So I’ve been thinking about getting religion. Seems like the next logical thing after the death of my dad and birth of my daughter. 🙂 I’ve always been one of those “spiritual but not religious” people that everybody loves to make fun of but lately I’ve been craving something more—I joke but it probably does have something to do with the recent death and birth. It’s not enough to just have vague, woowoo feelings about ~thE UniVerSe~ anymore. I want a space to ponder Big Questions.

I’ve also become interested in having more ritual in my life—in The Power of Moments they say that part of the reason our lives seem to accelerate as we age is because we run out of big milestones (what is there, really, after you graduate from college?) and as a result time just mushes together. It’s important to create moments, things to look forward to, things to look back on.

There’s probably also an element of wanting to create traditions for my daughter, something we can do every year and pass on.

All of this is to say, observing a liturgical calendar seems like it could check a few boxes for me. To guide me through Advent, I got Shadow & Light by Tsh Oxenrider—I am on her mailing list and she seems like a generally nice, chill person, so I figured her book would be similar. I was right! In her intro she specifically mentioned that you can observe Advent even if you’re just curious, which made me feel better about just kinda checking it out. 🙂

She talked about lighting candles for Advent and suggested DIYing a simple candle holder. I remembered that we had a pile of logs in the basement from the time my dad showed up at my house with leftover wood, which he proceeded to cut to size on my stoop with the handsaw and sawhorse he brought from home. I asked Bren to cut one of the smaller logs in half and drill holes in it for a candle log—it was harder than we thought and required a trip to the hardware store for different saw blades, but he got it done.

Somebody looking at it would probably be like “wow, stupid log” but I know all the effort Bren put into it so I LOVE LOG. I did add a wreath because the candles were a bit oversized compared to the lil log.

We were also lucky that a raised-Catholic friend came to visit, immediately recognized it, and let us know our candles were in the wrong order. 😀 We fixed it. Although I have learned many people set their candles in a circular wreath, so I guess there are different ways to do it and directions you can go.