The Fall Ember Days begin tomorrow! (Can you tell I'm excited?!) I love these quarterly days of fasting and prayer.  To give you some ideas of how to observe, I thought I would share my plans for this Ember Week!

Physical

Preparing my heart for the work of a new season means tackling the physical spaces I would rather ignore, or have already procrastinated on handling. This week it's prepping the library for painting, and cleaning out the grease trap over the stove.

I also do a lot of the less frequent type of cleaning this week: vacuuming the porch, cleaning out the car, doing a quick purge in each room, switching over clothes for the new season, etc. 

Realistically, not everything I try to do will happen, but I will have forced myself to do what is asked of me and that is a valuable practice in and of itself.

Spiritual

Confession is always the number one practice for spiritual clean out that I try to make happen during the Ember Days. 

This season I'm also re-committing to praying the Liturgy of the Hours for the readings, morning, and evening prayers. During a parish town hall this past weekend on the abuse crisis, our pastor said something that made me pause. He noted that most priests who became abusers started neglecting their promise to pray this common prayer of the Church first. Being negligent in small things was the first step down that evil road. For the healing and intentions of abuse survivors, I am dedicating these prayers that should have been faithfully prayed in the first place.

Fasting

I'm a fan of the two prong fasting approach. On these Ember Days I will be following a traditional fast (nothing but liquids during the day) and fasting from social media scrolling. 

To do the spiritual and physical clean out, I need time. When I looked at my time spent, my greatest amount of truly wasted time was scrolling on social media. The amount of that that turned into legitimate connection and communication with others was tiny, and could have been easily found without the scrolling.

Connection

Living through, and within, this crisis in the Church has made it very clear to me that this is also a crisis of community. Of connection. Of remembering to care about others as loved Children of God. These Ember Days I am making a special effort to connection with my children, with my spouse, with members of my parish, Catholics beyond my parish, and others I may have met but have not gotten to know yet. 

I don't know exactly what that's going to look like, but I've found that making a conscious effort to be open to the Holy Spirit tends to create what needs to be.

How are you observing these Ember Days? Will this be your first time?

#EmberDaysObservance and Time Marches On

It has been a very busy season in the Hoberg household! Here's some of the things that have been up this week.

1

Negative degrees are coming this week. Our area gearing up for the coldest Christmas in 20 years, and for sure the coldest cold anyone in our family has experienced. The time for creative ways to get physical activity into our day has arrived, so send me all of your ideas for getting out some high energy when it's too cold to leave the house with the baby!

2

We are midway through the Advent season Ember Days today. This is the only one of the Ember Days in which no one in the family has any events or appointments, so today will be our biggest cleaning day! Catch me over on Instagram (@underthyroof) to follow along. Tag your photos with #EmberDaysObservance and lets encourage each other through today and tomorrow's Ember Saturday.

3

Never heard of the Ember Days? Here's an overview.

4

You know Christmas is around the corner when you do your LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!

We wrapped up yesterday morning.

I had started our year early in August, thinking I needed to build in some flex time for postpartum. Matt proved to be a very competent substitute homeschool teacher, and now we are ahead of our year by 2 weeks!

However, it is high time to re-organize the school supplies and clean out the endlessly multiplying art projects. I'm 90% sure almost all of the pencils have had their erasers chewed off, and most all of the markers are used up or dried up. Time to regroup!

5

This baby is almost 3 months old!

I feel like each baby seems easier than the last. This one is just huge! She was 9lb 10oz at birth, and I had to size her up to the Ergo at 2 months because her weight was stretching out the Moby too much.

She has had her first visits to the child watch at the YMCA, and did fabulously. Big brother and sisters were very proud to show baby sister around "Y for Y". Her favorite things are quietly looking around and staring at people until they look at her (which she rewards with a big, toothless, smile.)

6

I like to do a "learning show" as kids are waking up from nap, and the favorite right now are the various historical farm series from the BBC. We've done Victorian Farm and we're now on Wartime Farm. John in particular is SUPER into it.

BBC narrator: "While some things are moving along nicely on the farm, there is concern about the weather. It has been raining steadily for weeks."

John: "BUT WHAT ABOUT THE HAY CROP?!"

Farm shows are the soap operas of the elementary school crowd.

7

I have been thinking I want to try some other forms of prayer with the kids, and teach them some more memorized prayers, in the coming year. This lovely book arrived today and I love it so far. Review coming soon!

Advent - Contain Your Excitement

Advent is coming! Now that we live in the Great White North it is very tempting to deck the halls with Christmas joy right when December 1st hits.

But we wait.

Advent is a season in of itself and it's worth the wait to let Advent do its work. Here's what we do before the joyous day of Christmas arrives!

Advent Wreath and Advent Decorating

On the first Sunday of Advent we put up our Advent wreath, greenery decorations, lights, and hang stockings.

This will be our first year getting a full size Christmas tree! While we'll probably get the tree in early December, I like the idea of not decorating it with ornaments until Gaudete Sunday. The Advent and Christmas seasons are a marathon - best to pace ourselves!

St. Nicholas (December 6th)

Our first Big Deal feast of Winter!
I grew up with the German style tradition of St. Nick filling stockings instead of shoes. I have a whole post on what we put in those stockings and how we celebrate the day.

St. Lucia (December 13th)

Like all good 90s girls, I was introduced to St. Lucia celebrations via American Girl books. This year Therese is finally big enough to play St. Lucia so maybe we'll add in more of the procession this year! Here's what the celebrations looked like last year.

Marian Feasts - Our Lady of Guadalupe (December 12th) and Immaculate Conception (December 8th)

There might be a lot of feasts in the month of December, but it would never do to forget mother Mary! I don't do anything too big for these feasts, but they are still celebrated.

Our Lady of Guadalupe is patroness of the pro-life movement. We watch the CCC Juan Diego movie and offer a rosary for life.

Immaculate Conception is actually for the conception of Mary, not the conception of Jesus (common mistake). It's also the patron feast day for the United States, and a solemnity. So get thee to mass, pray for the country, and have some sort of white dessert. Boom. Celebrated!

Ember Days - Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday of the 3rd Week of Advent

Those final days of preparation before settling into the welcoming of Christmas! I love Ember Days, but if you've never heard of them you're in good company. They are 3 days toward the beginning of each liturgical season set aside for fasting and prayer and to "to thank God for the gifts of nature, to teach men to make use of them in moderation, and to assist the needy." It contains the cleaning and preparing and forces me to stop and enjoy the fruits of our preparations! Read more about them here.

The beauty of letting Advent be Advent is we get to go all out through the whole Christmas season! This is the first year we will not be traveling to family for Christmas, and I'm planning an epic 12 day celebration. More on that later!

************

Want more ideas? Check out other Advent posts on this month's CWBN Blog Hop!

Ember Days - The Best Part of the Liturgical Year You Never Knew Existed

Linking up with This Ain't the Lyceum for 7 Quick Takes!

Happy Ember Friday! Have you never heard of Ember Days? You are in good company. They are not a part of Catholic culture that is in widespread usage. But they could be and I think they should be! 

Here's the low down on Ember Days and why they are the best part of the liturgical year you never knew existed.

1

What are Ember Days?

Essentially, they are 3 days, toward the beginning of each liturgical season, set aside for fasting and prayer and to "to thank God for the gifts of nature, to teach men to make use of them in moderation, and to assist the needy" (New Advent). 

They are very ancient practice in the Catholic Church and established somewhere between the Apostolic age and the 5th Century.

2

When are Ember Days?

They are the Wednesday, Friday, Saturday following:

Ash Wednesday

Pentecost

Feast of the Holy Cross

St. Lucia Day

That roughly works out to a set of Ember Days in each Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter.

So why are they awesome?

3

They are a Liturgical Reset Button

Each of those days are timed toward the beginning of a season, but are typically within the second or third week of a new season. That means they come right at the point when all of your lofty ideals have come tumbling down.

Maybe you are already overwhelmed by all of the prayer options for Lent. 

Maybe you really wanted to focus more on family this Advent but family time has yet to happen.

Maybe you are in a September spiritual slump.

Each of those Ember Days come at a time when you could probably do with slowing down, re-focusing, and re-evaluating.

4

They are the Main Reason I Have a Clean House

Lemme tell y'all a secret....I don't clean all that often. I tidy. I pick up. I wipe down the kitchen counters and bathroom surfaces (or as I call them the "high consequence areas"). 

But stuff like scouring the bathtub, dusting, sweeping into corners? Yeah....that happens about four times a year for sure. Ember Days!

When the Ember Days roll around, I make sure I set aside time to hit all of those tasks. It makes sense to me to clean out my physical house while I am cleaning spiritual house. 

Because the Ember Days come around just before the part of that liturgical season that involves hosting parities, the house is then cleaned and ready for festivities! So much to love!

5

They are a Reminder To Pray While We Work

Because I am normally cleaning during my Ember Days, I have to pray while working by necessity if the prayer part is going to happen. 

I have found that to be a huge blessing! Doing the externals of making myself do the tasks I do not enjoy doing, while holding mental intentions and prayers for other people is very humbling. It is an excellent reminder that my work is not about me.

6

They Are Something The Kids Can Understand

Ember Days are very much an external practice that has a big internal effect. The whole experience is full of stuff the kids can latch onto: praying for people they care about, helping clean out under their beds, making decisions about what clothes don't fit them anymore, etc.

I find that the Ember Days happen often enough for even my little kids to remember the last time they came around. That means they are a convenient way to jump start a family culture centered around the liturgical year.

7

That Thursday Rest Day is Genius

At first I thought it was odd to schedule the days Wednesday then Friday and Saturday. Why not just go full steam ahead? But I have decided that the Church was wise to make it that way.

Because that Wednesday is probably going to be a little rough as I make myself get moving and get my family back on board.

Because there might be other weekday stuff that, by necessity, should get done.

Because having one of the days fall on the weekend greatly increases the likelihood this might be a whole family endeavor.

Are you observing the Ember Days? Is this the first time you have heard of  them? Going to give it a shot?