Have Yourself a Mindful Little Christmas (PDF)

Description

How are you coping with the stress of Christmas? Yes, there is magic in this season. The carols and gifts, the family meals and get-togethers, the moments of worship where we remember the story and celebrate Christ’s birth are all wonderful. But the end of the year also brings with it a lot of deadlines and extra work to make sure everything is right for our celebrations. It’s more than a little ironic that the season of ‘Peace on Earth’ is also one of the busiest times in our year. It can be more than a little physically and emotionally exhausting.

With everything we have to do and remember, it is easy for Christmas to lose its meaning. We easily get caught up in the events and arrangements and forget to make time for prayer and spiritual practice. And when we get to the end, we can end up feeling empty and even a little lost.  This can mean that we enter the New Year not from a place of serenity and spiritual alertness, but rather from a sense of needing to catch up and get our lives and spiritual practice back on track. That’s why we need a simple but meaningful guide to keep us spiritually aware through this season. 

HOW TO STAY MINDFUL THIS CHRISTMAS SEASON

With this in mind, I am so excited to introduce you to Have Yourself a Mindful Little Christmas—12 Days of Christmas Prayer. In this little book, you will find twelve short prayer guides, one for each day of the Christmas season. Each prayer guide includes:

• • A short reading from one of the Gospel Christmas narratives;
  • A prayer that helps you to engage with the reading more personally and mindfully;
  • A reflection question to carry through the day as you apply the insights from the reading to your life;
  • An image that you can use as a meditative icon in your practice.

I pray that, as you use Have Yourself a Mindful Little Christmas, you will be drawn more deeply into the meaning of the Christmas story and that you will find this practice to be a refuge in the busyness of the season. May it also help you to enter the New Year with a deeper sense of hope, possibility, energy, and joy.