Worship, Music, and Spirituality: An Extra Tin
“Oops, sorry,” I said to my mom as we lovingly packed up our Christmas tins last year. “We have an extra tin now.” Christmas tins are priceless treasures in our house. We never have enough; between craft sales, friends, families, and neighbours, we always have more cookies than tins.
Homemade Christmas gifts have been a cherished Smith family tradition for as long as I can remember. From October to January, every Smith home is a flurry of nostalgia and busyness. I love it. The creating helps me to spiritually prepare for Christ’s coming. Every time I put a gloopy mess into a hot oven and a yummy treat comes out, I give thanks for the refiner’s firepower to transform and ask that the same thing happens to me, to us, and to the world. And as I decorate and pretty up our various Christmas creations for sharing, I ask God to make me alert to Christmas miracles that are all around us, to realize the extraordinary in ordinary things—like salt and butter, thread and fabric—with a little extra love and attention. From quilts to worship services, and cakes to cookies, creating is my Advent spiritual practice.
It is also a Smith family tradition for me to mess up the math somehow throughout the holiday season. And so, cussing my math skills is also an annual ritual for my mum. Last year was no different with the extra tin, until she noticed that I had accidentally made the tin for an “auntie” who had died earlier in the year.
Neither of us, we realized then, were prepared for a Christmas without this auntie. Just as I am not prepared, and never want to be, for a holiday season without the people I love. Love, no matter the form it takes—a love that is birthing, a love that is new, a love that is old, or a love that is transformed—seems almost impossible to prepare for, and yet as worship leaders in this sacred season, we are tasked to help people do exactly this: prepare for love’s long-expected arrival.
So this year, on top of my usual busy Christmas tradition of praying through creating, I am adding a new ritual of making an extra tin filled with treats I would love to share with missed loved ones and creating some extra room in a ridiculously busy schedule to slowly enjoy the bitter sweetness of love (and cookies) with others.
As we lovingly make room for love, may we also make sacred space for each other.
Sincerely,
Alydia
Alydia Smith, Program Coordinator, Worship, Music, and Spirituality
