This year will be remembered as the year of the Covid-Christmas. Many will find different ways to celebrate. But the pandemic is part of a much bigger environmental crisis. Surely what and how we celebrate in a crisis of unprecedented proportions has to be different!
Advent in the Christian calendar is the season of preparation. Candle lighting is part of each week of December. Each flame recalls Jesus' ways of hope, joy, love, and peace. Inspiring still, the intent of the ritual is to create a Christian culture of charity and social justice.
The sixth mass extinction, however, has revealed social justice to be a myopic goal. The intent of all rituals must be the preparation for a One-Earth culture of eco-justice.
In the book, Evolutionary Dancer, I tell how a group of evolutionary elders in a small, rural congregation came to celebrate not Advent but Advent'ure!
Advent'ure is how we understand the new story from science of Cosmos-genesis: the fact that Universe is ever birthing greater complexity, consciousness, and inter-relatedness.
As part of our Advent'ure, we lit candles of radiance, allurement, centration, and emergence, some of the ways the Universal Intelligence moves in and through us. The intent of the ritual was preparation for birthing a One-Earth conscious society.
This Adventure wreath sits on our table through from the last Sunday in November to the first of January. The spiral, from Time Trace, Inc. traces the 13.8 billion year Universe story. It reminds us that the nature of reality is expansive, ever-beginning, and ever-birthing. The star is a symbol of the Big Bang, Sun, our day-star. The large candle reminds us that the Christmas story is a recent chapter in a much larger story. Cedar and the hand painted Earth, puts the story of love in an ecological context.
Each week, Paul and I light a candle and read the words of the Advent'ure ritual to honour the infinite potential we find in the cosmic birth story.
The ritual is from the book's section, On The Fringe. We share it in hopes you might join us in the dance of becoming that is yours and ours to dance.
An evolutionary ritual, this is an inter-spiritual practice. We encourage you to add candles that honour the light of wisdom found in other teachers, traditions, and holidays celebrated in December.
The Dance of Radiance
Candle lighting Practice for Home or Church
Note: Creation Spirituality teaches the four paths of creation as the sacred ways of life.