunities to watch and wait for the Lord’s advent in your time and place. Each month I will ask you to Pause, Ponder, Pray, and Play Your Part. These reflective exercises will help you develop your own pilgrimage, the art of finding and following Jesus in every place and every season.
Let us now join the company of santons as we begin our journey through the church year, observing how they offer to the Lord what they can: their everyday skills, their everyday vocations, and their everyday lives. Let us learn from them the art of living for Christ as women and men for all seasons.
BY “SPECIAL SEASONS,” I mean those times of the year when the church celebrates important events in the life of Christ. They are holy days—set-apart times for paying attention. They punctuate the church year, providing order and rhythm to the church calendar.
Historically, setting apart certain days and weeks was one way for everyday Christians to become familiar with key events in Jesus’ life on earth; they were part of the pedagogy by which laypeople learned Christ. With these events internalized, disciples could walk with Jesus through his story on a weekly and seasonal basis. The special seasons were ways that Jesus’ followers could participate in Christ. They still serve as means of grace that help disciples hew to the story of the one who is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
Church tradition has planted each episode of Jesus’ story in a suitably appropriate season of nature; it makes sense to talk about fasting during the food-scarce winter. As Christians walked through the church year, the natural world around them illuminated Jesus’ story. They walked through the seasons of nature and the church calendar alike as fellow pilgrims, members of the one holy catholic and apostolic church.
Centuries have passed, much has changed. Different countries have their own carols, Christmas treats, and stories. As a result, not every church today inhabits the church calendar in exactly the same way, though all churches observe at least some of the special seasons. Some churches are highly liturgical and observe the church calendar, well, religiously; others observe only Christmas and Easter. Still, the special seasons mark those times when the church remembers its foundation in the life of Jesus, her cornerstone. At minimum, they provide a sense of direction, identity, and purpose: a narrative template for the church year, a temporal frame for the art of living in season.
Why keep observing these age-old, analog traditions in our modern digital age, when people have their own personalized electronic calendar? Why celebrate special days? Because doing so still serves everyday saints. This truth is the burden of this book.
The rhythms of the church seasons hallow the seasons of nature. It is all too easy to become displaced, to lose one’s bearings in a meaningless day-to-day sameness, where it is always a weekday and never Christmas. The special seasons are an antidote for this ennui, anchoring everyday saints in a passion play, a story that invites us in, as it has been doing for centuries, and asks us to “do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19).
The special seasons train us in the way we should go:
Thus says the LORD:
“Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.” (Jeremiah 6:16)
In the land of my ancestors, the Christian year starts with the santons. This is no surprise: as crèche figures, the santons are obviously associated with the Christmas season. But if you examine these manger scenes more closely, you see not just the holy family, but also a collection of typical nineteenth-century French townsfolk, dressed in period clothing and furnished with appropriate props. To observe this Christmas scene is to enter a village suspended in time and space, abuzz with the news that Jesus is coming to Provence. To contemplate this crèche is to become aware that Christ may indeed arrive anywhere, anytime, to anyone. Yes, the original crèche belongs in Bethlehem, but I suggest these santons have much to teach us about how Jesus continues to come to us, in our own times and places.
Strictly speaking, the French manger scene is inaccurate. Jesus did not in fact come to Provence in the nineteenth century! But the point is not to put Jesus into nineteenth-century Provence, but to learn how to put nineteenth-century Provence, or any time and place, into Jesus and his story. This is the real lesson and purpose of the special seasons: to help us learn how to put our own times and place, mine and yours, into his.
This, then, is how the crèche of my childhood Christmases in Provence has come to be—for me, my family, and hopefully for you too— parable of how to follow Jesus in every time and place.
In this book I propose to accompany these little saints as they make their pilgrimage through the church year. At times we will sing and laugh with them, at other times we will argue and grieve with them. They are not perfect, and neither are we—and that is all right. The purpose of the journey is to become mature in Christ, to fit our lives and stories into his.
We thus embark on a pilgrimage, following the rhythm of a calendar that is punctuated not by the usual cultural holidays, but by holy days that celebrate the gradual unfolding of the extended Christmas story, starting with Advent and moving on from one season of Jesus’ life to the next, all the way to Pentecost. We will lean into Jesus’ story in order better to follow him faithfully and fittingly, in ways that are in accordance with the Scriptures and appropriate to our cultural situations. In so doing, we will learn to cultivate the mind, and heart, of Christ. For, as Jesus said to the first disciples, so he says to us: “Come, follow me” (Matthew 4:19 NIV).
We’re coming!
Chapter 1
Advent
The Art of Watchful Waiting
The LORD is good to those who wait for him,
to the soul who seeks him.
It is good that one should wait quietly
for the salvation of the LORD.
We may not receive visits from winged angels proclaiming that God has
a message for us, but God still speaks to us. Our task as those who would
hear is to do all in our power to listen to God’s voice speaking to us.
WHERE CHURCH CALENDAR AND NATURE MEET
The first Sunday of Advent is the official start of the Christian year. It’s a day marked not by parties and fanfare but by the quiet atmosphere of fading autumn days moving into early winter, when nothing much grows anymore in the land of the santons, whether countryside or kitchen garden. Hedges and vineyards barely hold on to leaves that are slowly fading, while the rolling hills and patchwork fields of my childhood are blanketed in a faint mist that invites repose. Advent, a time of prayerful expectation mixed with a quiet joy of anticipation, similarly invites inner stillness. It is as if nature begins her own Advent, waiting quietly for the season of growth and new life ahead. Christians replay the story of watching and waiting that started millennia ago, when the people of Israel looked forward to the Messiah’s coming. Christians know he has come, yet they continue to wait, watchfully.
ADVENT COMES TO PROVENCE
In the land of my ancestors, Advent is when people bring their precious seasonal figurines out of storage, not forgetting the miniature barn with its stone walls and red roof, seemingly taken straight out of the Provençal countryside. According to the ancient carols, Advent marks the season when the shepherds went on their peculiar pilgrimage to Bethlehem. In similar fashion, and in a way that is entirely in keeping with the season, another “holy pilgrimage” starts, this time with real people. Children, parents, and grandparents ramble into the quiet hills to gather material with which to decorate the manger scene. This walk is so special it even has its own name: La promenade de l’Avent (Advent walk).1
By gathering native plants, moss, twigs, and so forth to provide a landscape for the manger scene, we root the crèche, and Jesus himself, in our terroir, our own patch of earth—the same earth, in fact, from which the santons figurines themselves were made, rendering the entire endeavor remarkably organic.2 The Advent walk brings plants and people, and a special season of the church year, together in an intimate, unique, and interrelated way.
During these Advent walks, the elders speak softly to the young ones, initiating them into the deep mysteries of their storied place. Thyme is a “manger herb” because, according to legend, Joseph gathered grass and hay from the roadside with which to line the manger and, as soon as the baby’s head touched the manger, the grass turned into fragrant herbs—one of which was thyme. Children learn to identify the native thyme by smell when they rub it between their fingers. They watch in wonder as the thyme sprigs they gathered, inserted into the manger scene, transform into olive trees like the ones that dot their land. They learn that the juniper they collected preserves the scent of the hills and stays green in the crèche throughout the season. Each plant that makes its way into the scenery of the crèche is an integral part of the soil in which the children themselves have their own roots. The Advent walk helps inoculate them from what Wendell Berry calls the “characteristic diseases” of the century, namely, “the suspicion that they would be greatly improved if they were someplace else.”3
Juniper leaves and berries
Upon their return home, young and old gather around the crèche and deck it out with their local treasures, re-creating a model version of their homeland with the herbs and scents they know so well. Each person has something to place in the scene, a small gift that, in a way, hints at the season of giving ahead. One may even catch a glimpse of a season further ahead in the story, when individual santons will become a fellowship of saints, sharing the gifts with one another they have been given by their risen Lord. With a little imagination, one might say that what ultimately grows out of the crèche gathering is a local church.
In my family’s Christmas crèche, simple brown paper and bark become hills, creases simulate paths, stones stand like ancient boulders along the way. Only when the scene is finally ready do we place the figurines. At first, the holy family is nowhere in sight, nor are the Magi—it is not yet their season. In the beginning of Advent, the crèche keepers have only prepared a place for the baby with the materials of their land. Afterward, however, the younger members of the family tend the crèche daily, adding and moving the little saints about, creating the impression of a bustling village. Now the baker and the miller seem to be in conversation; now the dairy maid comes out of the barn with a jug of milk; now an old man approaches the well with his earthen jars.
Meanwhile, the shepherds are abiding on those makeshift hills with their sheep (also little figurines), grazing on the freshly gathered moss. Shepherds are a familiar sight for anyone who lives in Provence. They are the first visitors to the crèche, just as they are in the Gospels. In the crèche, some shepherds are standing, others are sitting. All are watching and waiting.
THE SEASONAL SANTON
Le berger (the shepherd)
The first little saint we encounter as we set out on our pilgrimage through the seasons is, appropriately enough, a shepherd—pastre in the Provençal tongue, hence pastorales, the traditional Christmas plays that begin with the angels’ announcement to the shepherds keeping watch in their fields by night. The plays follow Luke’s Gospel in depicting the shepherds as the first ones to spread the news. The shepherd santon comes dressed in a traditional woolen cape (the wool sheared from his sheep, of course) that turns into a blanket to stave off the cold outdoor nights. The shepherd santon carries his gift for the baby Jesus on his shoulders—like Abel, he offers up his most precious possession, a lamb.
WEEK 1 Pause
“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention. / Be astonished. / Tell about it.”4
Plants are mentioned by name throughout the Bible. They clearly matter to God, their Creator, who made each one for a particular place and people. We read about lilies, roses, great cedars, firs, olive trees, vines, rue, and myrtle. In the land of my ancestors, the Advent walk helps us locate our place and plants (and even the baby Jesus) in the Great Story, and in Provence.
Whether or not you have a manger to decorate, go on an Advent walk in a nature reserve, botanic garden, country path, or city garden. Take slow, measured steps so that you can observe what’s around you, and then try to name the native plants of your locale. (You can use an app like Seek to help you—but then put the phone away!) If you have children, involve them in this treasure hunt. Gather some local flora to “plant” (i.e., contextualize) the Christmas story in your own place, and in your home.
If you already have a manger scene, try to keep to the church calendar instead of rushing the holy family to the manger before their time. Keep the Magi closeted until the proper time (do you know when that is?). Advent watching and waiting can be spiritually formative, both as a teaching tool and a way to enter the season.
Invite a neighbor over for coffee and show them your manger (they’re great conversation starters!). She may ask you, “Why don’t you have the baby Jesus in your manger?” How would you answer that question? Can you explain what makes the special seasons special? Think about the etymology of holiday (a “holy day”). Why should certain days be set apart? What should we do on them?
SHEPHERDS IN PROVENÇAL CULTURAL TRADITION
In Provence, people still regard shepherds with quiet respect. These pastres belong to the land, and to the landscape, as they have for generations. They figure in our popular stories (not just the pastorales) and they frequently appear in our songs, thanks to Nicolas Saboly, a seventeenth-century French poet and composer. Himself a descendant of shepherds, Saboly was the composer of the first Provençal carols, called noëls.
Saboly’s beloved carols retell the biblical story of the first Christmas and the angelic announcement to the shepherds, with additional imaginative flourishes thrown in to add local color and detail. The noëls eventually became part of the regular repertoire of folk songs of Provence, part of the year-round culture.5
The shepherds were the first recorded people, apart from Mary and Joseph, to bear witness to Jesus’ birth. And, according to the folk songs, the shepherds began spreading the news about the baby in the manger even as they made their way to see him. More than any other group, then, it is the shepherds who usher in Christmas: “How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!” (Romans 10:15).
The lyrics of Saboly’s carols are down-to-earth, even comical at times, reminding us that these shepherds, while playing a special part in Jesus’ story, are just as human as the rest of us. This becomes clear as they make their way to the child Christ: “It’s such a long way. We’re going to freeze in this wind! Our shirts, our trousers are full of holes. . . . Holes can’t keep out the cold. . . . How are we going to manage? . . . I’m afraid we’re going to die!”6 This is a remarkably realistic picture of the ordinary cares and concerns that are part and parcel of an everyday saint’s pilgrimage. On the other hand, Saboly’s carols depict place and time somewhat confusedly. It is hard to tell whether the shepherds are on a long, drawn-out journey or whether everything happens in a single night, whether they are headed to Bethlehem or to some remote village in Provence. One might wonder as they wander: Is this an Advent walk or a lifelong pilgrimage? Oui!
Before the angels appear to them, the shepherds are minding their own business, up in the hills, watching the sheep, often in humble isolation, perhaps with a dog as a sole companion. Advent aside, the shepherds were always watching and waiting for something: wolves, wild boars, even highway robbers—anything that might threaten their flock. In the meantime they spend their days, weeks, and months on their own. To be a shepherd is to learn to embrace solitude.
Their solitary vocation evokes respect from the villagers, who in contrast (and by definition) are part of a small community that provides ready-made company. Solitude is no easy accomplishment, especially for a gregarious Mediterranean people. Blaise Pascal said that the root cause of human misery is our inability to sit quietly in our rooms alone.7 Yet not everyone who sits alone feels alone; solitude is not the same as loneliness. An everyday saint seeks solitude, an inner quietness, in order to keep watch and wait for God’s unexpected advents. As Bible teacher Jan Johnson reminds us: “To take time for silence and solitude means we assume that God wants to speak to us and relate to us in a personal way. . . . we learn to converse with God and hear God—first in solitude, then in all of life.”8 Such is the purpose of the Advent walk: to prepare the way of the Lord in one’s own most particular place—our heart. Advent watching and waiting is a spiritual exercise for which the shepherd serves as our model and teacher.
Alone in the hills, away from the world below, the shepherd develops the art of attentiveness: concern for his charge, alertness to the land, and fondness for the stars above. The Northern Star is known to the French as l’étoile du berger (“the shepherd’s star”). I cannot help wondering if it was the shepherds’ natural attentiveness that led the angels to appear first to them that first Christmas night. Why else were they the first to hear the good news? Perhaps they saw the angels because they had already been practicing their solitary watchful waiting in the fields while “keeping watch over their flock by night” (Luke 2:8).
MY OWN PILGRIMAGE
I have often recalled those shepherds while taking my own quiet Advent walks, “wondering as I wandered out under the sky” across Yorkshire moors, Grantchester meadows, Edinburgh city parks, Wisconsin woods, and Midwest prairie paths, a permanent resident transplant in foreign lands. As my travels and the passing of time took me farther and farther away from my native land and beloved hills, I came to realize that something was amiss in my crèche. Even though I was careful to include herbs from Provence, dried and carefully stored from year to year, I sensed there was something out of place.
It was on one of these quiet Advent walks that it finally dawned on me: just as the traditional plays brought the story of Christ into Provence with all its local color, so I too had to bring it into my new place—or rather, I had to incorporate my place into the story of Christ. I therefore decided to bedeck my crèche with plants and shrubs from the surrounding terroir: heather when we lived in Scotland, white pine and prairie grass when we moved to Illinois. The only criterion was that it had to be local. I am here, and “here” is wherever God plants me for a particular season of my life; “here” is where he wants me to live, grow, and welcome the child Christ. The manger scene must therefore reflect my current place, as the Provençal crèche does in and for the land of my ancestors. As one book about the santons puts it: “If we can localize the nativity, we make it contemporary such that it is no longer an exotic mystery but a familiar event.”9Exactement.
WEEK 2 Pray
“Be still, and know that I am God.” PSALM 46:10
Imagine yourself a shepherd, sitting quietly, not talking to God, but just watching and waiting and listening. Find a place where you will not be disturbed. Turn off your cell phone, quiet the voices in your head. Then, for five or six minutes, tell God that you are listening. Ask him to show you how to welcome him into your place this Advent. Then wait. This is his time to talk. This too is prayer.
Try to do this every day this week. That’s how habits are formed. Can you do it for ten minutes? Fifteen? The point is to be intentional about making time for quiet listening. Those who listen also watch and wait.
God will speak, in his own way, and his own time, if you are attentive—not just now, but throughout the day. Have you heard him?
Indiangrass from the prairies
I have accordingly made a mental shift. I now see my new place (wherever God happens to put me) less as a foreign land than a holy land, a place set apart in which I can continue to adore the Word become flesh. It was this insight—that Christ could be reborn, as it were, here, there, and everywhere—that made me realize that I too could belong here, there, and everywhere. I am “here,” far from Provence, a real-life little saint in a new crèche, eager to know, and love, my new environs: the vast prairie with its varied grasses waving over a snow-covered expanse; the white oaks of Illinois lifting their heavy limbs toward the sky; the native juniper, greening and scenting the manger throughout the season. Like the santons who populate my crèche, I found the grace to welcome Christ where I am.
THE ART OF EATING IN SEASON
The kitchen table is another place to practice watching and waiting, this time for the advent of each season’s crops. Ideally, the everyday saints’ food, like the rest of their lives, is organically connected to the local terroir. After all, God created us as embodied beings, and we can only be in one place at a time. Like prayer, watching and waiting for particular foods to ripen can be a way of sharpening awareness of our perpetual dependence on God, in our place, in and out of season. Advent watching and waiting reminds us, and our children, to be grateful for the created world around us, and to thank the Giver of all good gifts.
Advent is also a season that invites everyday saints to use restraint. For, at least in the northern hemisphere, Advent is a time when the garden begins its annual hibernation. Acknowledging the decreasing harvest is part and parcel of the art of living in season. Eating during Advent means reserving part of the harvest for the next feast: Christmas. Living in correspondence to the season of Advent may require fasting rather than feasting, regardless of the impression that supermarkets give, where it is always Christmas, never winter.
For wise everyday saints, local vegetables are de rigueur: cabbages, spinach, legumes (chickpeas in Provence, red beans in Illinois)—the staples of simple soups and stews. Nothing fancy, but nonetheless tastefully prepared. This too is a way of respecting the seasons, the land, and the Lord who created and ordered them.
Swiss chard and thyme
Those who live in sync with the rhythms of the land know that Advent marks the last of Swiss chard, a Mediterranean staple.10 It is the last gasp of autumn, the last bright green leafy vegetable before the earth enters into the grave of winter. Chard is nothing for a gourmand to write home about, yet it is dressed by nature in festive colors, with its swirly red garland crisscrossing the bright green leaf. In Provence, cooks traditionally pair it with thyme gathered from the hills, embellished in a béchamel sauce, grilled with croûtons, drizzled with olive oil—perhaps garnished with crumbled bacon when it is dressed in its Sunday best.
Advent is not only about putting off good things until tomorrow, but it is a season of preparation. In the land of my ancestors, some families take little breaks, sampling a few Christmas specialties like nougat and mulled wine when they gather with neighbors to admire each other’s crèche on Sundays, which according to the church calendar are minor feast days (they’re sometimes called “little Easters”). During the rest of the week, however, they learn the virtue of watchful waiting, preserving rather than consuming the contents of the larder.
WEEK 3 Play Your Part
“We remember the fish we ate in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers,
the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.” NUMBERS 11:5
The Bible mentions food by specific names throughout the Old and New Testaments—sorrel, cinnamon, honey, gum, wheat, milk, pistachio nuts, almonds, and grapes, to name but a few.
Can you name five foods that are harvested or stored by local farmers in your local place during this particular season? Hint: read the “country of origin” at the supermarket or, even better, track down a farmers’ market in your area.
Procure some seasonal ingredients, then produce a seasonal dish. Then talk about it at the table as a way of introducing the discipline of eating in season. We won’t find manna on our doorsteps, as the Israelites did, but we can learn to trust God to provide while waiting for the next harvest.
In the passage cited above, Israel complained to God because of the food they did not have anymore. Can you focus, and help others at your table (family and small groups) to focus, on what God has provided, rather than complain about what is no longer available, even as you practice seasonal restraint?
END OF SEASON
Our Advent walk is approaching the threshold of Christmas. In the words of the angel who opens one of the pastorales: “The Mistral [a strong cold wind from the north] who is a friend of the Good Lord, decided to prepare the stage by cleansing the sky that night, leaving not a single cloud, so that every star might shine brightly on God’s little one.”11 It is a beautiful thought, nature’s way of preparing for a special season. The whole of creation, which has been watching and waiting, now welcomes the child Christ, just as the shepherd-poet David had said: “The heavens declare the glory of God, / and the sky above proclaims his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Now, the Christmas stage is set. The house is ready. The Guest may enter!
WHAT’S AN EVERYDAY SAINT TO DO?
The shepherds in the old carols faced dark mountain paths, biting cold, little food, and the prospect of brigands taking what little they had, yet they continued to search for the child Christ until they found him in a barnyard, lying between a cow and donkey. A contemporary everyday saint might well ask, “What dark paths will I have to take, and what hidden dangers and unknown assailants will I meet on my way to Christ?”
WEEK 4 Ponder
“Most of us grew up saying prayers, reading prayers, or listening to others
praying. Few of us were challenged to be prayer. There is a difference
between a person who says prayers and a prayerful person. It is the
difference between something we do and someone we are.”12
Reflect on the last few weeks: Have you come to see the importance of watching and waiting? Have you learned how? Have you found a dwelling place in your life for the Lord? Think about what it looks like to watch, wait, and welcome Christ in your place.
As you begin to listen to God speak throughout the day, note that “devotion” is not just an event at a set time, but an attitude of attentiveness and expectation to maintain throughout the day.
Imagine Advent as the first chapter of a great story in which you are invited to come along. Imagine you are one of those little saints on a pilgrimage to find Christ. Can you see the story of your life as one of holy pilgrimage? You don’t have to leave your place. You just have to be Adventish: prayerfully expecting and preparing to meet Christ where you are.
Can you imagine prayer becoming so naturally enmeshed in your daily life that your whole life might end up being prayer? Might praying continually (1 Thessalonians 5:17) be the art of watchful waiting, the art of living in Advent?
Everyday saints, shepherds or not, should know the seasons of the place where they are planted. They should go on quiet Advent walks, whether in hills, through prairies, or along riverbanks—anywhere away from the distractions of a stressful world, crowded shops, and hectic schedules that tempt them to rush to Christmas before its due season. The art of living in Advent involves remembering: ’tis not yet the season (of Christmas). Everyday saints who pay attention to the seasons will use Advent to prepare inwardly the way of the Lord, pondering in their hearts, like Mary, the mystery of the one who came down from heaven to be here—not Bethlehem (or Provence), but here: let it be to me, here, according to your word (Luke 1:38).
What does this season of Advent really mean for me? Much as I love my crèche, Advent is about more than searching the hills for herbs to adorn a model manger. The real art of living in the season of Advent is about learning how to welcome Jesus in my place this Christmas, and in the coming year—and not just in the “official” manger scene, but in all the scenes of my everyday life: home, neighborhood, workplace, church, and heart. Everyday saints need time to prepare a fitting welcome for their Lord. This is the reason for the Advent season: to watch and wait, in solitude and attentiveness, for God’s active presence, so that as we make our own pilgrimage we can say with David:
I will not give sleep to my eyes
or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the LORD,
a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.
(Psalm 132:4-5)
