Advent 2023

 My Plan for Advent 2023

This year, I decided to brainstorm writing projects for Advent. It seemed a fitting next step to go ahead and make a small post about what I intend to do this Advent season to prepare for the coming of my Lord.

Listening Patiently Rather than Interrupting

Over the last several months or so, the Lord has revealed one of my faults to me: I am an interrupter. Regardless of the reasons for why interrupting is so appealing to me, it is something that I have decided I should work on. This will help me practice patience and self-denial.

When I fail, I think I'll try to return to my conversation partner's original comment, ask them to continue, and then try to make a quick prayer to ask Jesus to bring good out of my shortcomings.

Regular Prayer

I've gotten away from making sure I say a Rosary every single day - I say it most days, but I miss it now and then. It will be good to sacrifice extra sleeping time to make sure that special time of prayer happens.

I have also had a bad record of getting to adoration regularly. I'm committing myself to trying harder to get to adoration every single week. This will require some planning and discipline.

My husband was probably more excited about getting the Advent wreath out than I was, and was instrumental in making sure we started it tonight. What a blessing for me to have such a wonderful helpmate!

Limiting Facebook

I almost forgot this one. Per tradition, I take Advent and Lent to get away from social media a little bit. I haven't done great today, but the goal is to start out making sure only 5 minutes of my day goes towards Facebook - and let's add Pinterest, too, now that it's become more of a thing over the last year or two. I hope to reduce the time by a minute every week and/or by limiting myself to every other day. It'll make more time available for prayer and those other projects I want to get to.

YouTube Adult Formation

Our parish priest is offering Advent adult formation via his YouTube channel. This season's focus is on the prophet Isaiah and Padre Pio. I have no ideas about where this will go, but it sounds like a pretty epic mashup to me.

Reading

The main book I'm focusing on reading this Advent is Walking with Mary by Edward Sri. I began it almost a month ago, but took breaks from it here and there. I think it's one of those books that it's going to be good to read a small portion of, and then let it percolate for a while. I'm sure there will be more Christmas-y reads coming too (besides the ones I already finished), but this seems like a fitting book for this season. After finishing it, I might try to find another Mary-focused one, or move on to a different spiritual work, like the Rule of St. Benedict.

Writing Project(s)

Writing strikes me as an important way to engage with ideas, to get things out of my head and keep some minimal creative juices flowing, even if it's not fiction. I did consider trying to write an Advent story this season, but I don't think I have it in me this year. 

I was struck by the lack of lists of "5 Books You Should Read This Advent", or at least, lists that had fictional literature on them instead of strictly spiritual works. I am very much in favor of fantastic spiritual reads for Advent and all other liturgical seasons, but I think it would be lovely to have some Advent-y books out there that feed the spirit through stories. I have some ideas of books - and even music - that I can write about, but we'll see what I have time for. I requested one writing assignment from my husband and received several excellent ideas about writing project ideas for Advent, so I'm just going to have to see what sticks and what I have time for.