The Second Week of Advent for Children December 11 2018
The first week of the four leading to Christmas or Solstice is devoted to Minerals. The second week is devoted to plants. All the sleeping plants beneath the earth’s surface have the chance to rest, waiting for the time when warmth and light and our yearning call them up to grow again.
These hectic days are often filled with purchases and preparation for the festivals celebrated in December. Weather can add to the increased number of tasks to accomplish and adds time to travel. Everyone tends to be busy and finding spaces in which to contemplate, consider, and appreciate the season is necessary. These darker days invite us to draw inward, and yet the hustle and bustle works actively against this.
Here’s another story picture for the second week in December. These little pictures come from a Christian Community priest and could be construed as specific to a religion, but we hope that they might speak to any child about the mood in these darkest days of the year. They can be changed to match different cultural traditions, and help prompt some of this inner quiet so hard to find in the midst of the myriad things to get done.
On the second Sunday of Advent, a second angel descends from heaven. He is dressed in a great mantle of red and he carries in his left hand a great basket all of gold. This basket is empty and the angel would like very much to fill the basket so that he can carry it full to the throne of God. But with what will he fill it?
The basket is very fine and delicate because it is braided from rays of sunlight; one cannot put anything in that is too hard or too heavy. The angel passes very quietly into all the houses of all the earth and he searches.
For what is he searching? He looks into the hearts of all people to see if he can find a little love that is very pure and that love he takes to put in his basket and he carries it to heaven.
And there, those who live in heaven - the angels and also those people who lived on earth but have died – they take that love and make from it the light that lights the stars.