Advent 2025 Resources
Three devotionals for the season of Advent from SALT for printing or downloading to your phone, tablet, or laptop. Scroll to the bottom of this page for information on a great podcast and Advent resources from the Episcopal Church.
If you have questions about the Advent devotionals below or would like to review a print copy, please speak with
Sheelagh Higginson or email sheelaghhigginson@gmail.com
Dawn Chorus: A Family-Friendly Devotional on the wonders of birds
Songbirds know a thing or two about singing into darkness: in the wee hours of the morning, before the sun appears over the horizon, they begin a great symphony that scientists call the “dawn chorus.”
Advent is the church’s dawn chorus. In this devotional designed for families of all shapes and sizes, we walk with scripture through the season’s four weeks of hope, peace, joy, and love, singing into shadows and looking to the light.
Each week includes a simple candlelight service (light a candle, read a passage from scripture and a short reflection, and sing a dawn chorus song or two); a few bird-related fun facts to share (try taking turns reading them around the table!); some provocative conversation starters; a handful of ideas for service during the week; and a lovely, simple bird ornament to cut out, decorate, and hang on your tree or around the house.
The scriptural passages in this devotional correspond to Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary – but since their themes are universal, this devotional can be used fruitfully during any Advent season. There is also a podcast for this devotional - click here for the first episode
Below are links to two versions of the devotional along with an instruction sheet if you are having issues accessing the document on your technology or you need print instructions!
1. Instruction sheet
2. A digital download version perfect for laptops, desktops, phones and tablets!
3. A print version (if you need a copy printed, please check with the office)
Heaven’s Earthly Life: Wendell Berry and the Poetry of Advent
“It gets darker and darker,” the poet Wendell Berry once remarked, “and then Jesus is born.”
Each week, this devotional explores biblical texts, Berry’s insights, and weekly practices you can try yourself, with your family or friends, or with your congregation. As our eloquent guide to the season, Berry helps our eyes adjust to the darkness – the better to notice the light.
So grab your favorite Bible and collections of Berry’s poetry (the poems in this devotional can also be found online). Week by week, we’ll make our way through the shadows, arriving at last on Christmas day, that beautiful glimpse of what Berry calls “Heaven’s earthly life.”
The scriptural passages in this devotional correspond to Year A in the Revised Common Lectionary – but since their themes are universal, this devotional can be used fruitfully during any Advent season.
Below are links to two versions of the devotional along with an instruction sheet if you are having issues accessing the document on your technology or you need print instructions!
1. Instruction sheet
2. A digital download version perfect for laptops, desktops, phones and tablets!
3. A print version (if you need a copy printed, please check with the office)
Advent Unbound: A Companion to Pádraig Ó Tuama’s “Poetry Unbound”
God becoming incarnate in a human being is too astounding, too dazzling, too impossible an event to merely celebrate on a single day. Poetry (and podcasts!) can help - and the Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama’s beloved podcast, “Poetry Unbound,” is an inspiring case in point: evocative, accessible poems illuminated with sensitivity and insight by Ó Tuama’s commentary.
In this Advent devotional, we let scripture and “Poetry Unbound” be our guides, together pointing us toward weekly practices that can help deepen and enrich our experience of the season – a perfect way to prepare for the hope, peace, joy, and love of Christmas day.
So grab a Bible and your favorite way of listening to the “Poetry Unbound” podcast (the poems and episode transcripts can also be read online). Week by week, poem by poem, we’ll wait and prepare and listen and sing, unbinding the season – and with God’s help, unbinding our hearts – along the way.
The scriptural passages in this devotional correspond to Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary - but since their themes are universal, this devotional can be used fruitfully during any Advent season.
Below are links to two versions of the devotional along with an instruction sheet if you are having issues accessing the document on your technology or you need print instructions!
1. Instruction sheet
2. A digital download version perfect for laptops, desktops, phones and tablets!
3. A print version (if you need a copy printed, please check with the office)
If you have questions please speak with Sheelagh Higginson or email sheelaghhigginson@gmail.com
Podcast: Strange New World - The Poetry of Christmas
​The Poetry of Christmas Podcast
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Listen to part one of SALT’s four-part “Strange New World” miniseries, “The Poetry of Christmas.”
In this episode, we explore how the Bible is made of poetry, and how Mary Oliver, E. E. Cummings, and the wonder of creation can help us hear Jesus’ call for this Advent and Christmas season: “Keep awake. Be ready.”
Click here to listen to Episode 1: 16 minutes.
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Listen to part two of SALT’s four-part “Strange New World” miniseries, “The Poetry of Christmas.”
In this episode, we dive into whether poetry can be “true,” revisit the infamous image of “the wheat and the chaff,” and explore how E. E. Cummings, Mary Oliver, and the wonder of creation can help us understand “the Way” at the heart of Advent and Christmas.
Click here to listen to Episode 2: 19 minutes
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​​“Strange New World,” a show about understanding the Bible, the world’s most influential, misunderstood book — a podcast tailor-made for skeptics, believers, and everybody in between.
Hosted by SALT’s own Matthew Myer Boulton, who’s spent twenty years teaching the Bible and theology to students at Harvard Divinity School and seminaries in New England and the Midwest, “Strange New World” will take a fresh look at the world’s bestselling book of all time, the ancient community library we call “the Bible.”
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The show’s title, “Strange New World,” is borrowed from an essay written by a Swiss theologian a hundred years ago, in which he wrote of “the strange new world within the Bible,” a world so ancient, so different, so familiar, so strange that it presses us to think new thoughts from new points of view, “to dare and to reach,” and ultimately “to grow out beyond ourselves.”
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Click here to visit the podcast page and listen away.
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Click here for Advent resources from the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire
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Click here for Advent resources from the National Episcopal Church
Click here for Advent resources from the Episcopal Church Foundation
AdventWord
Email subscribers and social media followers will receive a daily meditation (in English and Spanish) and visual image inspired by the day’s word, and are invited to share their own personal reflections, art, poetry, or other creative expression. Click here to sign-up.
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