day four: some birthday presents and the beginning of the piles, all that I can show for now
There is a direct connection between the season of Advent and the time that I spend each year working on my holiday cards. In the early years (this is year fourteen for me) I tried to formulate some type of reasoning for the ritual but I’m not quite sure that I knew just what it was about the process that was so important to me. After awhile it became just what I needed it to be. A way to prepare, a way to turn inward, a way to sit in the stillness of the house, night after night, with just my thoughts and quiet music, and move through a stack of papers, an envelope of blades, a pile of envelopes, a palette of paint.
The ideas start to come to me in the late fall, and I usually sketch them out on the back of a bulletin in the quiet of a sanctuary. Last year it was about healing the heart and finding the beautiful again in this life of so many beautiful things. For the one hundred times I wrote that line, I whispered it one thousand times. “For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.” There was that moment with the girls as they read books together when it came together. The rest of the process was preparation, and waiting, taking the time to make something and send a little of it out into the world a hundred different ways.
This year it’s much different, and I’m very excited about it. The preparations are done, and the work begins. Advent. Waiting on my hands to do the work, waiting for my mind to clear.