Our Advent calendar came in the mail today! yay!
Marci made this for our family. It is our advent calendar forever and always and we will cherish it greatly.
This year is the first time I have been able to prepare in advance to have a full celebration of Advent. Many activities are planned for each week. A special gathering each Sunday night (where we will learn about the festivals and share thoughts from the week prior, as well as work on our prayer flags we will be making, and time for reflection and sharing about each element as we learn about them and honor them....among many other ideas....i will of course share with everyone.... i am soooooooo excited to be doing this)
The Verse the idea comes from is:
The first light of Advent is the light of stones.
Stones that live in crystals, seashells, and bones.
The second light of Advent is the light of plants.
Roots, stem, leaf, flower, and fruit by whom we live and grow.
The third light of Advent is the light of beasts.
Animals of farm, field, forest, air, and seas.
All await the birth in greatest and in least.
The fourth light of Advent is the light of humankind.
The light of love, the light of thought, to give and to understand.
Each night of advent Sebastian will draw a verse pertaining to that week's festival from the stocking and will read it and we will share our thoughts on the topic....
We will begin our advent next Sunday evening beginning with the Festival of Stones....
The first Week of our Advent is the Festival of Stones.... During this week we honor the stones of the Earth and how they help build our lives. How buried deep in the cold ground they are the bones of the Mother Earth.....
The color of our prayer flag for that week will be Red and the symbol is a moonstone mandala....
The Second week of Advent is the Festival of Plants.
During this week we honor the place of plants in our lives and the life of the earth. We will do activities and have verses that reflect on our dependence on plants and green things....
(during this week we will plant our bulbs for next spring, among other things)
The prayer flag color for this week is Green (of course) and the Symbol is the Tree of Life...
The Third week of Advent is the Festival of Beasts (animals). During this week we honor the spirits of the animals of the world and their wisdom and ways of being.
If all goes to plan, this will be the week we will receive our new moonstone animal family member. We are looking to get a cat or kitten so that we can extend our lives to a pet.
We will also go meat-free during this week and much more again after.
Other activites will include feeding our yard squirrels some acorns we gathered on a picnic in yellow springs, as well as making pine cone bird feeders to hang from our tree....and reading animal stories....
The color of the prayer flag for the week is Yellow and the symbol is Ta, the Wind Horse....
The fourth week of Advent is the Festival of Humankind . In this week we will honor our fellow human beings and learn to more peacefully coexist with each other and all people.....
Activities will include Charity, Helpfulness, Giving, and Kindess ........
The prayer flag color for the week is Blue and the symbol is Om.
The Fifth and final bit of our Advent will be (something i kinda made up) the Festival of Soul....There are a few days between the last Sunday of Advent and Solstice itself, which is on Tuesday....And still a few more days between Solstice (the 22nd) and Yule (the 25th)....So on this week, we will learn about the Yule festival and what it means (Yule literally means "Wheel" as in the turn of the Wheel of the Year.)....
Activities will include the Decorating and Lighting of our tree on Solstice, and all the yummy lovely goodnesses of the Yule celebration, with presents, music, movies, good food and treats, and of course Santa's visit!
Following Yule, we will hang our Prayer Flags we have made in order to set our intentions for Good Fortune in the coming year....
I am excited about the Season this year. I feel I am doing a great thing in honoring this time of year and its significance as well as creating memories, gifts, magic, and knowledge for the children to remember, cherish, and enjoy for the rest of their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment