Advent, Advent A Candle Burns

I love this time of year.  Yes there is the excitement of the season: seasonal crafting, decorating, shopping, wrapping, baking, and gathering.  But, for me, I love any excuse to comtemplate.  Advent is a great time to experience the season as a time of waiting and preparation.  A time to move through the darkness toward the light of Christmas Day.  A time well spent reflecting on what it is that we are willing to let be born in our lives.  What is the highest and best that is waiting to come forth as a gift to ourselves and the world?

One way I like to share this is by creating an Advent garden.  It starts simply enough, candles, rocks, crystals, stones.  Every week adding one more of the four kingdoms of nature as we light one more candle.  As we move through our Advent season, we experience the increase in light and deepen our understanding of our place in the universe, of all that sustains us, and to that to which we aspire.

This first week as we light our first candle we celebrate the Mineral Kingdom, that realm of nature that gives us form - a foundation in which to experience our everchanging lives.

The first light of Advent

It is the light of Stones.

The light we find in Crystals,

Seashells, Rocks and Bones.