Amy Boucher Pye

Category: High Days and Holidays

  • And now it’s Advent – Finding Myself in Britain

    In Finding Myself in Britain, I take a through-the-year approach at life in the UK. Originally I wanted to start the book with Advent, for after all, it’s when the church calendar commences. But I took my publisher’s good advice and instead began with the start of the academic year, which marks a time of fresh starts. Here’s a snippet of the chapter on Advent: “Waiting for the Coming King.”

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    Photo: grassrootsgroundswell, Flickr

    For those who follow a church calendar, the start of the church year begins with the season of Advent. Traditionally the four Sundays before Christmas have been a period of fasting during which we prepare ourselves for the birth of Jesus. Some Christians are returning to this lost practice, making sure they have done all of their Christmas shopping, for instance, before Advent starts. They take the time and energy to prepare for Advent so that they can be ready for Christmas.

    I laud them. I would love to be like them. But I haven’t ever managed a complete fast from decorations or baking or even Christmas carols during Advent, for the cultural trappings of the season speak deeply to me of the spiritual meaning of Christmas. Growing up, I’d help decorate the Christmas tree much earlier than what Nicholas experienced – his family would purchase theirs on Christmas Eve, whereas my parents use the late November days just before or after Thanksgiving to put up theirs. As a child, I never knew of Christmas carols banned during Advent, for I understood that the practical preparation of this season was part of the spiritual looking ahead.

    I would love to spend Advent in quiet reflection, praying and preparing for Jesus to be born in my heart and home, but instead I mix the reflective with the practical as I get ready for the feasts of Christmas. Because the British traditions differ from the American, over the years I’ve worked hard to ensure that Christmas feels like Christmas in this foreign land. What could feel like a situation of scarcity – the pain of being away from loved ones during the holidays – has evolved into a season of abundance as our traditions have developed and solidified. Finding myself in Britain means creatively enacting the American approach to Advent and Christmas, while learning the British one too. And more importantly, making sure the Christian elements, which transcend any culture, receive the star treatment.

    How about you? How do you approach the season of Advent? Are there practices you ban, saving them for the twelve days of Christmas, or do you enter into the spirit of the season as soon as you can?

  • Giving Thanks – Prayers for Thanksgiving

    FMIB Quotes 3 FinalHappy Thanksgiving!

    I love this holiday – a non-commercialized time to stop and breathe and give thanks. A time to join with family and friends to feast and laugh and sing and share. A time to enjoy and spread the joy.

    But we live in an imperfect world, and someone’s chair may be empty at our Thanksgiving table. Or we’re separated from the ones we really want to be with. Or we’re not even in the country that’s celebrating this holiday – that’s me today (Tonight I’ll be at my master’s class talking about gender and Christian spirituality!).

    May the Lord fill in the gaps, shining his light into the places of pain and longing and giving us his peace.

    May we breathe in his light and love.

    May we give thanks – whichever country we’re living in.

  • We Will Remember

    DSCN3987Last year we remembered the 100th anniversary of the start to World War 1 – the war that was to end all wars. London became a focal point as the art installation at the Tower of London slowly caught the public attention and eventually their heart as poppy by poppy was planted, turning into a sea of red. One for each life lost, eventually the last of the 888,246 ceramic flowers was planted a year ago today on Remembrance Day (Armistice Day, or in the States, Veteran’s Day).

    As I tell in Finding Myself in Britain, we visited the Tower on that Remembrance Sunday – we and a few thousand others. Though we only gazed at the sea of red for a short time, jostled by the crowds, the sight moved us. Not least because 152 of those poppies stood for men whose names appear on the two war memorials in our church.

    DSCN3988Nicholas and PyelotBoy, lovers of history both, dug up information about these men on the memorials, scouring websites about ancestry and that of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission for clues. What were the backgrounds and interests of these men? How did they die? Our intrepid researchers even took a field trip to the London Metropolitan Archives to search out the original church documents and revel in such items as the 1920 invoice for our church’s north transept stained-glass window, entitled “Saints in Glory,” installed to commemorate the fallen soldiers, sailors, and airmen.

    On Remembrance Sunday, both last year and this year, at our church a group of people young and old read out the 152 names, while members of the congregation placed a poppy for each person at the foot of the cross. Direct descendants of the men on the memorial were invited to the service – some came from Sussex, Kent, and even Australia – as well as the occupants of the homes where the men lived before going to war.

    All this research brought home the personal nature of the sacrifice of these men. No longer were they just statistics of those who died, but fathers, brothers, sons, husbands; writers and bricklayers, police constables and trainee architects, dentists and regulars in the military; two men who died in the same German prison camp; at least three sets of brothers. The youngest man was aged 17, the eldest 48.
    DSCN4015I told the story last year of one of the men, who captured my imagination. Frederick Goodyear, who was born locally in North Finchley and who died at the age of 30 in France. I had included his story in my book in an early draft, but alas, it got chopped at the cutting table as it changed the flow and tone too much. Still, a fascinating thing to enter into his life – a dreamer who would have been better suited to the academy than as life as a soldier.

    We will remember.