When I saw the notice from the Society of St. John the Evangelist inviting people to add a contemporary dimension to the watching and waiting of Advent, I jumped on board. “Pray through Advent. Pray through your phone camera. Create a Global Advent Calendar. Sign up and receive the daily Adventword. Tweet or Insta an image for each day’s #Adventword. Watch the calendar grow each day.”
The images pouring onto the monastery’s website and popping up on Twitter throughout this season have been comforting, confrontational, predictable, unexpected, beautiful, and full of longing. My own contributions have been a mix of images I already had in my Instagram account and some new ones I created in response to the daily Adventword.
May the wait of Advent prepare us to receive the Promised One. This experience kept me watching and waiting each day, and I’m grateful to the brothers at SSJE for sparking this opportunity to participate in this powerful way in which to pray through image this month. My contributions are below, but you’ll certainly want to head to theSSJE.org website to join the choir of praise and longing via image for many more powerful images that are meant to give us all eyes to see the first advent of our Baby King. [Read more]
