Advent Garden in Ecuador
/By Sheila Johns, Cuenca, Ecuador
On Sunday, December 1st, the Uriel Center for Human Renewal through the Arts and Education in Cuenca, Ecuador sponsored our fifth annual Advent Garden. The Uriel Center is serving as a center for anthroposophic activity here in Cuenca and has most recently become home for a budding local Waldorf early childhood program.
We were pleased to have the participation of two of the local teachers of this initiative for whom this was their first Advent Garden experience. Since Ecuador is the land of roses, we combined the use of local palms with harder to find pine branches, and then decorated liberally with red roses and crystals. A local church has welcomed this activity and supported our efforts to darken and create the desired mood of peace and tranquility, which is a most uncommon experience here in Cuenca. We provided a bilingual written explanation of the history and background of the Advent Garden experience which people could read while they were waiting for the doors to open.
I was pleased to provide lyre music for our 30 participants of every background, who deeply appreciated coming into such a beautiful space, taking an hour out of their busy lives to sit in silence until it was their turn to walk and experience the increasing glow of the candles as they were placed one by one along the spiral. Here is what one ex-pat participant wrote to us the next day:
I forget sometimes how important ceremonies can be. Since I’ve never been to a Spiral Garden ceremony before, I wanted to tell you what is was like for me:
Even though I manage to find and remind myself of peace and stillness most every day, last night’s ceremony, with music, greenery, silence, darkness, and light was exactly what I needed.
Since I read a little beforehand about the aspect of bringing the light back in, I felt very appreciative, not only for myself, but also for an opportunity to be in a group that could and did bring light from a center and out toward wherever it went and to wherever we directed or intended. I found myself intentional at times, toward a place like Syria, but also to some individuals in our national political scene whom I normally tend to judge rather negatively. The sound of the lyre helped me to feel equanimity in this process – to stand back and experience the light as an objective gift that I could both send to others throughout the world as well as allow for myself. Thank you for your dedication to creating a space here in Cuenca for such an experience of noble awareness of the highest that lives in us all.
It is always a privilege to participate in the creation and execution of an Advent Garden, but it is a special additional gift to bring it to people in a foreign country who have never experienced anything like it in their lives and who deeply appreciate such an opportunity.