2009-2010 Calendar

The new Story-formed Calendar for 2009-2010 is NOW AVAILABLE!!

There are some sample pictures under the “View a Couple Pages” tab.  I have included the Christmas, Epiphany, Holy Week and Lent pages.  Enjoy…I’ve had a lot of fun putting it all together.

If you are interested in finding out more about the calendar, you can email me at: This year the cost of the calendar is $16 (includes shipping in the continental U.S.) …AND there is a PayPal option this year.  Until I figure out if I can put the PayPal option on this site, you can go here:  StoryFormed 2009-2010 Christian Calendar…then click on the “How To Order” link.

I look forward to journeying through all the seasons of this next year with you!

Blessings,

Tara

 

There Are Still Presents Under the Tree

This has been an interesting Advent/Christmas season for me.  As people came to our house during Advent, the huge Jesse tree always became a topic of conversation.   Friends and acquaintances had a tough time wrapping their minds around what we are doing with this rather large bundle of twigs and branches on our kitchen table.  More than a few, however, when we explained that we were reading through the Scriptures with our family in order to see the waiting, longing, and need for a Messiah, thought it was pretty neat.  (What I found interesting is that those who would not claim to be followers of Jesus found it more intriguing than those who were.  Perhaps, there is a certain numbness that comes within any religious circles…we think we already know the story, so why would we have to read it over and over, year after year?)

But whatever sort of responses I got to our Advent activities, it was nothing compared to trying to explain that Christmas is a season and not just a day…and that we would not be opening presents on Christmas Day (although we did a few little ones) but rather spreading them out through the whole 12 days to celebrate the Incarnation.  All around as we’ve seen people at church, the grocery store, or our neighborhood, the question we consistently get is “what did you get for Christmas?  what was your favorite  present?”  (I am a little cheeky and so I want to answer that I got Jesus – God with Us – for Christmas…but I’ve restrained myself!!)  I am simply getting used to explaining the 12 days of Christmas and getting some glassy-eyed stares and polite smiles!

However, I do have a favorite present from this year (and I know it will remain my favorite even though there are still presents under the tree to be opened.)

This last year we have been trying to teach our children about how to handle money and so we’ve helped them come up with a system of giving, long term savings, and short term savings (ie. spending).   All year long they have added up each of these categories and kept a record of them…and watched their money increase.   They had to give at least 10% to giving, but our daughter, who was born with the gift of generous giving, almost consistently put between 35 and 50% into her giving category!!  Not bad for a 12 year old!!!)

A few weeks ago, the World Vision catalog arrived at our house and as our children went through it, they became giddy with excitement.  They realized that they could buy goats, chickens, clothing, soccer balls…really whatever…for people in other parts of the world!!!  They had the money and they set out to write their “Christmas List” of what they wanted to do with their giving money.  ( In fact, we had a birthday party for our son a week or so ago and he asked that instead of gifts people could give him money toward his World Vision fund!)

So on the 23rd we went down to World Vision’s headquarters (we live very nearby) in order to give the money.  We stopped by the bank beforehand, pulled out the cash for each kid and gave it to them in an envelope to carry.  As we walked in to the lobby, both of our children were bubbling over with excitement!!    They both ran up to the counter and announced that they had money they wanted to give and they wanted to “buy” things from the catalog!!  I think the little lady sitting behind the desk was a little overwhelmed!

What insued over the next 20 minutes or so brought tears to my eyes.  Our children deliberated and calculated just how best to spend their money.  They agonized over where the money would go and even verbalized that they felt like they didn’t enough to give as much as they wanted to.  They knew the money was God’s but they wanted it to be used to the “most it could be”.  Then they gladly marched up to the counter, told the lady what they wanted to “buy”, gladly handed over their money and walked away with a huge grin on their faces!!

THAT was my best gift!!  I don’t even think I need any others.  To watch my children give generously and so gladly fills my heart!!  To see them want to give money for Kingdom Work is a part of my desire for them.  To get to be present as they experience the joy of giving to God is priceless!!

Later we walked through World Vision’s visitor center where our hearts were torn by the immense poverty and needs in this world and the hope that some followers of Jesus are just audacious enough to bring into dark places.   And I asked God, then and there, to not only let my kids know the joy of giving money to His work around the world, but to take them there as well, letting them participate firsthand in how these monies are making a difference in the lives of people.

 

Expanding Women

Reading the story of Elizabeth and Mary this morning in the silence of a dark, sleepy house, I had these thoughts:

Both Elizabeth and Mary were expanding women.  Despite the gap in age, they found themselves in much the same predicament.  Something was growing in them that was pushing the edges of their physiques.  They were expanding beyond anything their bodies had ever experienced.

But not just their flesh, their minds and hearts too were being stretched.  What was God up to?  How is it that the old woman and the virgin are in the same position?  Neither should be pregnant.  What about all the messiness since angels had appeared and delivered their messages?  How would they explain what they knew to be real?

I remember being pregnant with our first child and looking at my rounded belly at six months thinking, “oh this isn’t so bad!”  Little did I know the stretching of joints, organs, and skin that would take place the following 12 weeks!!  Just when I thought I could not get any bigger – that surely I had reached the limit of my expansion – my skin magically found a way to stretch even more.

And so it is with God, I think.  He comes and plants something in us – something to be grown to fruition.  He finds us unprepared (and full of questions) for what He is about to do but that does not deter Him.  Instead, He grows us and stretches us to make us fit habitations for His handiwork.  He doesn’t ask us to understand but just to respond with Mary, “I am the Lord’s…may it be to me as you have said.”  Then He stretches our souls and hearts past the point of recognition – little by little…..and arrives (many times) in messiness and at an inconvenient hour!

Lord,  I know I carry You in me – in my flesh.  What I do not always know is what You are growing in the dark recesses of my body.  Sometimes I feel nothing – even doubting that I could be pregnant with Your Spirit.  Other times, a flutter, a kick, reminds me of Your presence.  More often, an uncomfortable stretching sensation – for You are expanding the limits of my heart and soul.  But it causes discomfort and I can no longer wear the clothing I used to wear.  I cannot see the inward development that is occurring.  Instead, I must trust that this expansion is from You and will be delivered in the proper time.

 

A Journey of Longing

My family and I take an Advent pilgrimage of sorts each year.  It happens around our dinner table as we slowly take a journey toward Bethlehem.  We open the pages of the Scriptures and wander with the friends we find within – from creation to the birth of Jesus.   This year I have been struck with a question that Christine Sine asked…”What are we waiting for this Advent season?“  I took the question and mixed it with the point of view of being in the middle of the story of the Scriptures, and here is my answer:

I stand on the edge of unformed worlds and watch them come into being.  I see light, brilliant color and exquisite detail.  I hear rushing waters, animals calling to one another and the sound of footsteps on the gravel.  I hear the words “it is VERY good” and those words are forever imprinted upon my psyche.  They churn in me images of intimacy with the Creator, my fellow bipeds and all creation.  I taste joy and sweet glory dripping off this newborn terrestrial ball.

Then tears…the sound of pitiful weeping and the thud of an apple falling to the ground.  The taste in my mouth turns bitter with pride, shame, hiding and toil.  I feel the jolt of a planet askew in its orbit.  I must squint for the light has dimmed, my eyes relegated to the spectrum of shadows.  I feel the stabbing pain of jealousy, murder, arrogance, love of self.  I am disoriented with the rest of the planet.  I have become “homo incurvatus in se ipsum” – man bent in on himself.  I am trapped and only a whisper of “it is good” lies  below audible frequencies in the regions of my heart.

I am hot and weary from wandering a planet that does not cooperate with me.  I hear promises and I hope; I trust…I long.  I celebrate moments of light when the “very good” seems to well up almost to crescendo but then…always falls flat.

I walk, I lie, I settle down, I am oppressed, I am delivered, I run back to tyrannical idols.  I obey, I distrust, I watch generations die,  I hope, I am faithful, I disobey.  I watch leaders rise and fall, I cry in agony, I am carted off to foreign lands, I watch God be faithful, I am deafened by His silence.  And I wait…I long…for that “very good” rhythm.

I hear the sound of weeping again and this time find my face and hands wet with tears.  I cry as a sojourner in a strange land.  I hear the words of the prophets and they stir my soul awake with words of justice, wholeness, and intonations of “very good”.  My tongue, so used to bitterness, perceives ever so slightly, the taste of joy once again.

Then I hear nothing….

Heavy weighted under this unbearable nothingness lies my hope.  It is suffocating – being executed by the crushing weight.  In its final breath, a single Baby’s cry rings out and shatters the grip of this oppressive foe.  The weary planet shudders and takes, at long last, a gasp of fresh air.  The Baby’s cries reverberate to the outer edges of the universe and command the attention of a King.  The planet stands up straighter and a new creation process is put into place.

The Advent journey ends here for many, but I do not think it should.  For we  live in the unraveling story outside the pages of the Book – a story not so different from the one gone before.  A story of longing and waiting and hope.

Though able to breathe, this planet still wheezes and coughs within its brokenness.  It groans for full restoration – for the new creation to be complete.  And I stand on its infected skin hearing children crying and people yelling.  I feel the pain of wars and hate and cruelty.  I, like back at the beginning, still taste the bitterness of sin.   I still live with that awkward curvature of my soul.

And I wait…Though I catch glimpses of Reality, I long for this Baby to return in the fullness of His Kingdom.  I long for Him to immerse a tired creation once again with the fullness of His glory.  I long for peace.  I long for a world put to right.  I long for the reign of a just King.  I long for healing and for joy to be the only flavor in our mouths.  I long for rest…for Shalom.  And I long to live fully in the dance of “it is VERY good”.

(But Lord, as I wait for Your Son to come again and to make His Kingdom fully established, let me labor to make to make it a present reality- more visible wherever I am. )

 

Simply Present

I had the privilege of speaking to a group of moms the other day.  I always feel as if I should take off my shoes when I enter into a room full of young moms because I know I am standing on holy ground.  Though often mundane, tedious and exhausting, mothering children is truly entering in and co-laboring with God.  (There is a similar post here.)

I spoke on being Simply Present – connecting with God and our children in the moment at hand.  (Something I will confess that I am always practicing – never perfecting or becoming an expert.)

So as we are in the midst of a culture who is so frenzied about finding and purchasing  just the right gift for a certain date, it got me thinking as to what is that “perfect gift”.  True, it is different for each person, but for kids I think it is the gift of our presence.  After all I do believe that every kid’s favorite toy is Mom or Dad!

So I am challenged as the current outside my door rushes to the malls, to hang lights, to concerts, to parties, to purchase, to mail and to mmet all the deadlines – how do I live differently?  As a mom I want to choose to give gifts that my children “will love rather than ones that meet deadlines” (thanks to Maggi Dawn for these words).  And the gifts they love???  To be together, to play a game, to read together, to snuggle as they are going to sleep, to help them make their sandwich for their lunchbox, and to have a place to talk about their day.  I did a photo shoot yesterday for a family that was in the middle of the decorating frenzy and trying to get the perfect Christmas card picture.  Half way through the session, we were down on their beach and dad started a bonfire.  We warmed ourselves around the flames,  the family toasted marshmallows and the boys were just loving the very presence of their parents.  I photographed these moments and afterward mom said to me “I get so caught up in schedules and timing that I forget to live in the moment and have a fire on the beach and eat marshmallows at 10 in the morning.”  Those are the gifts that don’t come on the “right date”, but rather in the right moments.

My dad gave me a wonderful gift 13 years ago although I don’t know if he knows it and I didn’t know it until weeks after he “gave” it to me.   I was six months pregnant with my daughter when my dad, who had bravely fought cancer for three years, died.  After our daughter was born I remember nursing her one exhausting night almost at the end of my rope, wanting that certain date when she would sleep through the night, when I realized the gift my dad had left me.

In his death, he taught me that I am not guaranteed another day with my children – there are no “certain dates” that I am promised.  But what I am given is the moment at hand.  And that is all I am given – the moment before me to be fully present in.  To play, to sing, to talk, to correct, to cook, to connect, to whatever…but not to let a certain future date on the calendar overshadow the NOW.

Lord, as I am preparing and looking forward to the celebration of Christmas, may You help me to live in the waiting and expectation of Advent.  Help me to be simply and fully present – each given moment – to You, my family and to those You put before me.  Help me to be like You – giving good gifts in the right moment and not on a certain deadline!

 

Our Experimental Jesse Tree

I am glad that Advent is a season of preparation and not perfection…or else I would have already failed!!  It seems as though this season has come upon me without me being fully ready.  I am trying to make an Advent menu (because we are going to try vegetarian eating except for Sundays) but it’s been on my desk for the last two days and I haven’t touched it once.  I just pulled out some books we will use for our journey into the next few weeks, but didn’t get to any readings tonight because I friend of mine had to go to the emergency room and I had her kids here.  (I don’t know if anyone else can relate…but I could use a few more days before Advent starts!  However, since I don’t have that, I want to take a deep breath and enter into preparation…not perfection!)

One thing we did do today is create a “kind-of” Jesse Tree.  My daughter and I put together an arch of twigs from the yard for the creche to go under.   You can tell we put it together ourselves but we had fun doing it!!  (In other words…we won’t be marketing our homemade “Jesse Trees” anytime soon!)  Anyway, the arch will reside over the creche and each night after we do these nightly readings, we’ll add a symbol/picture/ornament to the arch.

So then my daughter gathered 7 rocks from our garden and covered them with the colors of the Christian Seasons.  They are the anchor points for our Jesse Tree arch.  And of course, I had to get into our seasonal stuff and get out the creche.

I also pulled out a couple of the books we will use during this season.  My kids LOVE The Advent Book.   Even as they get older, they love to open the doors and read the story behind them.  Then Beginnings and Endings accompany our readings in the evenings.

May you enjoy the preparation of Advent and not worry or fall into perfectionism.  May we all not just fall into sentimentality (as we hear one more rendition of  “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”) but may we tell the Stories that deepen our faith and lead us into expectation.

 

Putting Christmas in its Place

Well, the turkey and stuffing have been eaten.  The pumpkin pie is three-quarters gone and calling to me from the fridge.  The laughter from last night’s meal is just a memory.  I slept in way too late to make it to any crazy Black Friday sales (although I will go to Costco for a free cookbook!)  But the first thing out of my daughter’s mouth this morning was, “Oh…now we start Christmas!”

I have to be honest that it made me cringe.  I wanted to cry out, “We don’t start Christmas…we enter into the ADVENT season soon!!”  There is a difference and when they blend together, I don’t think we live in either season well.  I was reading Amy over at Splendor in the Ordinary where she titled a post “Christmas has devoured Advent”.  I agree…I feel like all the glitter, ornaments and trumpery of Christmas has consumed the discipline and preparation of Advent.

In The End of Advent, Joseph Bottum writes

Christmas has devoured Advent, gobbled it up with the turkey giblets and the goblets of seasonal ale. Every secularized holiday, of course, tends to lose the context it had in the liturgical year. Across the nation, even in many churches, Easter has hopped across Lent, Halloween has frightened away All Saints, and New Year’s has drunk up Epiphany.

Still, the disappearance of Advent seems especially disturbing—for it’s injured even the secular Christmas season: opening a hole, from Thanksgiving on, that can be filled only with fiercer, madder, and wilder attempts to anticipate Christmas.

He goes on to talk about Advent being a discipline – “a way of forming anticipation and channeling it toward its goal.“  And that “a season of contrition and sacrifice prepares us to understand and feel something about just how great the gift is when at last the day itself arrives. “

As for our household, we want to try to put Christmas in its place this year (with TRY being the opportune word!!)  We have already decided not to put our tree up until the second or third week of December.  We will make a Jesse Tree centerpiece for the table and use it in nightly readings/activities to lead us in anticipation toward Christmas.  We are going to try a fast of some sort during the Advent season so we can more enjoy the feasting of the Christmas season.  And we are going to have “A Walk to Bethlehem” – an experiential storytelling event – using the O Antiphons as our guide.  (I’ll post more about this tomorrow…and pictures after Sunday!)

O Lord, let us live well in each season in its time.  Help us to not lag behind nor rush forward to the next thing, but rather to engage with You and Your story in each season.  Let us see the beauty of creation, the tragedy of sin and the long cry of a people waiting for a Savior to free them.  Let us hear the patriarchs and the prophets, the angels and the heralds, and help us to take it all in.  Form us, once again, by Your story and Your Spirit.

 

A Distant Call

The weather here has been pretty foggy the last couple of days.  Now, I am not complaining because I love the feeling of the air pulling close to the earth in a tight-wrapping hug and I like the way the misty air touches my skin and caresses the foliage.  Big diamond droplets of water cling tenaciously to the bare branches of the tree outside our kitchen.  My children will always comment that they feel like Narnia is close by when we experience the fog and I agree with them.  I half expect to see the shadow of lion moving in the veil – just out of my reach, yet not out of my vision.

This morning I awoke to the sound of a foghorn calling from somewhere on the coastline.  It was a low, deep call – calming with no sense of panic, yet a strong solid message of guidance.  I lay in bed enjoying the periodic sound allowing its reverberations to move through my body.   With each subsequent sounding, it became a call to my heart.

Over the past few months I feel like time has become crazy – my business, kids schedules, church, school, marriage, friendships, projects, and parenting all became a tumble-jumble mess and mix.  It couldn’t even be called “juggling” but rather more like tub of balls being dumped on me from above, some of them bouncing, others needing to be tossed in the air again and still others rolling away into some corner waiting for attention at a later date.  (I hope someone understands this illustration!)

But this morning, the foghorn became to me a distant call beckoning me toward Advent.  It signaled to me that there is coming a new season – one in which I am to enter by slowing down, waiting, listening, and even fasting.  In the midst of my foggy brain it became an directional compass, navigating me away from shipwreck on rocky shores and guiding me on to other harbors.  And as I listened, I found myself breathing in rhythm with the foghorn.  And so I long to breathe in sync to the rhythms of Advent.

 

Music

Just found this site through a friend of mine.  They have some great Advent music as well as other WONDERFUL music!!  I’ve been listening to it all morning and just had to share it!!

Sojourn Music

Enjoy!!!

 

I am Rich!!

I love living in the Pacific Northwest!  It is green and lush and thick with vegetation.  As you fly into the airport you are able to see why some call Seattle the Emerald City!

But there is a moment – a day or two perhaps – when the green explodes into yellows, organge, browns and reds.  The leaves of the trees begin to sing in color!!  They hum in harmony with one another, complimenting each other.  No one color or leaf outshines the others, for their beauty is made all the more prominent when the differences between them can be seen.  It is in the diversity that true beauty is seen.

And…as I walk through this colorful symphony, I am rich!!

I had the opportunity last week to be with a group of people at a retreat.  There we talked about living in rhythm with the Christian Seasons and walking faithfully with God.  One night a group of us sat together and I began to hear that lovely music of diversity again.

There we sat – a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Russian Orthodox, and me (a non-denominational girl who leans toward the Christian mystics and now attends a charismatic church…go figure!!).  And in that small circle of chairs, the world broke out in vibrant color again!  Each person’s beauty accentuated by the differences of the other traditions!  The conversation was a lovely symphony of diverse words and ideas.

And…as I walked away, I realized that, like among the leaves, I am rich within the many colors of my brothers and sisters in Christ!

Lord, thank you for the colors – both in nature and inside Your Church.  Help us to live our lives vibrantly for You while also knowing that others also add to the color of the landscape.  May Your Church in all her color spectrum point to You, our Creator.  And may the world see the beauty of a God who does not just paint in black and white.

 

Caught Up in a Whirlwind

I really feel like my life has been caught in a whirlwind for the past couple of months.  First, I do think the rhythm of the summer is a little more chaotic than that of the school year.  Then that rhythm continued to follow me into the Fall.  I am a photographer (as well as a mom, wife, and all else!) and this season has been SUPER busy!!

It has been difficult to slow down…rest…play…and not allow work to consume me.  (Although I don’t think I’m saying anything that any other mother wouldn’t say as well!)

So…this is a quick post to say that I’m back (or at least trying to be)!  And to share a resource we’ve been using during this last little bit of Ordinary Time.

As far as I understand, for some, the last bit of Ordinary Time becomes “Kingdomtide”.  We’ve been trying to practice this in our family – both in our reading and our living of life.  One of the books that we’ve enjoyed reading together around our meal times is Tales of the Kingdom by David and Karen Mains.  It is a beautiful allegory of life in the kingdom and each time I read it, I find new depths and dimensions.

For little kids and big kids…it is a wonderful read!!!