Jesse Tree: the Story of the Exodus from Egypt

God had compassion on the suffering of the enslaved Israelites, and so God chose Moses to free the people from slavery.  Terrible plagues ravaged Egypt, and in the midst of them, Moses led the Israelites out of the land of bondage.  "The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night."  Then, even though Pharoah had said that the Israelites could go, he changed his mind and sent an army to capture them and bring them back to slavery.  The pillar of cloud and fire moved behind the Israelites to protect them from the pursuing army.

Exodus 3-14

Potential ornament for the Jesse Tree: a pillar of fire or a cloud

Jesse Tree: a Story of Civil Disobedience by Two Midwives

Because of a severe famine, all of Joseph's eleven brothers and their families and even his old father Jacob ended up moving to Egypt where there was still food, so the family was finally reunited.  As years went by, "the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them."  After many, many years, a new king of Egypt decided that there were too many of these outsiders and he made the Israelites work as slaves.   He even told Puah and Shiphrah, two Hebrew midwives, to kill all the boy babies born to the Israelites.  "But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live."  They followed their conscience, not the command of the king. And so the number of Israelites in Egypt continued to grow.

Exodus 1:1-21

Potential ornaments for the Jesse Tree: a baby, two women, a raised fist

Jesse Tree: the Story of Joseph's Coat and His Brothers' Jealousy

Jacob, who dreamed of the ladder, had twelve sons of his own; he loved his son Joseph in a special way "because he was the son of his old age," so he had a long coat made for him.  Joseph's brothers were jealous of the fancy coat their father had given Joseph, and when Joseph began telling them about his own dreams of glory, "They hated him even more because of his dreams and his words."  One day while all the brothers were tending their father's flock of sheep, the older brothers turned against Joseph and sold him to a caravan headed to Egypt, dipped his robe in goat's blood, and told their father that Joseph had been killed by wild animals.  Actually, although at first Joseph had a very hard life in Egypt, later "he became a successful man." Long years later, the story had a happy ending when all his brothers came to Egypt. Jacob even got to see Joseph again and to know that his son was still alive!

Genesis 37:1-36

Potential ornament to make for the Jesse Tree: a many-colored robe or coat

Jesse Tree: the Story of Jacob's Ladder

When Isaac grew up, he married Rebekah; they had twin sons named Esau and Jacob.  One night after the twins had grown up, Jacob went on a journey to visit his uncle Laban. The first night on the road, he slept outside under the stars, using a stone for a pillow.  As he slept, "he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it."  After this dream of the angels going up and down the ladder between heaven and earth, God spoke to Jacob and blessed him: "Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go."  In the morning Jacob used the stone that had been his pillow to mark the place as holy ground.

Genesis 28:10-22

Potential ornament to make for the Jesse Tree: a ladder

For those who might like to read more about angels, here are two links:

from Season of Angels website: http://www.seasonofangels.com/background.html

from Friends of Silence newsletter: http://friendsofsilence.net/email/december-2013

Jesse Tree: 2nd Sunday in Advent review and invitation

Review: So now we're a week into Advent, and for those of you that may have missed the Nov. 25 background on using the Jesse Tree as an Advent activity at home, here is a portion of that posting:

When my kids were little, the Jesse Tree ritual helped counter the cultural pressure to see Christmas as nothing but "What do I get? What will be under the tree for me?"

By making "ornaments" to symbolize stories from Scripture and then hanging them on a small branch we cut ahead of time, we found the Jesse Tree to be a family ritual which gave the gift of Scripture to our children and allowed the old stories to etch themselves into their memories. It's a fine companion to the traditional Advent Calendar, an additional buffer to the commercial kidnapping of Christmas.

Incorporating the Jesse Tree into Advent simply involves retelling a story from Scripture each day (or on those days you can make time) during Advent, and then making some sort of symbol to represent that story (an "ornament") to hang on the branch. Our "ornaments" were construction paper, or felt and glue, or found objects -- we were not an artistic bunch. Some families create much more elaborate (or at least attractive) Jesse Tree ornaments...  



Next, the Invitation: send photos of your Jesse Tree or of some of your homemade ornaments! Mine are pretty primitive (as you can see from our "world," our bundle of sticks, and Jacob's ladder); I love them, but it would be fun to see what others of you are doing. 

Jesse Tree: the Story of Abraham and Isaac

When Isaac was still a boy, God again tested Abraham's faith: "Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on the mountain that I shall show you."  Once again, Abraham obeyed God.  Giving Isaac the kindling to carry, he took him to the mountain that God showed him.  He built an altar, laid the kindling on it, then placed Isaac on top.  When God saw that Abraham would obey even this, God sent an angel to stop him.  "Do not lay your hand on the boy," the angel said.  Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught in a thicket, and he offered it instead as a burnt offering to God.

Genesis 22:1-14

Potential ornaments to make for the Jesse Tree: a bundle of sticks, a ram

Jesse Tree: the Story of Sarah's Laughter

Sarah knew of God's promise to her and to Abraham that they would be parents to a new nation, but she grew to be an old woman, ninety-nine years old, and she still didn't have any children! One day, Abraham invited three travelers to dinner; hospitality was very important in the land where Abraham and Sarah pitched their tent because there weren't any restaurants to feed travelers.  Sarah began immediately to bake fresh bread for these visitors, who were actually angels of the Lord.  As she was working, she overheard one of the strangers say to Abraham, "I shall visit you again next year, and your wife will then have a son."  Sarah laughed out loud when she heard that, because she was too old to have children, but the stranger insisted it was true.  And sure enough, within the year Sarah gave birth to a son.  She and Abraham named him Isaac, which in Hebrew means "laughter."  

Genesis 18:1-15 and 21:1-7

Potential ornaments to make for the Jesse Tree: a loaf of bread, an angel

Jesse Tree: God's Promise to Abraham

Abraham grew up among people who worshiped other gods.  But God called to Abraham and said, "Leave your country and your kindred and your father's house for a land that I will show you.  I will make you the father of a great nation; I will bless you...so that you will be a blessing."  Abraham listened to God.  As hard as it was to leave home, he packed up his tent and all his belongings and went where God led him.  Abraham spent much of his long life wondering how on earth he could be the father of a great nation when he and his wife Sarah didn't have any children, but he kept on trusting in God's promise that his descendents would be as many as the stars in heaven. 

Genesis 12:1-4a and 1:1-16-1

Potential ornaments to make for the Jesse Tree: a tent, a star 

Jesse Tree: the Story of the Flood and the Rainbow

Genesis also tells the story of Noah and the flood.  Noah was a good man, but most people at the time he lived were behaving very badly indeed. God was sad because of the violent ways people treated each other, and so God told Noah to build an ark -- a kind of ship -- and to take his family, along with two of every kind of animal, into the ark.  Then it rained for 40 days and 40 nights, and the earth was flooded with water. Only Noah's family and the animals he brought on board survived. Then the rain stopped, the sun shone, the earth dried out, and Noah's family and all the animals went out of the ark onto dry land. God blessed them, and to symbolize the promise never to flood the whole earth again, God said, "I set my rainbow in the clouds and it shall be a sign of the Covenant between me and the earth." Every time we see a rainbow, we can remember God’s blessing of the Earth and all its creatures.

Genesis 6:5-9-17

Potential ornaments to make for the Jesse Tree: a rainbow, a boat, animals of any kind (we made giraffes)

Jesse Tree: The Story of Leaving Eden

Genesis also tells a story about Adam and Eve and the beautiful Garden of Eden where they lived.  God's own breath had given life to human beings. Fruit trees in the garden provided all the food they needed, and they were very happy.  But a sneaky serpent tempted them to disobey God. One tree grew fruit that God had forbidden them to eat, but the serpent told them it was the most delicious fruit in the garden, and besides, if they ate it they would gain knowledge of good and evil, and be just like God.  So Adam and Eve ate the fruit.  They knew right away that they had done a very bad thing--and so did God.  Because of their disobedience, they had to leave the Garden.  

Genesis 2:4-3:24

Potential ornaments to make for the Jesse Tree: an apple, a snake

Jesse Tree: the Story of How God Created Everything

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." The book of Genesis tells how God created everything: light and darkness, water and dry land, plants and animals, and human beings, male and female, in God's own image. And when God saw all of creation, "behold, it was very good." This story reminds us that the whole universe is God's creation, and that our life is a loving gift from God, and that all of it is very, very good.

Genesis 1:1-2:3

Potential ornament to make for the Jesse Tree: the Earth

Advent 1: "planting" your Jesse Tree

Here is a brief retelling of the story from Scripture which gives the Jesse Tree its name. (If any of you have read Star of Wonder, you’ll note that the young shepherd is named Jesse, just like the keeper of sheep from ancient times.) This is what you will read when you first plant your Jesse Tree and light the candle:

This is a story of Jesus' family tree. Long ago, the prophet Isaiah told the ancient Hebrew people that a new branch would grow from an old tree stump. Isaiah said that this new branch, this new life, would come from the family of Jesse, a farmer and keeper of sheep who lived near Bethlehem. David, Israel's most famous king, was Jesse's youngest son, and Jesus was born hundreds of years later into David's family of descendants. The prophet Isaiah wrote:

          A shoot will spring from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him.

All the "ornaments" that we make to hang on our Jesse Trees come from different stories in the Bible that happened before Jesus was born and so they are part of what make up his family tree.

Final preparation for the Jesse Tree

Next Sunday, on December 1, Advent begins:  a good time to "plant" your Jesse Tree

Throughout Advent, evening by evening, after you light the candle(s) near your Jesse Tree, consider doing the following:

     Either recite this brief prayer:

o  Parent: You, O Lord, are my lamp.

o  Children: My God, you make my darkness bright.

or try singing a verse or two from an Advent hymn (you can find very different online versions of any of the following: "Come O Come Emmanuel";  "Come, Thou Long-expected Jesus"; "On Jordan's Bank the Baptist's Cry" -- experiment till you find one you like)

·     Read the day’s brief Scripture story aloud to your children. As they get older, you may want to switch to reading the original stories from the Bible.

·     Ask one of the children to hang the appropriate "ornament" that you've created earlier in the day to go with the reading.  If you have several children, you can alternate who lights candles, who hangs the ornament, who does the closing blessing, who puts out the candle.  Try to include everyone each evening.

·     After hanging the day’s symbolic ornament, say the following brief blessing:

o  Parent: In this Advent season, Lord, help us to hear and heed these stories as we prepare for the Holy Birth on Christmas.

o  Child: God bless us all. Amen.

·     Put out the candles, unless you want to leave them burning until bedtime and ask one of the children extinguish them then.

Note: Don’t feel you have to do every reading, or that you have to follow this particular set of rituals. Find your own comfort level, using this simply as a resource to develop your own family activities.

Getting ready for Advent, before getting ready for Christmas

It's almost Advent, so time to start thinking about how to "keep the faith" in the midst of commercial chaos.

(Those of you who followed this blog last year will recognize much of what's coming over the next month.)

When my kids were little, maintaining a Jesse Tree during Advent helped counter the cultural pressure to see Christmas as nothing but "What do I get? What will be under the tree for me?" 

By making "ornaments" to symbolize stories from Scripture and then hanging them on a small branch we cut ahead of time, we found the Jesse Tree to be a family ritual which gave the gift of Scripture to our children and allowed the old stories to etch themselves into their memories. It's a fine companion to the traditional Advent Calendar, an additional buffer to the commercial kidnapping of Christmas.

Incorporating the Jesse Tree into Advent simply involves retelling a story from Scripture each day during Advent, and then making some sort of symbol to represent that story (an "ornament") to hang on the branch. Our "ornaments" were pretty basic -- we were not an artistic bunch. Some families create much more elaborate (or at least attractive) Jesse Tree ornaments. Note the photo of our Jesse Tree -- and be convinced that even the artistically challenged can do this, or be inspired to do better.

Madeleine L'Engle used to talk about the ancient magic of telling stories around tribal fires at night. Even within our contemporary homes, we can recreate this sense of awe and wonder.  The Jesse Tree ritual of lighting a candle and telling a story unites those participating.  The more ritual and story we can incorporate into family life, the deeper the sense of community we share with one another, and by enlivening our children's imaginations with these ancient stories we can help them see themselves as part of God's ongoing creation, as part of salvation history.

If this is the first year you create a Jesse Tree, you’ll need to make the symbolic ornaments to hang on the “tree”, either day by day or in a marathon crafts session.  I’ll offer potential symbols for each story, but you might want to come up with your own; many families use a rainbow for Noah's story, for example, but one of my sons loves animals so we had giraffes.  To make the symbols, we used colored construction paper and felt tipped pens, or cut out and glued felt, or we used found materials.  For Isaac's sticks, for example, we bundled a small bunch of twigs together, and for Rahab's cord, we used a piece of red ribbon.  You can’t get it wrong.

Go for a walk with your children to look for a branch from a bush or tree that you can "plant" in a flower pot filled with sand or place in a sturdy vase. On the first night of Advent, or on whatever night you begin, instead of hanging a symbol on the Jesse Tree you will "plant" it. 

Then each night, light a candle or two near where you put the Jesse Tree and tell one of the stories.  (If you are comfortable doing so, have one of the children light the candle, but keep it far enough away from the tree to avoid a fire.)

By looking at our cat Zeke trying to steal ornaments, you can get a sense of the size of the branch we use for our Jesse Tree, and some of our rather primitive symbols.  Years ago when our children were young, one of their friends looked at the dead branch with its paper ornaments and asked in horror, "Is that your Christmas tree?" Micah explained that no, this was a Jesse Tree, not a Christmas tree, and proceeded to share some of the stories that went with the symbols. Later, when he was in an 8th grade Humanities class, he aced work on Judeo-Christian Scriptures because he already knew all the stories. 

Next week,  I'll have a little more about the Jesse Tree, and on December 1st and every day after, all the way through to Christmas Eve, I'll post a brief retelling of a story from Scripture along with a suggested ornament to make.

Reptilian brains and boredom

Reptiles don't dream.

Boredom can foster creativity and spirituality.

Now bear with me while I try to connect those two seemingly disparate statements.

Reptiles don't dream because they live in a constant state of simple visual awareness that is like our REM  dreaming sleep.

Only recently did I learn that all mammals (including humans) still have a reptilian brain, which begins at the top of the spinal column and reaches into the midbrain region. Our residual reptilian brain is where our own dreams originate, and it is activated by such visual stimulants as television, movies, and video games.

This primitive part of our brain is the source of aggression, territoriality, greed, hostility, ritual -- all sorts of instinctive survival behaviors -- and it is also the place where human beings "stuff" things that disturb or distress us when we fail to process them. (This makes me think about how badly I sleep if I go to bed without processing a particularly difficult day. No wonder: I'm inviting the alligators to come out and play…..)

All this raises a couple of red flags for those of us who tend children.

First, this is another way of telling us that allowing kids to watch too much television (or movies or video games) means that we are failing to help them develop the evolutionarily more complex neocortex, but instead are providing stimulation of the primitive, aggressive reptilian part of the brain. It's not just a matter of watching violent content, but of passively watching anything for too long a time.

Next, awareness of our reptilian brain alerts us to the importance of listening to the stories our children tell, day by day, keeping us alert to those things that frighten or hurt them. Failure to confront trauma and difficulties as they arise can end up feeding those negative feelings to the reptilian brain, which in turn can lead to nightmares,  anxiety, and depression.

So where on earth does boredom factor into all this talk of aggression, repression, and reptiles?

"Boredom," I was raised to believe, was a bad word for a bad reality. My own mother was determined that her children would never be bored, and so she taught us to read early, enrolled us in ballet classes, insisted we take piano lessons, initiated play groups, and later encouraged us to have friends over often. Her encouragement of active engagement seems small potatoes compared to the crowded schedules so many kids currently maintain.

Constant busyness, however, even if it doesn't involve television or video games, can prevent the necessary processing of daily experience. If there's always "the next thing" to do, there's no time to think about what's already happened, good or bad, and there's no reason for children to be in charge of their own reality.

When we allow our kids to experience enough down time to become bored, we give them the chance to come up with ways of entertaining themselves. I used to hate hearing, "Mama, I'm bored." It felt like an accusation, a statement that I had failed as a mother. In retrospect, I realize that I was trying too hard to give them -- give them  -- whatever they needed rather than letting them find their own way.

Providing times of "nothing in particular to do," by the way, can also begin to foster spirituality in children. If we fill our children (or ourselves) with too much busyness, there's no room or time for God. Remember the promise of Scripture: God will lead us to green pastures and still waters, where we may lie down to rest and be restored (maybe even a little bored?).