Advent Garden

Hi Friends,

After a many-year hiatus, Westtown Meeting will once again be celebrating the holiday season with an Advent Garden activity. The Advent Garden will occur on December 8th, starting at 3PM.

Rebecca Mays has invited a well-known actor and writer from People’s Light -- Tom Teti to write and tell a story for children and adults alike. At our most recent Meeting for Business, we agreed to take up a collection to raise $300 for the event. If you would be willing to contribute to this activity, please send a check made out to Westtown Monthly Meeting to Marc Dear at 1222 Mallard Road, West Chester PA 19382.

We will also need many "greens" to make the spiral path the children will walk (evergreens of all kinds, pine branches, holly branches, mistletoe, eucalyptus, dried flowers, moss, small potted shrubs, etc.). We will arrange with the school to start collecting these items on December 1 on the Meetinghouse's west side porch facing the small greenhouse. Friends can drop off greens at the porch anytime during the week December 1 - 8.

That garden itself is a gift to the children from the adults so families can help them anticipate the walk but we ask only for adults to build the garden immediately following Meeting for Worship to about 2:30. The families then should arrive for the opening story at 3:00. We anticipate, depending on how many children come, a total time of two hours for every child to have a chance to walk the garden. We hope families can hold the event in the Light as a worshipful time where we hold each child walking in the Light as a blessing; it is not a game to see who can race the fastest to the middle. It is an extension of intergenerational worship. Again, depending on who can come, we are thinking of letting the younger children go first and then take a short break. The younger children are then welcome to stay and watch the older children walk the garden the second hour or they can go downstairs where we will have someone to be with them to share about their experience in the Advent Garden. Our program for children has been growing in depth and quality over the past couple of years. This particular activity will focus on the transforming Light which was discussed at an earlier Meeting for Business.

We are asking that those of you that are able to provide greens, are able to help set up the spiral Advent Garden, will be attending with your child(ren), or can help clean up Monday mid morning to please use the Sign Up Genius link below to indicate what your level of participation will be. On the Sign Up page you will click on one or more participation choices that will then display a check mark and show " ✔️ Selected". Once you do this a red "Save & Continue" button will appear at the bottom of the screen (you may need to scroll down to see it and it may be partially obscured with ads or a service policy update message that you just need to agree to in order to close it). Click on the "Save & Continue" button to go to the next screen to provide your name and any comments you would like to add such as name and age of children and number of people (Quantity). Once you have completed the screen click on the "Sign Up Now" button and you're all set.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0A49ACAF2DA1FA7-53170629-advent

Thanks in advance.

The Worship and Ministry Committee