It’s about that time of year when my heart starts its gentle turn toward Advent. It’s the end of the 31st week of Ordinary Time, and slowly, quietly I’m feeling the stirrings of the desire for the extraordinary.
Like most of us, though, I am aware that my heart’s stirrings need to be tended carefully. Guarded even. It’s so easy to slip from a deep desire for the extraordinariness of God to a consumerist desire simply for something, anything extraordinary. Something to give me a spiritual high, without requiring anything of me. To make me go oooh, ahhhhh and leave me totally unchanged.
The Church Fathers and Mothers knew about this tendency, this infinitisimal shift that sometimes happens within us when our God is kindling our hearts and our habits of fallenness want to take over. That’s where the disciplines and the beauty of Advent provide a generous, gentle structure to guide us toward our desires, toward God.
Advent starts “early” this year. Since Christmas falls on a Sunday (glorious feast day!), the march of the Sundays before Christmas begins on November 27, the Sunday after American Thanksgiving. I’ve already been asked by a few directees which resources I might recommend to tend the flickering wicks of their hearts into the flame of God this Christmas season.
And so, today’s Friday Favorite. 
God With Us: Rediscovering the Meaning of Christmas is one of my beloved resources for the Advent journey. My husband and I have walked through it together for these past four years, and both of our copies are well-thumbed with prayer. Not only does it walk through each day of Advent, with Scripture readings and stunning artwork, but it also explains the history and the depth of the feast days during this season, from the Feast of St. Nicholas (December 6) to the Feast of the Holy Innocents (December 28), and everything before and betwixt.
Plus, look at the authors:
Scott Cairns is the author of six poetry collections, including Compass of Affection. He is Professor of English at the University of Missouri, and a recent Guggenheim Fellow.
Emilie Griffin is the author of Doors Into Prayer, Turning, and Wonderful and Dark is This Road.
Richard John Neuhaus is a Catholic priest and one of the leading voices on religion and culture in America. He is the founder and editor of the journal First Things.
Kathleen Norris is an award-winning poet and bestselling author of Dakota: A Spiritual Geography and The Cloister Walk.
Eugene Peterson is a pastor, author, and professor emeritus of theology at Regent College. He is the author of the popular paraphrase of the Bible, The Message.
Luci Shaw is a poet and writer-in-residence at Regent College in Vancouver.
Editor Gregory Wolfe is writer-in-residence and director of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at Seattle Pacific University and the founder and editor of Image. Greg Pennoyer is the co-founder of the Centre for Cultural Renewal in Ottawa, Canada, and the Project Director for Incarnation: A Recovery of Meaning, an international art exhibition.
So, if you’re looking for a resource, a guide, an tending for this Advent—look no further. And if you order it now, you’ll be sure to receive it in time to start the first reading on November 27. I’ll join you.