Adverbs for Advent: Quiet Reflections for a Noisy Time

By Marilyn McEntyre

These daily reflections for the season of Advent focus on the question of how we are to live into the promise of the season and the challenges of our historical moment, and how we might, as we focus again on the great theme of waiting in Christian life, practice the presence of God. They include pieces entitled, for instance, "Live Boldly," "Live Patiently," "Live Harmoniously," and "Live Repentantly." Based on the author's own efforts to accept the invitation of Advent each year as a time of interior renewal, these short essays are meant as invitations to reclaim a holy season and enjoy it as it was meant to be enjoyed--as "the crowning of the year."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Dec 5, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532643163

Marilyn McEntyre

 Marilyn McEntyre is the award-winning author of several books on language and faith, including Where the Eye Alights, Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Speaking Peace in a Climate of Conflict, When Poets Pray, Make a List, Word by Word, and What's in a Phrase? Pausing Where Scripture Gives You Pause, winner of the 2015 Christianity Today book award in spirituality.

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Adverbs for Advent

Quiet Reflections for a Noisy Time

Marilyn McEntyre

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Adverbs for Advent

Quiet Reflections for a Noisy Time

Copyright ©

2017

Marilyn McEntyre. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-4314-9

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-4315-6

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-4316-3

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

09/17/15

Table of Contents

Title Page

Introduction

Chapter 1: Live Generously

Chapter 2: Live Boldly

Chapter 3: Live Vigilantly

Chapter 4: Live Attentively

Chapter 5: Live Imaginatively

Chapter 6: Live Healthily

Chapter 7: Live Beautifully

Chapter 8: Live Simply

Chapter 9: Live Expectantly

Chapter 10: Live Wholeheartedly

Chapter 11: Live Prudently

Chapter 12: Live Globally

Chapter 13: Live Locally

Chapter 14: Live Playfully

Chapter 15: Live Faithfully

Chapter 16: Live Gratefully

Chapter 17: Live Mercifully

Chapter 18: Live Patiently

Chapter 19: Live Deliberately

Chapter 20: Live Mindfully

Chapter 21: Live Spaciously

Chapter 22: Live Kindly

Chapter 23: Live Lightly

Chapter 24: Live Harmoniously

Chapter 25: Live Courageously

Chapter 26: Live Repentantly

Chapter 27: Live wisely

Chapter 28: Live Lovingly

Introduction

Despite tinsel, noise, and incessant invitations to shop, the weeks of Advent are still, for many of us, a time set apart for reflection. The days on the Advent calendar are marked not only by little doors behind which small treats lie hidden but by the doors we open onto inner spaces where we may find quiet and renewal as the year draws to its end, in encounters with the indwelling Spirit.

The daily reflections in this little book (28 of them, since Advent season varies from 25 to 28 days in the liturgical calendar) are focused on the ancient question, How, then, shall we live? Each of them is rooted in experience, encounter, or a particular passage from Scripture or poetry that has seemed to me to address that question. They link the historical moment in which we live to the long history of faithful living and spiritual seeking that precedes us.

In this season, the dark time of the year, may we dwell daily in light no darkness can overcome.

1

Live Generously

A dear friend and teacher offered me this last reminder as she died: Live boldly. Live generously. She had encouraged me through many of the uncertainties of early adulthood and offered this challenging advice not as an admonition so much as an invitation to a life, I would say, a lot like hers. She modeled those virtues in the extra time she spent with struggling students (her patients, she called them) and in the simple meals she served on a small table in her tiny apartment and in the imagination she brought to conversations that ranged from dream interpretation to the history of a Dutch river to the hidden lives of women in the rural South.

The word generous comes to us through medieval French where it was linked to nobility. The gentry were those who could afford to spread their wealth. The best of them believed in noblesse oblige—the obligation of the rich to care for the poor. To be generous in that sense means to live with an awareness of how richly we have been blessed—so richly that we can afford to spread that wealth, and should. One of the hymns I remember singing as a child proclaimed in a lusty refrain, I’m a child of the King. It’s an antique image for an abiding truth: that we are not only creatures of a divine Creator but more intimately, children of a loving God who made us dependent on each other so that in giving and receiving we might learn something of the divine life in which we’re invited to participate.

The deeper root of generous goes back to the Latin genus—race or stock. That broader meaning suggests that the practice of generosity appropriately reflects our relatedness to one another as members of a human family, made from the soil (humus), borne in our mothers’ bodies, and deeply dependent on each

Reviews for Adverbs for Advent

[Randy Anderson · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I will be returning again and again to this small book for it is a treasury of insight and wisdom--not only for advent preparation but in how to live abundantly and fully.