Announcing A New Way to Enjoy Advent Daybook Devotional Posts: Patreon!
Dear Sacramental Life friends,
Things are bustling around our house as we prepare to move to a new place this weekend. It’s only a couple miles away but a rental house that’s more conducive for hosting friends and family and - not inconsequentially - our kids’ dogs!
In the fray of packing boxes and paintbrushes, you and Advent are very much on my mind. The first day of Advent is next Sunday, December 1, and I’ve been peeking ahead to the lectionary Scriptures for this year. The prophet Amos features prominently, and I’ve been trying to get to know him a bit better. As with every season leading up to the Great Festival of Christmastide, the Gospel accounts and the Psalms offer a counterpoint to the weighty prophecies we find tucked into the end of the Old Testament. These Scripture passages, combined, remind us of the anguish of longing and the flickers of hope for a better future when the Messiah comes - and comes again - to restore all of creation to its rightful glory.
I can’t wait to soak in the promises and prayers of Scripture together for the 24 days leading up to Christmastide.
If you’ve followed this blog for a while you know that each Advent and Lent I publish multi-media devotional posts to help us look, listen, pray, and do daily practices of devotion in the themes of each liturgical season. The posts include classic and contemporary art and music with links to the daily Scripture reading. Each post concludes with a traditional or Scripture-based prayer and a simple spiritual practice to help us embody in physical form what we’ve looked, listened, and read from the devotional post.
(For those of you who are new, you can read about the devotional posts here: Advent Daybook Explained.)
Many of you tell me that you look forward to these Daybook posts each year and that they’ve become a part of your regular habit of worship throughout the seasons. I can’t quite put into words how much it means to me every time I hear that from one of you.
As I continue to grow in my understanding of where and how to spend my time, I've decided to share some of the work on my blog through a platform called Patreon. (Patreon is a crowdfunding platform that provides ways for creators to build relationships and provide exclusive experiences to their subscribers.)
Building a community of patrons will allow me to seed writing and other projects in my dream folder and will allow those who follow my blog to have greater options in how much they'd like to engage with the projects I share. I'm hoping to be able to integrate my work as a Spiritual Director with my desire to encourage all of us to worship God, love people, and enjoy beauty. I'm launching the patron site with two subscription levels and am dreaming up more opportunities to provide simple spiritual, relational, and creative direction.
The site is live and I’m eagerly welcoming patrons! Click the link or type patreon.com/sacramentallife into your browser.
There are two levels of patronage to select: Stories or Daybook.
The Stories community is for those who’d like to be the first readers to receive select, off-the-cuff stories I've been collecting but not yet written. These will serve as a personal complement to the guest posts you see here throughout the year, where friends generously share their personal experiences of mourning, celebration, work, home and rest.
The Daybook community at the Patreon page is for those who’d like to receive my personal stories as well as the devotional posts I curate for Advent, Christmastide, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide, and Pentecost.
You can read about the two patronage options as well as see a sample Daybook post here.
Each Sunday in Advent I’ll share a free Daybook devotional post at the Patreon page for everyone to enjoy. The daily devotional posts will then be available to those who purchase a $5 a month Daybook subscription.
If you enjoy what I’ve been curating and creating here, please invite your friends to subscribe too! The Daybook devotional posts provide a beautiful experience to be able to share and talk about together.
Please feel free to email me your questions.
May the peace of our Messiah permeate your hearts, minds, bodies, homes, and neighborhoods in the coming weeks. I’m with you and for you in this beautiful work of worship.
Tamara
p.s. When you subscribe at the Daybook level today you’ll receive a special Daybook devotional for Christ the King Sunday tomorrow as well as a link to my private playlist of 100+ songs for Advent. I’ve had so much fun curating this list and, at the risk of sounding immodest, I think it’s one of my very best!
