Being Present in Advent

Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace

I started my photography practice back in 2014.  It had roots in photo-a-day challenges but it emerged as I started the pray the Psalms at the urging of a friend.   I detail some of that story here .  What happened in that time was that I started to look for a Psalm in what I would see/experience/etc during that day.  It was a practice that transformed the way that I engaged not only the Bible but also life as a whole.  It began to open my perception of the world and bring me to a deeper sense of attentiveness to the present moment.

As the Christian church begins the practice of Advent tomorrow, I want to look for the themes of hope, love, joy, and peace in the everyday of life in the coming weeks.  The plan for now is to spend 5-6 days with each word, simply looking for where I see something of that in my day.  I’ll start with six days of hope, then continue with six days of love, six of joy, and then five days of peace, ending on Christmas Day.

I’ll be sharing these as I go but in a slightly different way.  While I’ll be posting each day here, I am only going to put them out via email once a week (summary message of the days).  I will, however, post them daily to Substack notes and also to social media (@revdarth on instagram).

My heart with this is to try to be as present as possible to seeing, experiencing, and sharing these themes in this season ahead.   If you want to share in this practice, you are welcome to share via the comments where you experience the theme (hope, love, joy, peace) that day as well.

Hope, Love, Joy, and Peace,
Ed

Our back steps' Christmas lights reflected in the morning rain