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Advent: A Time of Expectation and Hope in the Episcopal Tradition
As we enter the season of Advent, the Episcopal Church invites us to embrace a time of waiting, hope, and preparation. Derived from the Latin word adventus, meaning “coming,” Advent is a season to prepare our hearts for the birth of Christ at Christmas and to anticipate His return in glory. It’s a time to slow down, reflect, and deepen our spiritual lives in a world that often rushes forward.
The Episcopal Church offers resources to help us live into this season with intention. Here are some highlights for Advent 2024:
Devotional and Educational Materials:
1.Journeying the Way of Love: Advent Curriculum and Calendar
These resources explore the first chapters of Luke’s Gospel and offer daily practices for engaging with the Way of Love: turn, learn, pray, worship, bless, go, and rest. Perfect for individuals, families, or small groups, they are available in English, Spanish, and French.
2.Living Well Through Advent 2024
This daily devotional focuses on the theme “Practicing Peace With All Your Heart, Soul, Strength, and Mind”. Available as a free PDF download, daily email, or printed booklet, it includes Spanish versions as well.
3.Forward Movement Advent Resources
Forward Movement provides materials such as Jay Sidebotham’s Advent calendar and other devotionals to support your spiritual journey.
4.Advent Word
Join a global community in daily prayer and reflection through this online Advent calendar inspired by lectionary readings. Each day features a new word to meditate on and share with others.
5.Advent and Christmas Digital Invitation Kit
For those seeking to share the spirit of Advent with others, this kit offers printable and digital resources to promote special events and services. Materials are available in English, Spanish, and French.
Living the Advent Tradition
Advent calls us to a holy pause—a time to listen for God’s voice amid the busyness. Through practices like lighting the Advent wreath, praying the collects, and engaging with Scripture, we root ourselves in the ancient promises of God while preparing for Christ’s light to break into our lives anew.
This season is not just about personal reflection but also about preparing our communities to receive Christ. How can we extend the hope, peace, joy, and love of Advent to those who need it most? As Episcopalians, our liturgies and traditions guide us to hold space for both longing and praise, teaching us to live in the tension of the “already and not yet.”
Advent is a gift—a holy invitation to prepare, reflect, and embrace hope. May this season draw us closer to God and one another as we await the coming of Emmanuel: God with us.
Woven Together by Love and Faith: The Story of Jim and Elaine
Once upon a time, in a small town not far from the banks of the Chippewa River, Jim Ellenson and Elaine Roosa arrived in Eau Claire as young college students, fresh-faced and earnest, with lives stretching before them. It was the 1950s for Jim, 1960 for Elaine, back when downtown Eau Claire had just a handful of stoplights and Christ Church Cathedral was a grand stone building on Farwell Street with doors wide open to anyone who might wander in.
Jim was a quiet sort, a young man of decent Midwest stock who worked as hard as he could at his studies. But one chilly autumn, money ran out, and he faced the hard fact of dropping out. He trudged to church that Sunday, heavy with the weight of it all, only to find the Dean himself, Gordon Brandt, waiting by the chapel door with a warm handshake and a keen eye for troubled students. When he found out that Jim was thinking of leaving school, he did something remarkable: he reached into his discretionary fund and pulled out $150 to keep him in classes. “No strings attached,” he said. Just one friend helping another. Years later, Jim tried to repay the kindness, but Dean Brandt just smiled and said, “Jim, it was a gift.” Well, Jim knew that, but he couldn’t resist, handing over that repayment with a nod, saying, “Maybe someone else needs it now.”
Meanwhile, young Elaine Roosa had come to Eau Claire for her own reasons. She was a reader, a lover of ideas and debates, and one day while flipping through the university handbook, she saw that the Canterbury Club was meeting that week. “Why not?” she thought, picturing tea and conversation, perhaps a bit of C.S. Lewis. Little did she know she’d find Jim there—handsome, earnest, the club president, and himself a great fan of Lewis. She joined the study group in the Buffington Home dining room, where the walls were thick with the smell of wood polish and old books, and they talked about “The Screwtape Letters,” the kind of book that made you laugh and think at the same time.
During Lent, they’d climb down to the little basement chapel for services, led by Fr. Robert Leve. It was just down the outside staircase, and a slight draft would whistle through the chapel, but nobody much minded. After all, they were young and in good company, sitting in the candlelight, reciting the words that had brought them together in the first place. Now, Elaine wasn’t one to sit back and wait for life to find her. She rather liked Jim and wasn’t about to let a little shyness get in the way. So, one sunny day, the Canterbury Club had a picnic in the park, and Elaine, with a twinkle in her eye, pointed to a green Cadillac in the parking lot. “That’s my car,” she said with a casual wave, though she didn’t even own a bicycle. When it came time to leave, she confessed that, actually, she had no way home. Jim took her hand, smiled, and brought her to the Blugold Room, where he bought her a Coke and asked if she might join him for a double date sometime. She said yes.
And so it began. They became regulars at the dances held in the basement of the Wilson Building, tasked with chaperoning the young students and enforcing the six-inch rule between dancers—a rule they themselves were known to forget from time to time. As the years went on, they became more than just dance chaperones and Canterbury members. They taught Sunday school together at Christ Church Cathedral, Jim handling the sixth graders and Elaine the third graders, under the kind eye of Jo Gow, the superintendent. They found that teaching children brought out something special in each of them, maybe a bit of that joy and whimsy they’d known as young people, now passing it down to others.
It was the fall of 1962, on their second date, when Jim took Elaine out to Menomonie, where Bundy Hall sat grand and slightly worn around the edges, like a grand old aunt. They walked in the woods, the air heavy with the scent of fallen leaves and woodsmoke, and Jim said, “If I could live anywhere, I’d choose here.” There was something timeless about Bundy Hall, something that appealed to his heart, which loved the past as much as the present. And then, in 1970, on a December afternoon during a Christmas tea at Christ Church, Bishop Atkins approached Elaine. He leaned in and asked if they would consider becoming the caretakers of Bundy Hall, to live there with their three young children, and to tend to its rooms and grounds as if it were their own. It was, in Jim’s words, a dream realized, the kind of gift that arrives quietly, dressed as an opportunity but wrapped in grace. By the first of the year, they had accepted.
Jim and Elaine raised their family at Bundy Hall, watching the seasons turn over the hills, raising children who ran through the same halls where, as students, they’d once shared whispers and laughter. And they remained part of the parish at Christ Church, the heart of their faith and the place where, long ago, they’d found each other. They still sit together at church, a little older, maybe a little slower, but no less full of the quiet joy that brought them together. And as they share this story, with its laughter and memories, they remember that $150, the Canterbury Club, the dances, the chapel, and those steps down into the basement—all pieces of a life woven together by love, faith, and a good dash of adventure.
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