Our Dark Days and the Advent Journey

Dear friends,

As I prepare to begin my Advent Online Journal Workshop, I am filled with a new spiritual realism.  The darkness of this time, this year, is so much more than merely the change to Daylight Savings Time.  We begin the journey of Advent in many kinds of darkness — among us there is personal loss, sadness and uncertainty.  Out there, a world more violent than we have known in two generations.  Each month our planet seems to weep more deeply at the loss of its habitats and life forms.

But I am hope-filled for the journey I will be taking with my participants, because I have come to believe that even in the midst of darkness can we find a luminous center of meaning and connection.  I am so excited to be gathering good souls for four Fridays of sharing, reflection, and quiet writing.

The image above is one of my favorite Advent paintings, by Henry Ossawa Tanner.  Born in Pittsburgh in 1859, just before the start of the Civil War, Tanner was the only Black student at the Philadelphia Academy of Fine Arts.  He studied under Thomas Eakins, befriended Robert Henri, and made his way to France, where he earned international acclaim for his religious paintings.  This work, entitled, “The Annunciation,” is such a beautiful rendering of Mary’s undoubted bewilderment at the journey on which she was being sent forth.  We see the unsentimental realization that her life has changed in ways she can’t fathom.  And so it begins.

Isn’t this always the case with our own lives?  Something comes to us that says, “you must change,” or “you will be changed, whether you wish to be or not.”  This is a story of the ways in which every day people responded to this challenge.

If you have interest in joining us, please go to my Workshops page here:

Spiritual Writing and Creativity Workshops