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Email to FriendThis Advent season, online calendars offer meditations and more
This year, the Episcopal Diocese of Washington's fifth annual online Advent calendar is supporting the work of the Bokamoso Youth Program in Winterveld, South Africa, which helps young people thrive amidst the poverty, crime and despair of the AIDS epidemic.
A new window will be available each day during the month of December featuring daily meditations from Episcopal Café, videotaped interviews with the young people of Bokamoso, and opportunities to support the program and the Diocese of Washington's other ministries in Southern Africa. The calendar is available here.
Trinity Church Wall Street has created an online Advent calendar that reveals a new message of hope every day during the season.
"The Light Shines in the Darkness: An Advent Calendar of Hope" uses music, video, photography, scripture, poetry, and more "to show how everyday people are finding hope in unexpected places," a Trinity news release says. "Listen as a father uses song and photographs to tell how he finds hope in a morning commute with his young daughter; learn why one unique senior citizen finds hope in Star Trek; and how an inmate at Sing Sing has found direction, faith, and, most importantly, hope behind the bars of a maximum security prison." The calendar is available here.
Trinity Wall Street is also making its Advent Calendar of Hope available for syndication at no cost to churches and other religious organizations who are interested in adding special holiday content to their websites. Details on how to include the calendar on your website are available here.
The Diocese of Connecticut's Committee on the Environment has developed an "Eco-Advent Calendar," which offers daily suggestions on how to care for God's creation. The calendar can be downloaded here.
Other Episcopal websites offering online daily reflections and meditations for the Advent season include the Diocese of Maryland here, the Diocese of West Texas here and the Diocese of Texas here.
The Church of England is encouraging people to "rediscover the forgotten joys and deeper benefits of waiting for the things they want" with the launch of a new website, www.WhyWeAreWaiting.com, which features an introductory film of the Archbishop of Canterbury and an Advent calendar that includes reflections, podcasts, waiting tips and a quiz on the social networking site Facebook.
"If you did one of those word association tests on Advent, the other word you'd come up with straight away would be calendar," said Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams in his introductory message on www.WhyWeAreWaiting.com. "Advent is a time when you have calendars and the Advent calendar is a countdown to Christmas and it means daily sweets and chocolates. It's a slightly thin and inadequate account of what has for a long time been one of the most important and significant times in the church's year -- a time of waiting we sometimes say."
Through a series of seasonal hints, the www.WhyWeAreWaiting.com website suggests ways of waiting for your wallet, waiting for your soul and waiting for the environment.
"This Advent calendar is a timely resource as we approach Christmas in the credit crunch. It offers people a breathing space in what is often a busy and stressful time of year so we can all consider how best to use our resources. We hope the website reminds people that waiting is not a waste of time but, as we see in nature, a time of change, growth and transformation," says Bishop Stephen Cottrell of Reading, author of "Do Nothing: Christmas is Coming," one of three books from which reflections are taken for www.WhyWeAreWaiting.com.
"Many Advent calendars offer daily chocolate," he added. "What this website offers is a daily dose of chocolate for the soul."
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