What’s in this month’s Seed Disperser
Inspiration this month – God With Us
Twelve Days of Christmas
Norah Jones - You’re Not Alone
Kiwi Christmas
Christmas at Home
Bringing in a New Year
A Gift for Christmas
20% discount across entire range
On a personal note
It’s a wrap - 2021
Inspiration this month - God With Us
Twelve Days of Christmas
This is the book that wasn’t meant to happen! Dreamed up as an add-on to this year’s Advent series, Twelve Days of Christmas was initially intended to be a couple of extra downloadable pages to extend our Advent series into Christmas Day and beyond. Seventy pages later and we realised that Caroline accidentally wrote a book. If you’re planning on spending Christmas Day at home and looking for a creative worship experience for your household this is for you. If you lead a church or other group and want to distribute it amongst your people we’re offering a distribution licence.
Twelve Days of Christmas includes a full worship experience for Christmas Day, complete with a cast of downloadable characters for a Nativity Play. There’s a little bit of preparation required ahead of time, but all the instructions are included and most items can be gathered from around the home or sourced locally.
Spending the days after Christmas Day at home or not gathering with the usual friends and family? There’s 12 different days of ideas with inspiration and activity for each, culminating in a Twelfth Night feast and an interactive worship experience for Epiphany.
Written with these pandemic times in mind, the ideas in this book will last for future years when the pandemic is behind us. Everything is fully adaptable and like most of Kereru Publishing’s resources takes a smorgasbord approach.
Individual PDF = $20 (NZD) approx $14 (USD)
Group license to distribute to 50 people = $50 (NZD) approx $34 (USD)
Norah Jones - You’re Not Alone
In October Norah Jones released her first Christmas album. The inspiration for this album came after listening to Christmas music for comfort during the 2020 pandemic lockdown. The whole album is curated for our current times and offers comfort and hope. You’re Not Alone is one of the her own six original songs on the album. It’s a beautiful song coming alongside us on a lonely Christmas Day and reminding us we are not alone when is God is with us.
Kiwi Christmas
Looking for a kiwi take on Christmas? Here’s three recommended titles written by New Zealand authors.
Kiwi Christmas by Joy Cowley is a retelling of the first Christmas set in a land of summer days, sheep shearing, pohutukawas and a starry sky.
Hymns from the Heart by Jan Chamberlin will take you all through the year, but there’s a special section just for Advent and Christmas. Sing new words to old tunes.
Prayers for the Gathering by Alan K Webster does not contain seasonal Christmas prayers but it is a book for all times and occasions. We’ve included this book in our Kiwi Christmas collection as a wonderful resource celebrating God With Us.
Purchase a copy of all three books and receive a free copy of Twelve Days of Christmas by Caroline Bindon.
Add all four books to your shopping cart and use the code KIWICHRISTMAS at the checkout. Offer available until 26th December 2021 (NZDT)
Christmas at Home
If you’re planning on a Christmas at home and looking for ideas our December issue of The Seed Disperser in 2020 had a few simple ways to bring meaningful inspiration into your Christmas at home experience.
Bringing in a New Year
A New Year comes with possibilities of fresh starts, new beginnings and second chances. You might want to keep the pressure off yourself from making goals, resolutions and plans amidst the current pandemic challenges. The New Year is still a good time to reflect on what’s been and what’s ahead.
Here’s some fun ideas to try if you’re feeling reflective.
Use a stick on a beach below the high tide mark. Write or draw things you will be pleased to see behind you from 2021. Turn this into a prayer. Watch the tide come over your drawing and cleanse the sand, taking way with the tide the things you’ve given to God.
Use chalk and draw on a driveway or footpath. Choose a sunny day so the rain won’t wash away your creation for a while. Create an image representing your hopes and dreams for 2022. Turn this into a prayer.
Start a practice of gratitude
Make a gratitude jar. Write three things you’re grateful for each day and drop them into your jar. This works really well if you prefer a non-linear approach and find recording in a daily journal a stressful pressure.
Pay it forward. If you’re grateful for the help of someone else has given you this year, plan a way to pay it forward in the coming year and do something for someone else who is struggling.
Look for signs of hope
Rise early one day in the New Year. Greet the new day by watching the sunrise. Let the light wash over you, slowly and gradually building stronger and brighter. Use the time to pray for hope in your present and future circumstances.
Stay up late and try to be away from city lights. Lie on a blanket looking up at the starry sky. Ponder the vast expanse of stars, and the bigness of God’s creation. Ponder how Jesus talked of little things; a bit of yeast, a small seed, a coin. Invite God’s hope to infuse your approach to your own challenges, small and big.
A Gift for Christmas
We’re offering a special discount across our whole range of resources in our online shop. Use the code GIFTS before midnight 31st December 2021 and receive 20% discount.
On a Personal Note - It’s a wrap
We’ve written and edited thousands of words this year and like many others, we reach the end of this year and we’re feeling tired and ready for our summer holiday. Highlights for 2021 include launching our first Autumn Rambles in collaboration with The Prayer Bench, our bumper issues and seasonal series in our lectionary resource, Taking Flight, our best ever Counting Down to Christmas and the surprise of Twelve Days of Christmas.
Thank you to everyone who sends us feedback about using our resources. We really appreciate the interaction as it helps us shape and change what we write to meet needs and prompt new paths of creativity. We have a few exciting ideas and plans for 2022 and after a summer break we’ll share some of them with you in our next edition of The Seed Disperser.
Here’s an image from our Counting Down to Christmas resource this year. We have been travelling daily from the start of Advent, listening to songs of hope, peace, joy and love in our Rhymes, Rhythms & Rituals theme for 2021. This image is from the sixth day. Each day another caroller joins the chorus. By Christmas Day it will be almost impossible to count the heads in our angel choir.
May you hear the Song this Christmas.
May you hear the Voice this Christmas.
May God With Us be present with you this Christmas and through 2022
And may both Christmas and the New Year bring hope, peace, love and joy to you.
On the journey
Andrew and Caroline