M. Suzanne Terry

I am still a toddler at following the liturgical calendar, and I’m not very good at it yet. This year, about mid-October, I thought to myself, “Self, Advent starts soon. You should start early – make your calendar, find your books, buy your candles. That way you won’t feel rushed.” And I did. I made this:

And the finished product:

It looks a little baby shower-ish, but we’re expecting the Christ child here, so I felt that was appropriate. I felt good about my progress.

Then time sped up.

So now it’s the first week of Advent, which is my favorite season because I know what longing is and usually have a lot to say about it. I’m reading the things and lighting the candles (which are the wrong color – because it’s actually pretty hard to find Advent candles here. War on Christmas, my ass. Christmas is fricking everywhere.), and going to the services (which has kept me sane this week). And I’m fighting not to settle for autopilot because it would be so easy to check out mentally and emotionally and barrel through, waiting until it is over to be human again. I’m just barely making it.

But I have had a little help from a few places this week.

1. Annie Leibovitz is the photographer for the 2016 Pirelli calendar.  And it’s going to be amazing. I need to become royalty so I can get this calendar.
2. The #BodiesMatter hashtag and Suzannah Paul’s piece on Faith Feminisms.
3. Jamaal May’s poem The Gun Joke could have been written yesterday, but it wasn’t. Ponder.
4. Ten great books by women that were overlooked in 2015. My reading list just gets longer and longer.
5. And thank you Abby and Amy. I needed this so bad – ten ways to be unproductive and stay sane this season.

What’s helping you today?