I feel a smattering of posts coming on, but this one is going to deal specifically with Advent.
Advent is one of my of my favorite times of the year. In South Louisiana the weather is cold enough to be a nice change and make you feel "all Christmas-y" but isn't nasty and wet like it typically gets later in the winter (with the nastiness invariably reaching it's peak during Mardi Gras no matter if it comes early or late). That said and with the risk of sounding like Charlie Brown in his Christmas special, I don't like Christmas before Christmas day, all the commercialism and crappy music (a Bob Dylan Christmas album? I mean really, is that necessary?), the whole month long parade of terrible Lifetime movies being shown on tv and traffic filling the roads as parents buy far too much for their little darlings at home. Anyway Advent is one of the places where I feel the Baptists are missing out the most by not really using the church calendar. You may get a four week sermon series on "Reclaiming Christmas" or an occasional diatribe about the evils of abreviating the season X-mas, but as for putting things in context where things make sense and anticipating the Second Advent, you are largely on your own.
So, I thought I'd post some links and things here about Advent and resources you might could use. I'll probably post more later. If you find something you would like to share through this blog, feel free to put it in the comments section (I'm not sure if you can hyperlink or not there, if not, I can copy and paste the link into a post).
1. First a good article from First Things about how Advent saves us from the month long exhaustion of ballooning commercial Christmas. First Things will probably have much more in the future, good catholic magazine that they are, but you might also want to check up on Christianity Today periodically, I remember them having a good Advent calendar last year.
2. Let me first say that I usually do not like most Christmas music I hear. It is usually cheesy, campy, or just plain, good ol' fashioned awful. The more Santa Claus is involved in a song, generally the worse the song becomes. I feel like Christmas albums are probably very easy to make, but they are hard to make well. Adding to this problem is the sheer number of albums out there; artists feel like they need to make their album unique to stand out from the rest of the pack and this can lead to some spectacularly bad decisions. With that lengthy disclaimer out of the way, I will now proceed to plug a Christmas album. I really like Sufjan Stevens Christmas album. I'm not proud of this, but I listened to a few songs before Thanksgiving this year, something I am generally oposed to. There are moments when the album reaches just about the perfect tone. And this is because its a weird album, and Sufjan is a weird sounding artist. The Incarnation should sound mysterious, and that is why we always feel something when we go to a candlelit Christmas Eve service and sing songs like "What Child is This?"; God become man needs to cause wonder or you really don't understand what is going on. Sufjan's cd has moments like this. It also has ridiculous but fun songs like the wonderfully titled "Get Behind Me, Santa!" or "Come on! Let's Boogey to the Elf Dance". Anyway you can listen to it online here ("What Child is This?", "Three Ships", the first version of "O Come, O Come Emmanuel", and "Star of Wonder" are standouts).
3. Finally something I did intermittently last year and hope to be more consistent about this year is reading the Daily Office. These readings come from the Book of Common Prayer and are divided for separate morning and evening readings if you desire to do so, but I usually read it all at once. Typically the Psalms are read first followed by two readings in the morning and one in the evening. If you split it up, the Gospel is usually read in the morning every other year, flip-flopping with the other New Testament reading. The bracketed portions are considered optional extensions of the reading. It is good to remember that these are simply the suggested readings, you may extend them as you wish. I'll post the first week here and hopefully will remember to put the others up later. The reading starts with this coming Sunday, tomorrow.
Sunday Psalms 146, 147 * 111, 112, 113
Isa. 1:1-9 2Pet. 3:1-10 Matt 25:1-13
Monday 1,2,3 * 4,7
Isa. 1:10-20 1Thess.1:1-10 Luke 20:1-8
Tuesday 5,6 * 10,11
Isa. 1:21-31 1Thess. 2:1-12 Luke 20:9-18
Wednesday 119:1-24 * 12,13,14
Isa. 2:1-11 1Thess. 2:13-20 Luke 20:19-26
Thursday 18:1-20 * 18:21-50
Isa 2:12-22 1Thess.3:1-13 Luke 20:27-40
Friday 16,17 * 22
Isa 3:8-15 1Thess.4:1-12 Luke 20:41-21:4
Saturday 20, 21:1-7(8-14) * 110:1-5(6-7), 116, 117
Isa 4:2-6 1Thess.4:13-18 Luke 21:5-19
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