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by Karen Twinem

Prepare for Advent

The first Sunday of Advent is the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It’s a great time to make sure you have your supplies, books and ideas ready for the season.

Having a mindful Christian Advent is a time of joy and wonder. It’s a quiet time spent intentionally concentrating on the miracle of Jesus’ birth rather than the commercial version of Christmas. This kind of Advent is build peace instead of panic.

two books for Advent

Some ideas for Advent prep include:

  • Get or make Advent candles. (We are doing beeswax candles from a kit this year. You can find the kit here.)
  • Purchase an Advent calendar or stock up one if you have a reusable model.
  • Get the Advent wreath out of storage … or buy one.
  • Order a new Advent devotional or order new ones. This year I’m using two favorites: “Preparing for Christmas” by Richard Rohr and “Living in Joyful Hope” by Suzanne M. Lewis.
  • Get out your Christmas music.
  • Organize children’s Christmas books.
  • Pick the name of a saint or devout Christian. You can study their life during the season. I’m doing Henri Nouwen this year.
worms eye view of spiral stained glass decors through the roof
by Karen Twinem

Add to the Light

If you are already in the fellowship, you should work unceasingly to keep it true to the whole gospel of Jesus Christ. You should see that your personal life and conduct cause no dimming of the light. With unflinching courage, you should seek to eliminate all barriers to genuine fellowship until men know that you are Christ’s disciples because you love one another. And above all, you should urge and encourage all people everywhere to forsake their evil, selfish ways and to come into the kingdom that they, too, might be part of the light of the world.

Clarence Jordan
by Karen Twinem

Get Ready for a Calm Christmas

As we hide away from heat advisories in sweltering August, preparing for Christmas is a fun item on the to-do list. I picked up “Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year: A Little Book of Festive Joy” by Beth Kempton for this purpose.

I already consider myself a mindful Christmas practitioner. Yet Kempton took an approach that I found fascinating. She proposes that Christmas has five storylines:

  1. Faith: The celebration of the birth of Jesus and the Christmas story involving church-based traditions and rituals like Advent candles, the creche and traditional Christmas carols.
  2. Magic: The story of Santa Claus, his reindeer and the elves, plus magical Christmas movies and songs.
  3. Connection: Things that connect us to Christmases past, such as “The Christmas Carol,” Christmas trees and treasured ornaments, Christmas dinners, holiday events and Christmas movie traditions.
  4. Abundance: The joy of getting and giving presents.
  5. Heritage: The Christmas practices of your family of origin and your background.

As a Christian, my Christmas celebrations focus on faith. But I was surprised to realize that my family also finds Connection as very important. For one family member, doing the same things that we have done, as in Heritage, is deeply important.

Talk to your family to see what about your Christmas celebration is most important to them. You can create an intentional approach to the season that meets everyone’s needs and desires.

“Calm Christmas” also offers a variety of ideas for a mindful approach to the whole season. I especially liked the author’s idea of spending the time between Christmas Day and New Years Day’s as a “hush” season. This is, she writes: “A time of long walks, hot coffees, languid lounging with leftover chocolates, adding birthday dates to the new diary, telephone catch-ups … and everything on pause.”

Wow! Can I have that in August, too?

by Karen Twinem

Try This: Visualize Dying With Jesus

An excellent description of Christian mindfulness is found in Acts 17:28: “for in him we live and move and have our being.” Step by step, hour by hour, we walk with Jesus intentionally, paying single-minded attention to every moment.

An exercise suggested in the Life Without Lack course I’m taking helps us move into this way of being.

Visualize being crucified with Jesus. Sound weird? Yes, but it’s Biblical.

  • Galatians 2:20: I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
  • Colossians 3:3: For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.
  • Romans 6:6-7: For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin — because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

So let’s take a quiet moment to visualize ourselves crucified with Jesus. This is a good start to dying to self and waking to walk in Christian mindfulness.

by Karen Twinem

Resource: Hope Mindfulness and Prayer

Hope Mindfulness and Prayer app presents mindfulness and meditation in Christian form. As the narrator describes it in the opening video, “Meditation is the ship, and Jesus is the captain.”

This app … use the whole name as other apps are also shortened to Hope … has a five-star rating with 105 reviews in the Apple app store. It’s an especially good app for beginners in Christian mindfulness. The graphics are well done, and it’s easy to navigate.

The 12-day guide called the Foundation for the practices is free. Getting the other meditations costs you a subscription, which is $10 a month or $70 a year.

If you pay that, you get access to hundreds of meditations in these categories:

  • Life (anxiety, stress, purpose, self-esteem, loneliness, disappointment)
  • Rest (sleep and relaxation)
  • Carpe Diem (energy, creativity, balance, productivity)
  • Virtues (happiness, love, kindness, patience, forgiveness)
  • Health (depression, dieting, chronic illness)
  • Moments (being single, healing a broken heart, marriage, motherhood, fatherhood, divorce)
  • Difficulty (delays, fear of flying, test taking, public speaking, talking to a crush)
  • Sports and Recreation (training, motivation)
  • Mastery
  • Kids sleep stories

I couldn’t find much information on who created the app. It does gamify meditation with awards. Other apps for Christian mindfulness and meditation are listed on the Resources page here.

by Karen Twinem

Hope in a Time of Pandemic

But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

Romans 8:25 NIV

Lately I feel a bit like the Lloyd Bridges character in “Airplane” who picked a bad day to give up all his addictions. I picked hope as my word for Lent, long before I knew I would be cloistered in my home. (Not quarantined, folks. Cloistered. It’s a choice.)

When you hope for what you do not see (i.e. the end of this pandemic), we have to wait. Patience is a fruit of the Holy Spirit, and we can ask for more of it.

In “Jesus Today,” Sarah Young suggests that we practice hoping for things we don’t see … even during good times. That includes things in this life and the next.

She also suggests that we ask Jesus to guide us into hopes and dreams in line with His will. Then we focus our eyes on Him as we wait for opportunities to do what He wants, praying for His will to be done.

Let’s do this together, no matter what scary thing happens next.

by Karen Twinem

The Man God Depended On

In 1985, I had a baby at the same time that my then-husband developed a severe psychosis. I had a feeling that I would be raising my son alone. (I was right.) So I named him after the man I trusted could help me: Joseph.

Today we celebrate Joseph of Nazareth, the man God depended on to help raise Jesus. The Bible tells us that Joseph was “just.” This doesn’t only mean that he was fair. He was aligned with doing God’s will, no matter what. Even when devastated by what he thought was Mary’s betrayal, he wanted to do the right thing.

And he did. He married Mary. He named Jesus. He woke up in the night and took his family to Egypt based on a dream. He brought them back to Nazareth. He lived with Jesus for an unknown number of years. He taught Him, and he learned from Him.

When the neighbors were astounded at Jesus’ teaching, they asked, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” Yes, he was. And I think there was a resemblance.

by Karen Twinem

Praying Inside God’s Will

Quite a few of us are praying about COVID-19. I have a long list of people, groups, causes and places I love, which I pray for every day. The Lord has recently been prompting me to find a quieter way to pray inside His will.

Instead of having a long list of what I think SHOULD happen, I am just lifting up the individuals and the groups to God for His will to be done. I am no longer Mrs. God, handing the Lord his honey-do list.

After all, as Psalm 139:4 says, “Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, Oh Lord.”

God knows what we need. The purpose of prayer is to help us grow closer to God and to understand His will. Just lifting up a person or a cause before the Lord and asking that His will be done is enough.

by Karen Twinem

Get Hygge With This Very Long Sabbath

How many times have we whined that we were too busy? Well, nature just took care of that. When we are isolated / socially distanced at home, our attitude makes all the difference.

I’m challenging myself to see this period as an extended Sabbath that I can brighten with hygge elements, like candles, a fire, plenty of reading, and snuggling with my husband and cats.

During this Sabbath, I can spend more time in prayer, which is needed, and study. My husband is teaching himself to bake. I am finally going to read a foot-high pile of magazines. (I’m glad I didn’t listen to you about this, Marie Kondo.).

While I am an introvert who owns the book, “Sorry I’m Late. I Didn’t Want to Come,” I think reframing the concept of social distancing into something wonderful like a Sabbath will work even for extroverts.

This is the time to calm down and get caught up. Enjoy as best you can.

by Karen Twinem

Resource: “Sacred Rhythms”

One of the essential books for Christian mindfulness is Ruth Haley Barton‘s “Sacred Rhythms: Arranging Our Lives for Spiritual Transformation.” I’ve recently finished reading it for the third time as part of Lenten practice.

Ruth Haley Barton

Barton, who is a spiritual director and founder/CEO of the Transforming Center, walks chapter by chapter through the spiritual disciplines that help one lead an intentional life in the presence of Jesus.

She writes about solitude, Scripture, prayer, honoring the body, self-examination, discernment and Sabbath. Each chapter ends with ideas for how to move the content into your own life. Finally she instructs readers how to prepare a rule for life so we can live closer to God in any life season.

Barton also co-hosts an excellent podcast, “Strengthening the Soul of Your Leadership.” The current season is covering Lent. She’s a wonder! I hope you look her up.