“In late fall, in the world’s north, the sun glides low in the sky.

Light dims, the air cools, signaling every living thing.

Animals know what to do when the season of dark and cold spreads over the earth.

Every creature makes changes to its home, its body, its habits.

Every creature makes ready to wait until the earth wakes again into the light & warmth of spring.

Waiting in the cold dark will be hard but each creature knows…

The dark is not an end.  It’s a door.  It’s the way a new beginning comes.”

– Gayle Boss, All Creation Waits

To those who wait,

I saw them before they saw me, two Toklat grizzlies crossing the river near Polychrome Pass in Alaska’s Denali National park.  It was mid-August.  After riding the shuttle up the gravel road that bisects the park, I’d hiked up some hills to the north and was enjoying my lunch among some mountain goats when the bears’ blond coats came into view a quarter mile away, immediately commanding my attention.  I had planned to spend a couple nights hiking solo along the Toklat River, but seeing that pair of grizzlies had me quickly changing my mind.  Never mind that Toklats are 80% vegetarian.  Never mind that they paid me no heed whatsoever.  One quarter mile was as close as I wanted to get to that pair of apex predators within that vast wilderness.

Close encounters like that tend to embed themselves in one’s memory.  What stories might you share of encounters with wild creatures on their turf?  How did it feel? What did the encounter teach you about the wild?  About yourself?

“In sacred manner may we live among the wise and loving ones,

Sit humbly, as at sages’ feet, by four-legged, finned, and feathered ones.”

In Sacred Manner, Susan Palo Cherwien

Advent is upon us, surprising us with its swiftness.  While Thanksgiving leftovers are still taking up space in the refrigerator, we turn the page to December and there’s Advent staring us in the face.  Only this year, the features of that face (better, those faces) include members of the animal kingdom: Painted Turtle, Muskrat, Black Bear, Chickadee, Whitetail deer, Honey bee—all are waiting, with many more or their kin, (24 in total) to greet us.  They come to us by way of the beautifully written and illustrated book by Gayle Boss, All Creation Waits.  Through a special grant and the vision of the Creation Care and Worship Teams, these Advent devotionals are being made available to every Peace Household.  (A regular edition is illustrated with intricate woodcuts by David Klein and the Children’s Edition includes the colorful art of Sharon Spitz.)

This devotional comes with a question:  What might we two-leggeds learn from our four-legged, winged, and finned friends about entering into this season?  We look forward to exploring that and other questions throughout the coming weeks.  It all kicks off on Sunday, December 3^rd with our annual ADVENT FESTIVAL, which you can read all about on page 3 below.  Suffice it to say, you won’t want to miss this grand entry into Advent, which includes a conversation with the author herself – Gayle Boss!   Let’s tune in to the animal stories and swap some of our own.

With you, on the Way,

Pastor Erik