In 2009 I wrote a series of blog posts called Advent Explorations both as a personal study of the first season of the and as a way of sharing what I was learning.1 I won't be doing that again this year; instead, I have something else in mind.
About a week ago, I received a lovely surprise in my mailbox at work. One of the parishioners who knows of my love for all things Bonhoeffer (and who is herself a Bonhoeffer enthusiast) left a copy of the book , an Advent devotional comprised of material compiled from Bonhoeffer's body of work. It's a simple little book (fitting for the season of Advent), with short excerpts from Bonhoeffer's writing accompanied by scripture texts.
As part of my personal practices, I will be reading the devotions daily and reflecting on the texts. Additionally, I've decided upon both creating and publicly sharing an artifact each day.
Enter , an iOS app which mimics typewriters of old and facilitates the creation of cool-looking . While I've had the app for a while and have played around with it here and there, from the beginning I've had the notion that doing some sort of a card-a-day type thing could be fun.
Besides the ability to make interesting, old fashioned-looking cards, the app has several unique features that make it stand out. First, like an actual typewriter, the "delete" key doesn't actually delete anything — it simply moves the cursor one space back, forcing you to either A) type another character over the original or B) start the entire card over. 2 Second, you can move the cursor anywhere on the card, and it's difficult to ascertain where the character will actually end up until after you actually type it. That, coupled with the no-delete feature (not to mention the app's ), make creating one of these cards an exercise in both patience and forethought — a discipline that, for me, neatly falls in line with the themes of Advent.
So this Advent, as I read through the devotions in the Bonhoeffer book, I'm going to select a sentence or two from each reading and use (? iTunes link) to create a card every day, the first of which is at the top of this post. Unlike today, however, I won't be posting them on this blog; I will post each day's card on both my and accounts, and you're welcome to follow along throughout the next several weeks as I do so.
It is my hope that Bonhoeffer's words on Advent and Christmas, coupled with my commitment to the practice of creating and sharing these cards, not only heighten my own awareness of the hopeful and expectant nature of Advent, but may also be a blessing to others.
- If you have no idea what Advent is and aren't particularly jazzed about the idea of reading a bunch of old blog posts about it, I recommend as a primer this short video: . [↩]
- You can see the result of this on the word "As" on the second line of the card at the top of this post. I originally accidentally typed "Ad" and had to go back and hammer the "s" key over the "d" several times to compensate. [↩]
