Sometimes the happiest and holiest time of the year is also the hardest for people to enjoy. These daily readings offer the skeptic, the over-committed the opportunity to make room-perhaps just enough room for God to show up. The weeks leading up to Christmas can spark a strong spiritual longing for more. Although it may never be articulated, we sense beneath those longings is a yearning for an experience of God. These brief writings address the challenges and realities of the season and include a simple action, ritual or meditation designed to gently steer the reader toward the deeper meaning that underlies the season. Smart, witty, edgy—and always hopeful—readings by Quinn Caldwell include a brief prayer for each morning and evening during the entire Christmas season. This book takes seriously the modern person’s hunger for meaning and import in a season that feels increasingly frivolous. Includes a calendar with one easy task to do each day. Readings for the harried, hurried and spiritually hungry in the season of Christmas. Quinn Caldwell is minister at Plymouth Congregational Church, United Church of Christ, Syracuse, NY. Caldwell is well-known in the wider United Church of Christ (UCC) as a member of the UCC Stillspeaking Writers Group and an author for the Stillspeaking Daily Devotionals. He is a former associate minister at Old South Church in Boston and since January has led the Under-40 Writers Group for the UCC website s Feed Your Spirit section on the denomination s global reach. Caldwell graduated from Cornell with a BS in natural resources in 1999, and received his master s in divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York City in 2003. All I Really Want Readings for a Modern Christmas By Quinn G. Caldwell Abingdon Press Copyright © 2014 Quinn G. Caldwell All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-4267-9017-1 CHAPTER 1 Christmas Calendar WEEK ONE 1 Go get your Advent calendar. Start opening! 2 Open the next door on your calendar. Stare at the others with longing. Don't cheat. 3 Put a star in your room that you can see in the dark. Fall asleep staring at it. 4 Call somebody fun and make plans for a favorite Christmas tradition: to bake a cookie, to sing a carol, or to trim a tree. 5 Call somebody and say something rare and important to them. 6 Find a recording of "Prepare Ye" from Godspell (check out iTunes and YouTube). Crank it up to 11 and dance around the house while singing it at the top of your lungs and throwing tinsel around. 7 Turn out all the lights and relish the dark for a while tonight. Pray for gestation. December 1 MORNING Lead me in your truth—teach it to me—because you are the God who saves me. I put my hope in you all day long. (Psalm 25:5) Some days it seems like waiting is all you do. For the train. For a reply to your e-mail. For your lunch order. For somebody at the customer service center, which is "experiencing higher-than-normal call volume," to pick up the freaking phone. For the other shoe to drop. Some days it feels like everybody but you is in control of your time, and all you can do—even if they have Highlights magazine in the waiting room—is sit around hoping they'll get to you soon. Apparently, the malls and stores feel pretty much the same way; these days, they put up their Christmas decorations before Halloween. I hate delayed gratification as much as the next guy, but the fact that all the big retailers seem to be against waiting is pretty much a guarantee that there must be some virtue in it. So today, since you'll be doing so much of it anyway, see if you can discover the virtue in waiting. Try to pay attention whenever you find yourself sitting around. Don't stick your earphones in or take your book out as soon as you get to the bus stop. Don't go for Angry Birds as soon as you get to the grocery line. Instead, notice: who's making you wait? Why? What are you waiting for? How impor-tant is it? Who's waiting with you? Why are you so impatient; is the next thing you have to do really so important? Why? And most important of all: what are you really waiting for? OK, God. You know I'm no good at this waiting thing. But I know you are. So enter into my wait and liven things up. Amen. December 1 EVENING "There will be signs in the sun, moon, and stars. On the earth, there will be dismay among nations in their confusion over the roaring of the sea and surging waves. The planets and other heavenly bodies will be shaken, causing people to faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world. Then they will see the Human One coming on a cloud with power and great splendor. Now when these things begin to happen, stand up straight and raise your heads because your redemption is near." (Luke 21:25-28) There's waiting, and then there's waiting. Sometimes it's the oh-God-when-will-this-pain-end kind of waiting. Sometimes it's just annoying, like waiting for your turn at the restroom. Sometimes it's worse, like waiting out the