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Elrena Evans

Merry Christmas!

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find it hard to write about Christmas. What is there to say that hasn’t already been said? Even in a pandemic year, surrounded by awful newness, my words seem to fall short.

And so I glean hope from the words of others: “First the fast, then the feast,” writes Christie.

“First the waiting, then the fulfillment. That is Advent.”

“This year, I’m profoundly and personally aware of the darkness that feels like a heavy fog over the earth,” writes Lisa-Jo. “This year, I need Advent to remind me of the coming light.”

“I desire a home where my family finds a welcome, a bright and warm retreat from the harsh weather and darker days, intentionally comforting and renewing for their souls,” writes Anna. “I will ‘prepare Him room’ as a rhythm, not an event.”

All of these words and more are waiting for you, here inside Paper&String.

••• We have eight different recipes for you to try this month... although I’m not sure my scientist husband’s recipe for boilo, a Pennsylvania Coal Region take on mulled whiskey, actually counts as a recipe... but to each his own. From overnight french toast to white bean sausage and kale soup, as well as several different Christmas cookies, all of us at Paper&String are looking forward to cooking and baking with you this month! As always, we’d love to see your pictures if you’d like to share: simply send them to paperandstring@blackbarncollective.com, or tag us on social media (@maplehurstblackbarn, #paperandstringcarepackage). You might even see your photos in an upcoming issue of Paper&String!

Last but not least, if you’re joining us for the first time this month, welcome. We’ve designed Paper&String to be a virtual “care package” for you, featuring articles, music, recipes, artwork, spiritual practices, and more. We hope these selections inspire you to read, listen, taste, grow, and gather with all of us in the Black Barn Collective. Don’t feel you need to open everything in order— each category is designed to be its own individually wrapped gift, nestled inside this package we are giving to you.

What is there to say about Christmas?

Perhaps only this: That you came to us, Jesus.

Emmanuel. God with us.

Our Longest Advent

by Christie Purifoy

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very year, on the day after Thanksgiving, my mother would pull the rickety attic ladder down from the ceiling. We four children were fascinated and repelled by these steps that always—winter and summer—led toward

a dark hole breathing hot air. The attic of our Texas home had no real floor, only spaces between the beams filled with pink fluff. If you do not balance exactly on the beams, my father always warned us, your foot will plunge right through the ceiling. I held my breath and kept one eye on the ceiling’s pristine plaster until the moment my mother placed her feet back on the steps balancing a box labeled “Christmas” in her arms.

Once the box had been unpacked, we were allowed to arrange and rearrange the painted Nativity figurines on the coffee table. We were not allowed to play with the Christmas angel who sat on a high shelf. My mother draped the angel’s ceramic form with something called “angel hair;” the words angel hair were actually printed on cardboard packaging that had gone soft with age. The silvery curls reminded me of fishing line, but they were made, my mother said, of glass. Never touch, she said.

I texted my mother this week, “Do you remember the angel? Was her hair really made of glass?”

My mother responded with a laughing emoji and the words, “It was spun glass. Like fiberglass. If you handled it too much it would cut your fingers and make them itch.”

First the fast, then the feast.

First the waiting, then the fulfillment.

That is Advent.

••• On the day after Thanksgiving, I will descend into the dark and damp of our Pennsylvania dirt-floor basement after telling my own four children to please just wait for me upstairs so you won’t track dirty footprints through the house.

My teenagers won’t need to be told twice.

They will be back in their bedrooms before I

return hugging a box labeled “Christmas.” The younger two will be right where I left them, already pleading, please, please can we unpack the whole box?

Not yet, I will say. Please, don’t touch, I will say.

I will place a crystal bowl on the table in the front hall, and the kids will fill it with goldpainted pinecones. They will find a spot for the wooden nutcracker prince with the broken sword buckled into his painted belt.

Then they will do their best to untangle the Advent countdown—a string of felt mittens marked 1 through 24—but I will leave most of the Christmas decor in the box for a while.

Every year, my children beg for “instant Christmas,” but I like to turn our house toward the holiday slowly. After all, the twelve days of the Christmas season traditionally don’t begin until December 25. I worry we will all tire of the feast before it starts. We need to pace ourselves toward Epiphany.

First the fast, then the feast. First the waiting, then the fulfillment. That is Advent.

••• Sometimes, waiting is delicious, like the aroma of a long-simmered supper as you light the candles and pour the wine. Sometimes, it’s an inconvenience and an irritant, like an itch you can’t quite scratch. And sometimes, it is an unchanging path with little hope of arrival and few companions on the way (because every shared breath is a risk).

I feel as if we have all been waiting since March. The “Great Pause,” they have called it.

Out of habit, I ask, what’s next? before remembering, nothing. Nothing comes next but something new to grieve, as if Lent had shifted into Advent with no Easter in between. I had hoped to sit shoulder to shoulder with old friends around a Thanksgiving table, but I add this to my litany of loss instead. Then I wonder what will become of the Christmas candlelight service. And what about New Year’s Eve? Advent—those weeks that stretch across the four Sundays before Christmas Day— is traditionally a time for penitence and preparation. One of the primary voices of Advent belongs to John the Baptist with his asceticism and his warnings. His is the voice calling in the wilderness, and yet I have never played with a ceramic figure dressed in camel skin, never rearranged the faux wild honey and locusts near a Nativity.

But if even angel hair is not-quite-safe, why not make room for prophets?

••• The season which precedes Advent is called “Ordinary Time.” But these weeks on the church’s traditional calendar are not named for their ordinariness. Rather, the phrase ordinary time refers to the word ordinal, meaning number. These are numbered days, ordered days, something I was reminded of every morning over the summer and fall whenever I tuned in to my favorite prayer app.

“Today is Tuesday the 13th of October,” a soothing voice would intone, “… in the twentyeighth week of Ordinary Time.” All those numbered weeks felt, if not ordinary, then certainly all-too-similar, as if a clock were tick, tick, ticking, but we would never, ever arrive. I do not like waiting when I do not know when it will end. I love Advent because it is more like a performance of waiting. Look at us, we are waiting! Look at the mittens on the wall telling us we will soon arrive!

Yet year after year, we climb the rickety stairs into dark attics. Year after year, I descend toward the far stone walls of our farmhouse basement. All these years, we have said don’t touch and not yet, and our words are of love, not punishment. Could it be that deep down within ourselves we know that the wilderness, with its longing and its waiting, also has good gifts to give? “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” Jesus once asked the listeners crowded around him. “A prophet? Yes, I tell you, and more than a prophet.”

••• I have a Christmas memory so strange, I have never been sure how much of what I remember is true.

The memory is this: I am lying on my stomach on the floor of the bedroom I share with two sisters. In front of me is the almost-biblical weight and spread of an enormous Sears catalog. It is not just any Sears catalog, however. It is the Christmas “Wish Book,” and I am wishing for a Barbie doll who sits in a jeweled dress at a tiny black piano.

Here is the strange part: in my memory, I know that the toys, including this pianoplaying Barbie, are at the very end of the catalog, after housewares, and women’s fashion, and even the lawn mowers and the tools. I only want to see the toys, but instead of flipping straight to the back of the book, I turn each slippery catalog page one by one.

I do this—I turn each page one at a time— because this is the only way I know how to arrive at the end. I don’t comprehend that it is possible to skip ahead, to grab a chunk of pages and turn them all at once.

Did that patient little girl grow

up to be someone who plays at waiting while really she is turning fistfuls of pages every time she looks ahead and asks what’s next? As a child, I waited every night–turning one page after another–until I arrived at the image of my doll. I never skipped ahead, though I cannot say with certainty if that was because I did not know how or I simply did not want to jump ahead. Did I enjoy the way my anticipation grew?

Turning to my dictionary, I read the familiar definition of Advent: coming. But there is also a second, less familiar, meaning: arrival.

Coming versus arrival. I wonder if the difference between the two is like the difference between coming and homecoming. And I wonder if, in my eagerness for what’s next, I have missed what has already begun to happen now. Today. In this moment. If someone is coming, we wait, and our waiting can feel as if it will never end. But if someone is arriving, if we glimpse our guest walking up the path to the door, do we stand

still and watch? No. If we love them very much, and if we have waited very long, we fling open the door and hurl ourselves outside.

This year, seconds will tick. Pages will turn.

Advent mittens on a string will be filled and emptied. Christmas of 2020 will come and perhaps it will too quickly go, carrying its strangeness and its social distancing, its twinkly lights and scented pine into our memories. But there is no pause, great or otherwise. Instead, there is—there always has been—a king drawing near to us, like a swiftly rising sun. And every year at Advent we are invited to open the door wider, and we are urged to step outside more boldly. As we do, the words do not touch and not yet begin to fade and our own voices join a chorus across time as we cry: Behold, the Lamb of God.

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Merry Christmas from Paper&String!

with ANNA GRIST

Prepare Him Room

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inter is not my favourite season.

But I’m still happy even in the deepness of its reign, which lasts around seven months here in the Rockies.

It reminds me that all things need a season of rest. A slow rhythm, instead of frenetic.

When our average temperatures run -25C or colder, bringing with them the very real threat of frostbite, enjoying nature becomes more intentional and less taken for granted. Sitting around the campfire involves considerably more flannel and wool. Walks to the morning school bus happen in pitch blackness by flashlight, and the sun sets soon after I meet the bus again on the return trip in the afternoon.

Our resident trespassers–deer, squirrels, rabbits, and moose– start looking bulkier and fluffier.

We’re forced into semi-hibernation ourselves, like our neighbourhood grizzly and black bears.

Do you notice your own rhythms slowing with the seasons? Especially in this time of cloistering for pandemic’s sake, is there a sigh of relief that our days are narrower, our waking hours slightly imposed upon?

I’m taking this transition from autumn to fall (though frightfully early, as we will have been under two months of snow by December) as a signal to prepare my heart, to quiet my soul.

I will spend more time focusing on my inner life, and the parts of my home that usually get left behind when I escape to the trees and mountains during warmer days.

I want to focus on making my heart more homelike for the Spirit that resides there. I want Him to feel at ease, in a heart that mirrors His more and more each day.

I desire, too, a home where my family finds a welcome, a bright and warm retreat from the harsh weather and darker days, intentionally comforting and renewing for their souls.

I will “prepare Him room� as a rhythm, not an event. My heart, a warm hearth for a Savior who deserves no less, and my home, a bright yellow beacon of comfort in our dark green and pale white winter world.

I’ve spent years raving to friends about the books, shows, and films I love and why. They don’t have to be recent to catch my eye.

They only have to be a new way to see the old, old story of light vs. dark.

This never fails to move me.

While not every review will be for every person, my hope is that these move you too.

The Jesus I Never Knew Author: Philip Yancey Where You Can Find It: Your local library or bookstore Rating: G What You Need To Know: If you feel tired entering this season of Advent and Christmas, then you’re not alone, dear heart. I feel tired. My dishwasher, dining room table, and fridge feel tired from so many demands on them. And I’m sure our Internet connection feels tired from being maxed out by months of many kids all doing online school while their parents are doing online work from home.

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his year isn’t like any before. There is a heaviness in the air that is more than the weather. But maybe, maybe there’s a hope buried there for us also? And this book, The Jesus I Never Knew, is like a decoder ring, making sense of the weary chaos around us. Because here is a book that reminds us that “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:2).

So, if you feel like you need a fresh perspective to be able to catch a glimpse of the light that seared through the darkness in this divine month—long ago, and also, thankfully, in 2020—then this book is that set of eyes.

I don’t know about you, but in the past Christmas has sometimes felt too tame to me. Too mild.

Too much like a greeting card that makes me feel warm and fuzzy for the 2.5 seconds I spend reading it and then ends up in the recycling minutes or months later (depending on how long you keep your decorations up in January). I have needed Advent to remind me of context, to set the scene, as it were. In other words, I needed

to be reminded of the darkness in order to fully appreciate the light.

This year, I’m profoundly and personally aware of the darkness that feels like a heavy fog over the earth. This year, I need Advent to remind me of the coming light.

“On earth, a baby was born, a king got wind of it, a chase ensued. In heaven, the Great Invasion had begun: a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.” - Yancey Yancey’s book is like having a kind and curious professor travel with you through Advent to Christmas, holding aloft a lantern and pointing out clues that light the way and that we so often miss. From the Torah to the streets of Brooklyn, from pop culture to ancient politics, Yancey takes

us through a pilgrimage of the lore and legacy, history and doctrine surrounding the remarkable man who was Jesus and challenges us to really see Him for who He claimed to be, and not who consumerism and greeting cards have reduced Him to.

Here is a God who arrived in the darkest of nights and times, in a brutal period in history when government and temple were clashing and ordinary people were caught in the crossfire. Here is a God who understood financial insecurity, family shame and scandal, and an uncertain future for vulnerable people.

So this month, here’s a different kind of readaloud to add to your Advent list. Pick a chapter or two that pique your curiosity. And gather ’round, read aloud to your families about the origin story of Jesus, the Heaven-sent superhero who brought both war and peace in His wake. Because when we peel back the layers of precious Christmas stories, like so much old wallpaper covering up ancient oak, we discover a tale of such daring

it will thrill us with hope if we are paying close enough attention.

In Yancey’s own words: “On earth, a baby was born, a king got wind of it, a chase ensued. In heaven, the Great Invasion had begun: a daring raid by the ruler of the forces of good into the universe’s seat of evil.”

So, when my children have nightmares, when they wake up and ask for a glass of water and a nightlight, this is the story I remind them of.

There is no darkness that has not been overcome by the light. Bright like the noonday sun, our Savior blazed into the world, and the powers and principalities of darkness were blinded by His glory and afraid for their kingdom. He brought Heaven to earth and it cost Him everything. The Kingdom of Heaven is now.

To read this book is to see Jesus in a way we cannot unsee. It might be the best gift any of us get this year.

P&S Playlist: A Black Barn Christmas From all of us at Paper&String!

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e’ve compiled a list of some favourite songs that put to music our memories and impressions and feelings from years of celebrating Christmas in our own ways with our own families. There are well-known pieces by more obscure musicians, and some pieces you might not recognize. Join us as we journey through the songs that tell the story the way we remember it through the years.

Click here to listen to the playlist on Spotify

Lynn’s Overnight French Toast

By Anna Grist

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y best friend Laura shared her mom’s recipe for this fantastic breakfast with me so many years ago that I don’t remember when or why. It’s become tradition for me to completely forget about making it (even after fifteen-plus years)... and then late at night after family (or “framily;” friends that are family) get-togethers on Christmas Eve, when I’m just winding down in bed after wrapping whatever gifts are left, I suddenly snap out of drowsiness and take my footie-pj’d self down to the kitchen to whip this together. I really need to start setting a yearly recurring alarm for 9pm on December 24th.

Laura and I share a common grief: both of us lost our mothers to cancer. I when I was in my late teens, and Laura in her early 30s.

Now this recipe serves to remind me of Laura’s mom, who also mothered me in the years after I lost my own mom. In all the hustle of the season, it’s a marker to slow down and remember those women that left our lives much sooner than we would have liked. To remember the long line of women before them that kept Christmas with their families, too.

We pop this in the oven once everyone is awake, and it’s usually ready around the same time that the kids finish opening gifts. Serve with some homemade whipped cream and fruit, or just maple syrup, and it’s a lovely way to round out a special family morning without spending any time in the kitchen!

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

Praline Grahams

By Allison Duncan

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ach December, my grandmother used to invite me and my sisters to bake dozens of cookies with her. I think our record one year was seven different kinds—sugar cookies, toffee bars, oatmeal scotchies, chocolate peppermint cookies, “spider cookies,” chocolate peanut butter bars, and praline grahams. My grandmother cut recipes out of the newspaper and swapped in a few new varieties each year to complement our old favorites.

She assigned me and my sisters tasks—press the slices of sugar cookie dough with the bottom of a glass covered in sugar, melt the butterscotch chips and peanut butter, stir the boiling caramel so it doesn’t burn. Once the baking was done, and the cookies were finished cooling on the racks set on every available surface in the kitchen, we gently packed them in metal tins between layers of wax paper. We took a

tin home with us, and my grandmother kept the other tins to give to friends for Christmas.

One year my grandmother gave me a set of our favorite cookie recipes, hand-written on index cards. Here is one that I had almost forgotten about until I was looking through the recipe box.

With just a few ingredients, it’s easy to make during the busyness of the holiday season.

And the cookies are delicious!

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

Three Childhood Recipes

By Amy Knorr

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hristmas baking was always a big deal in our house. Norwegian Kringla, sugar-sparkling logs, pumpkin bread, stuff-n-nonsense, sugar cookies, nut crunch...the list goes on. December found our kitchen full of yummy treats and the house full of heavenly smells. Most of the treats were packaged and given away to teachers and neighbors, friends and colleagues.

But there was always a log or two in the freezer ready to cut and bake, a loaf of pumpkin bread ready for snacking, a bag of stuff-n-nonsense in the fridge with a container of nut crunch right alongside, and tins of iced sugar cookies all waiting for Christmas Eve when we would arrange a plate of treats to be brought out after we got home from the Christmas Eve service. We would sit in the living room near the lighted Christmas tree and

munch on cookies and milk or hot chocolate and then go to bed with visions of sugar somethings dancing in our heads (a dream come true in the morning when we would wake to Christmas cinnamon rolls!). Now, in my own family, I find that December follows this same pattern of baking and giving and munching on Christmas Eve treats, and it is good.

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

Boilo

By Bill Evans

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oilo is a mulled whiskey that is often served around Christmastime in the Pennsylvania anthracite coal region1. The preparation probably originated as a cold remedy, and is excellent at clearing the sinuses. Each borough/village/patch/family has their own recipe. All are variations of citrus, spices, and sweetener steeped in an alcohol. Also, all recipes seem to contain caraway seeds for some reason. The alcohol is traditionally Four Queens blended whiskey, but local supply considerations outside of Schuylkill County, PA, may require a substitution. Grain alcohol (Everclear, moonshine) may also be used.

Regardless, the spices and citrus should be steeped in the alcohol of choice to extract alcohol-soluble compounds.

The recipe below is loosely based on my vague recollections of my paternal uncle’s recipe,

although I think he may have used more spices.

One Christmas he got too much in there, and had to blend it with my aunt’s batch to make it drinkable.

Finally, I need to remember to petition the Scrabble folks to add “BOILO” to the official dictionary, but I digress.

Please use appropriate safety precautions when heating distilled alcohol due to flammability concerns.

References: 1 www.coalregion.com/speak/speakb. php. Accessed November 1, 2020.

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

Savory, Comforting Soups

by Amy Knorr

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rowing up in Texas, we didn’t have very many soup nights. There was the chili and cornbread night, which is still a family standby and so deliciously easy! But I did not really get into soups until I was living in Seattle and the days were wet and cold and grey. Moving to Pennsylvania sealed the deal.

There is nothing like warm soup on a cold day.

Whether you’ve been pushing kids down a snowy hill on a sled or shoveling driveways or just lying sprawled on a couch recovering from one too many sweet Christmas treats, knowing that you have a warm brothy soup cooking in the kitchen is a comforting thought.

Our family loves the pairing of these two soups. One goes in the crock

pot mid-morning (as a vegetarian, it’s a bonus that there is very little I have to do to interact with this meaty soup) and the other I can throw together at the last minute with very little effort or fuss. Add a crusty loaf of bread, and this meal is as close to perfection as you can get. Here’s to a warm and savory antidote to the cold, the hustle and bustle, and the sweets-overload of December!

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

Pizza Rice

By Jon Purifoy

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think every parent struggles with cooking things that are:

a) Liked by the entire family b) Healthy c) Easy to make That brings me to Pizza Rice. Well, that’s what I have been calling this tomato-based risotto for years. Why Pizza Rice?

Well, it’s pretty simple... typically kids don’t like to eat things that don’t sound familiar, like hot

dog or nuggets. But this risotto contains many of the same ingredients as a pizza: tomato sauce, a starch, sausage (and spinach).

The original recipe has been modified in order to get the kids to eat entire plates-full and go for seconds....and it checks all the boxes above. So here it is, with modifications.

Download the recipe as a letter-size page or a recipe card, just click on the images below!

buds

The stuffing “cake” came out great!

Such a pretty presentation!

Thanks for the Taste of Paper & String Nov... it’s a decoration you can eat!

- Anne Boone

Will you try any of this month’s recipes?

Send pictures to paperandstring@blackbarncollective.com for a chance to be featured in our next issue!

And please tag us when you share on social media:

#paperandstringcarepackage • @maplehurstblackbarn

with CHRISTIE PURIFOY

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y world grows small in December. Fewer hours of daylight mean I am indoors for more of my waking hours. A cold, sharp wind means I am less likely to sit on the front porch or even out by the firepit than I was in fall.

My garden has frozen to sleep, and I am only responsible for the potted plants I brought indoors in October. They are few enough to be counted on my fingers: one rosemary, one Boston fern, two pelargoniums (one with

pink and one with coral flowers), and two plectranthus with their purple-black leaves. In addition, there is one papery brown amaryllis bulb sitting in a glass vase and one more glass vase with a dozen paperwhite bulbs at the bottom. That is the sum of my garden in the month of December.

My winter garden may be small, but it does not feel less. Rather, it has become concentrated.

With few other green things to catch my eye, the fate of the rosemary I ignored all summer long has assumed a much greater importance.

Will it last the winter, flavoring our stews and roasted potatoes? Or will it grieve the loss of light too deeply, wither, and die? The destiny of a single houseplant in winter carries a weight it never could in July.

Time itself becomes concentrated during this month. With daily readings and perhaps a cardboard calendar with cut-out windows, we will compress thousands of years of waiting into four weeks or so of the Advent season.

Come, Lord Jesus, we will pray as we walk toward

Christmas Day. And those words will hold more than seems possible: all of the prophets, those voices in the wilderness; the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and two thousand years of the Church’s witness to the life of the world to come.

That renewed world is difficult to imagine.

It is as hard to picture as a green summer garden while I stand on soil hard-frozen under the bare limbs of a tree that might as well be dead for all the life that I can see. Spring may feel impossibly

distant, but here is the seed of it growing in a terra cotta pot on the windowsill. Or here, where an ugly amaryllis bulb pushes out roots into an inch of water. Only eyes of faith can see the red flower to come. The petals will be scarlet with many small white flecks. They will sparkle as if dusted with shining stars, like a whole world in a single vase.

In summer, the earth itself sings so loudly, we can hear little else. But in December, if we listen carefully, studying amaryllis stars, might we hear voices that can only be carried on clear, cold winter air?

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.

To download this printable page, click here!

Rejoice, Emmanuel Shall come to thee O Israel.

Practice: Centering Prayer

By Jen Goodyer

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hether we are introverted or extroverted, we all have a deep yearning for peace and stillness. As 2020 enters its final month, perhaps we feel this more than ever. The contemplative tradition’s invitation to rest in God may sound appealing but is often hard to receive, especially when life is busy or stressful. Sometimes it seems that the more we need quiet and rest, the harder it is to find and enjoy it. The slow and gentle season of Advent invites us to lean into our need for rest. During Advent we long for what we do not yet have but we are confident it will arrive and so there is space to rest and breathe as we wait. Watching my children and their love of building ‘cushion houses,’ I have learnt that entering and remaining in spaces of rest and stillness requires preparation.

Slowing down and taking the time to create spaces that encourage rest and stillness is holy work and an essential part of our prayer lives.

This practice invites you to have fun with creating your own place of retreat and rest.

Click above OR here to view the video

Click to download the accompanying PDF which includes:

• Practice Preparation & Materials • An Invitation to Practice

Tell Me A Story About LIGHT ...

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live in the sunniest place in Canada. As someone who struggles some years with Seasonal Affective Disorder, moving to near Calgary from Ontario made a huge difference.

Winter lasts for almost eight months, and on our shortest winter days the sun just barely dips over the hills for a few hours, but the days are almost always bright and cloudless.

I didn’t know light could make such a difference until I was exposed to so much more of it during the cold, quiet months. Like most good things, I didn’t know what I’d been missing until I lived in it. I tend to treat the will of God the same way. As C. S. Lewis said, “It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because

he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”

For too long I couldn’t fathom a winter where I didn’t dread dark mornings, short days, long nights. Where I didn’t feel the weight of lethargy and the lack of drive, the fog of apathy that drifted in and out most days. It was normal. This was just how I was.

How often do we sit in half-darkness, focused on dust, when God is gently offering a better way? How content are we with our own plans and our own path when God offers to walk with us, Emmanuel: Himself present WITH US? When we look into the bright, reflected light on snow this season, may it remind us all to seek hard after God and crave His company, where we will find the deepest parts of our soul we weren’t even aware of awakened and cultivated.

Growing up in South Africa, Christmas was one of the hottest days of the year.

The sun beats down on kids running around in their swimsuits as they decorate the tree. Our summer vacation is from December - February and often we’d roadtrip to my grandparents because they lived by the seaside in Cape Town.

And by Christmas eve we’d be sunburned and dressed in our prettiest sundresses ready to unwrap presents. But our Ouma, she’d always light the candles on the tree first. Yes, real

candles that required matches. They clipped onto the branches of our pinetree with her old, silver candle holders and dripped white wax down onto the presents below.

When I think about Christmas I see those candles flickering on the tree. The real flames that could singe a pine needle and sometimes needed to be snuffed out when they drooped dangerously low. But they bore witness to the gathering of our people, the Dutch and Afrikaans and English that flickered like flame between us and the magic of lighting Christmas with real fire and light under the stars of the Southern cross.

The days that follow the “fall back” to Standard Time are difficult for my family.

We have two members who keenly feel the loss of light, two family members whose internal wiring can’t tolerate disruptions to routine, and one family member who falls apart just because so many other people are, so why not? In a family of seven, that leaves only two people

who are functioning well during the early days of November, neither of whom are adults.

This year, the darkness feels even more immense. A global pandemic, a death in the family...we are keening in the darkness, trying to find the light.

So I decided we needed a project. I named it 50 Days of Light. Every night at dinner, I’d ask my

family where they saw the light in their day— and we’d write it down, and on December 21st, I’d put together a little book of how we found the light through the 50 days of darkness from the time change to the solstice. I’d include pictures, too—pictures of our family—so we could look back in the coming days and years and say, Look what we got through together. Look how we found the light.

I anticipated some of the hiccups we’d encounter in the project. We wouldn’t actually work on it every day, well-intentioned as I might be; and I’d have to have good responses ready for my kids who only had smart-aleck things to say. My middle son, especially, I anticipated would be a challenge: literal to a fault (and smart-aleck as all get-out) I wasn’t sure he’d cooperate enough to tell me one single place he saw the light.

On the very first night of the project, after I explained what I wanted to do, I asked my kids where they saw the light and three of them pointed to a lamp. But then my middle son said, “I see Mom, because Mom is the light.

She’s beautiful and brings me joy.”

In the pin-drop silence that followed, my other kids turned to him, and he quickly made a joke

and we all laughed together. But I heard what he said. And I wrote it down. And I put it in our book.

We haven’t managed to work on our project every day (a global pandemic, a death in the family) but what we’ve done has been enough.

Look what we got through together. Look how we found the light.

The Team!

Christie & Jonathan Purifoy

live at the old farmhouse in Pennsylvania called Maplehurst and built the Black Barn. Christie earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago before trading the classroom for a picket-fenced garden and an old writing desk. Now she writes books and raises kids and chickens and tends the trees that gave Maplehurst its name.

Lisa-Jo Baker is a

third culture kid, former attorney, reader, writer, and storyteller. Every Wednesday on the Out of the Ordinary Podcast she and Christie explore the surprising ways that cultivating ordinary life leads to extraordinary stories. She is endlessly fascinated by people and how loud her children are.

Elrena Evans first had the dream of

sending you a care package from the Black Barn. She’s a writer, editor, and dancer, a mother of five, an ally and an advocate. A new Paper&String care package every month is her gift from us to you.

Amy Hinman is wife to Mike, momma of

three girls, artist, and crazy chicken lady! She created the gorgeous chalk wall mural at the first Black Barn gathering in July 2019 and now she’s brought the virtual Black Barn to life, along with all the hand-drawn elements in Paper&String.

Anna Grist is the Canadian in our midst,

working on Paper&String from the Rockies near Calgary. She creates all the design and layout and contributes a few illustrations and snippets of writing as well as laughter and well-timed GIFs. She’s a wife and mother to two human children, as well as twins Quill & Ink (pictured).

Amy Knorr is an educator,

speaker and writer who loves to create contemplative spaces in real life and online. She is in a Nonprofit and Spiritual Formation graduate program with a spiritual direction certification. Amy has shared a nomadic married life with her husband, Dan, for 21 years. She is mom to two girls growing tall and a son she will hold again someday. She enjoys a good laugh, a quiet moment, a furry doggy face, a challenging trail and a cup of hot tea.

Allison Sheeler Duncan studied English and

theology at Eastern University and is now a writer and editor at a university in southeastern Pennsylvania. She enjoys growing flowers and heirloom tomatoes, watching superhero movies, and trying new recipes.

By Elrena Evans

Click here for a printable version of this month’s benediction

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Into the darkness of our world O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Into the brokenness of our bonds O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Into the fear of our hearts O come, O come, Emmanuel.

Restore us, renew us, fill us with your light.

O come, O come, Emmanuel.

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