The December Surprise!

An Advent Calendar for my Flist!

You have made my life so much brighter that I would like to try and lighten up the last days of this year for you.

As we look back on the waning year, as the days are growing shorter, darker and colder in Europe and North America, I think all of us can use a quiet moment a day, to reflect on our lives and the rest of the universe.

Therefore I have decided to adapt the Advent calendar that I do with my husband for LiveJournal.

This Advent calendar needs a bit explaining, I think.

We are going to do it for the third year in a row now, because it helps us to find some quiet moments during the busy days right before Christmas. Our Advent calendar offers us moments of peace and introspection, and a chance to talk about things we might be hesitant to mention at other times.

And this is what we do:

Our Advent calendar is based on the book “50 Engel für das Jahr” (“50 Angels for the Year” – in English the books is available as ”Angels of Grace”) by Anselm Grün.

Anselm Grün is a Benedictine monk in the abbey of Münsterschwarzach in Frankonia – the northern part of Bavaria, more or less the region where I live.

Anselm Grün is one of the most well known Christian authors in Germany today. What I like about him is his humble and kind spirituality. Yes, he is Christian, and Catholic, and he talks about the Catholic interpretation of God and about things that are in the Bible. But much more than that, he is something like an angel himself, offering gentle words of guidance about situations that everyone of us has experienced in our lives.

The book “50 Angels for the Year” has fifty short chapters about angels, such as the “Angel of Love”, the “Angel of Reconciliation” and many more. Texts that offer guidance and comfort for many situations in life. Texts, I think that can be an inspiration to everyone, no matter if you are a Christian or a Buddhist or an agnostic or an atheist.

So how do I turn 50 Angels into an Advent calendar of 24 days?

Well, I have 24 postcards featuring angels and an envelope with fifty pieces of papers that have the numbers 1 to 50 on them. My husband draws 12 numbers and so do I. That way we randomly pick an angel for each day of Advent. Each night we read the chapter of the angel of the day to each other. Most of the times I do the reading, but sometimes my husband will read to me, too. Afterwards we pin the angel-postcard of the day with a wooden clothes-peg to a garland in the living room. Every day another angel is added, until on Christmas day the garland is full of angels who have accompanied us through the days of Advent.

Now, I can’t read to you. But I can try and translate our Christmas angels for you.

And that’s what I am going to do.

Every day of Advent I will share with you our Angel of the day, an angel picture, an angel icon, and an angel song to download with YouSendIt.

The angel songs will be flute music by Hans-Jürgen Hufeisen. I will use three of his albums: “Das Engelkonzert” (“Concert of Angels”), “Gold, Weihrauch & Flöte” (“Gold, Incense & Flute”) and “Pegasus – Melodien der vier Winde” (“Pegasus – Melodies of the Four Winds”).

I hope you will enjoy this Advent calender and I would like to invite you to share your thoughts about the angels of this Christmas with me.

And to get you in the mood for angels, I have collected a few quotes about angels.

“Angel of hope and calendars, do you know despair?
That hole I crawl into with a box of Kleenex…. “

– Anne Sexton (1928–1974), U.S. poet. “Angel of Hope and Calendars.”

~~~*~~~

“Angel in tights and garters”…

– This is Sam Weller’s famous description of Mr. Pickwick. Charles Dickens (1812–1870), British novelist. Sam Weller, The Pickwick Papers, ch. 45, p. 642 (1837).

~~~*~~~

”The Angel that presided o’er my birth
Said, ‘Little creature, formed of Joy and Mirth,
Go love without the help of any thing on earth.’”

– William Blake (1757–1827), British poet, painter, mystic. From Gnomic Verses. The Angel that presided o’er my birth (l. 1-3).

~~~*~~~

“An angel, robed in spotless white,
Bent down and kissed the sleeping Night.
Night woke to blush; the sprite was gone.
Men saw the blush and called it Dawn.”

– Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906), U.S. poet. Dawn (l. 1–4). . .
American Negro Poetry. Arna Bontemps, ed. (Rev. ed., 1974) Hill and Wang.

~~~*~~~

“My angel,—his name is Freedom,—
Choose him to be your king;
He shall cut pathways east and west,
And fend you with his wing.”

– Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), U.S. essayist, poet, philosopher. “Boston Hymn,” May-Day and Other Pieces (1867).

~~~*~~~

“If an angel were ever to tell us anything of his philosophy I believe many propositions would sound like 2 times 2 equals 13.”

– G.C. (Georg Christoph) Lichtenberg (1742–1799), German physicist, philosopher. “Notebook B,” aphorism 44, Aphorisms (written 1765-1799), trans. by R.J. Hollingdale (1990).

~~~*~~~

“In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.“

– George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. “Maxims for Revolutionists: Greatness,” Man and Superman (1903).

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“I hold a beast, an angel and a madman in me, and my enquiry is as to their working, and my problem is their subjugation and victory, downthrow and upheaval, and my effort is their self-expression.”

– Dylan Thomas, quoted by Constantine FitzGibbon “The Life of Dylan Thomas”, Little, Brown 65.

~~~*~~~

“But how irrelevantly
the absurd angel of happiness walks in….”

– Denise Levertov (b. 1923), Anglo–U.S. poet. “A Sequence.”

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“The flame from the angel’s sword in the garden of Eden has been catalysed into the atom bomb; God’s thunderbolt became blunted, so man’s dunderbolt has become the steel star of destruction.”

– Sean O’Casey (1884–1964), Irish dramatist. “And Evening Star,” vol. 6, Sunset and Evening Star (1954).

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”How fading are the joys we dote upon!
Like apparitions seen and gone.
But those which soonest take their flight
Are the most exquisite and strong,—
Like angels’ visits, short and bright;
Mortality ’s too weak to bear them long.”

– John Norris (1657–1711) , The Parting.

~~~*~~~

And finally: What Wikipedia says about angels.

I wish all my friends a wonderful December 2005!