Midwestern animals join in Advent
All of creation is waiting for the one who is coming; and this book reminds me of it.
All Creation Waits – Deluxe Edition: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings
Gayle Boss (Author)
and Sharon Spitz (Illustrator)
Paraclete Press, 2026.
I am always on the lookout for good resources to enhance spiritual life during Advent, my favourite liturgical season. So I’m especially grateful for All Creation Waits. This lyrical Advent calendar first came out as a slender paperback in 2016. It proved so successful, translated into a number of languages and with sales of over 100,000, that Paraclete has republished a deluxe tenth anniversary edition. This beautiful hardbound volume, with a sturdy slipcover, contains lovely full-colour wildlife illustrations throughout and – I kid you not – gilt-edged pages. It’s a keeper, worth visiting and revisiting year after year.
All Creation Waits provides daily in-depth reflections for the 25 days leading up to and including Christmas, each focused on a Midwestern animal (the author lives in Michigan) and how that animal prepares for the coming winter. This might seem surprising for an Advent calendar, but for much of our history, Christians have believed there are two books of revelation: scripture – the Bible – and nature. God is revealed through the physical world, “the earliest sacred text given to us.” As the Psalmist testifies: “The heavens tell the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims God’s handiwork.” (Ps. 19:1)
Boss cites much wisdom from the Christian tradition including: “Every creature is a word of God” (Meister Eckhart); “If you wish to know the Creator, come to know his creatures” (St. Columban); “The whole creation cries to us penetratingly, with a great cry, about the existence and the beauty and the love of God. . . . In all of nature we find God’s initials and all of God’s creatures are God’s love letters to us” (Ernesto Cardenal); “Love all God’s creation, the whole and every grain of sand in it. . . . If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things” (Dostoyevsky).
Boss explores how each particular animal – painted turtle, muskrat, black bear, chickadee, cottontail, honey bee, opossum, garter snake, firefly, and more – prepares for and deals with the encroaching darkness and cold when safety, warmth and food are all precarious. Just as humans fast and relinquish during Advent, the wild animals described gather energy and focus on essentials, working hard toward difficult survival. The author displays a matter-of-fact awe at the various strategies. The examples never feel preachy. I learned a lot; I did not know that the male cardinal’s stunning scarlet plumage (“Clothed in the colour of passionate abandon”) is enhanced because of the fruit he chooses to eat.
Then on the 25th day, we celebrate the one who came, the one for whom “all creation waits.” Revisiting this book annually will be one more reason to consider Advent my favourite time of year.
