Prayer Bench Advent & Christmas Newsletter
Unpacking, favourite things, and new for the New Year
Prayer Bench friends, I greet you from my new study in Lake Ainslie, Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. We moved. I’m still getting sorted but I love my new view.
Reflection
The prophet Jeremiah says God is like a potter — a village potter — shaping the vessels needed for daily life. God is a potter who centers the clay on the wheel and works it into a useful thing.
Sometimes it doesn’t work out. The clay doesn’t take the shape the Potter imagined.
What does God the Potter do? Does God throw away the clay? Get some new stuff to work with?
No, the clay is re-shaped, always re-worked, until it is closer to the vision in the imagination of the Potter.
We are in a time of re-making community. We are “betwixt and between.” We are living somewhere between the old familiar and the new unknown.
We wait. We linger in this Advent season between the old ways passing and the new birth unfolding. We learn to let go so we are ready to receive.
Practice
You may want to go and choose your favourite mug. Leave it empty. Hold it in your hands. Take special notice of its emptiness; its potential to hold.
Read these wisdom words, slowly.
“There, where clinging to things ends,
is where God begins to be.
If a cask is to contain wine,
you must first pour out the water.
The cask must be bare and empty.
Therefore,
if you wish to receive
divine joy and God,
first pour out your clinging to things.
Everything that is to receive
must and ought to be empty.” - Meister Eckhart
Look again at your mug. Look inside at the empty space. Imagine that space in your self. Take a few deep breaths. Allow your breath to expand your inner being. Breath in peace. Breath out worry, or upset, or distraction - whatever it is that takes up unnecessary space in you.
I put a special mug post on the Prayer Bench facebook page and you are welcome to come over and share a picture of your favourite mug. We hold one another in Advent prayer.
New Resources for a New Year: Prayer Bench Yearly Packages
As a subscriber to this Prayer Bench newsletter, I bring you word of the 2023 Prayer Bench packages of resources available as a yearly subscription.
The subscription packages are available in December and January, and then all the resources will be in the Prayer Bench shop at full cost as they become available through the months.
Throughout the year in the newsletters, you will see me offering resources and reminding yearly subscribers that the resource is included in the 2023 subscription. You can become a subscriber now and automatically receive these resources throughout the year and at a greatly reduced cost.
Review what is included in the two packages by visiting this calendar and description of what you can expect. There is more information at the Prayer Bench shop.
Advent Blessings, Janice
Host of the Prayer Bench.