All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings Spiral-Bound | 2016-10-01

Gayle Boss David G. Klein (Illustrated by)

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An ECPA 2023 Christmas Bestseller!
From the bestselling author of Wild Hope -- a beautiful book for Advent.

Open a window each day of Advent onto the natural world. Here are twenty-five fresh images of the foundational truth that lies beneath and within the Christ story. In twenty-five portraits depicting how wild animals of the northern hemisphere ingeniously adapt when darkness and cold descend, we see and hear as if for the first time the ancient wisdom of Advent: The dark is not an end but the way a new beginning comes.

Short, daily reflections that paint in vivid detail the intricate and astonishing ways that familiar animals, from the honeybee to the porcupine, prepare for winter. Paired with charming original wood-cut illustrations, this daily devotional will engage both children and adults. Anyone who feels tired of the consumer hype of "the holiday season" will be refreshed and awakened to the eternal truth the natural world reveals, and will welcome this book.

Advent, to the church Fathers, was the right naming of the season when light and life are fading. They urged the faithful to set aside four weeks to fast, give, and pray--all ways to strip down, to let the bared soul recall what it knows beneath its fear of the dark: that there is One who is the source of all life and is ever creating, One who comes to be with us and in us, even, especially, in darkness and death. One who brings us a new beginning.

The more I'm with animals and the more I learn from them, the more I know they can be more than our companions on this planet. They can be our guides. They can be to us "a book about God...a words of God," the God who comes, even in the darkest season, to bring us a new beginning. -- Gayle Boss, Introduction to "All Creation Waits"

Learn more about All Creation Waits and find free resources at AllCreationWaits.com

Publisher: Paraclete Press, Inc.
Original Binding: Trade Paperback
Pages: 112 pages
ISBN-10: 1612617859
Item Weight: 0.55 lbs
Dimensions: 6.9 x 0.3 x 8.3 inches

"All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings showcases twenty-five fresh images of the foundational truth that lies beneath and within the Christ story. In twenty-five portraits depicting how wild animals of the northern hemisphere ingeniously adapt when darkness and cold descend, we see and hear as if for the first time the ancient wisdom of Advent: The dark is not an end but the way a new beginning comes. Short, daily reflections that paint vivid, poetic images of familiar animals, paired with charming original wood-cuts, will engage both children and adults. Anyone who does not want to be caught, again, in the consumer hype of 'the holiday season' but rather to be taken up into the eternal truth the natural world reveals will benefit immensely from reading All Creation Waits. An informative and inspiring read from cover to cover, All Creation Waits is especially recommended to all members of the Christian community regardless of denominational affiliation. --Midwest Book Review

Gayle Boss writes from West Michigan, where she was born and raised. Her lifelong love of animals and her immersion in spiritual texts and practices have melded in poems and essays that explore how relationships with animals specifically, and an attentive presence in the natural world generally, restore us to our deepest selves. Also the author of Wild Hope: Stories for Lent from the Vanishing, Gayle lives with her husband and Welsh corgi rescue.

"Writing about animals and the human-animal bond is the writing that enthralls me. I've found it true, what the thirteenth-century mystic Meister Eckhart said: 'God is equally near in all creatures.' Many human creatures and two corgis have loved me and encouraged my work. Beyond them, the creatures and landscapes of Michigan's west coast, often wounded, open to me wonder after wonder." -- Gayle Boss

David G. Klein is an award-winning graphic artist, novelist, printmaker, engraving artist, and co-founder of Brooklyn-based Point Made Animation. He is a third generation graphic artist who started his career in his father's ad agency, doing design and print production. Klein's grandfather taught typography at the New York High School of Art & Design. Klein attended Pratt, where his father previously taught. His illustrations have been featured in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Random House, Tor Books, DC Comics, and Marvel.