About the Book
In a world that's difficult to make sense of, and a season that's so often overtaken by consumerism, here you'll find heart-stirring illustrations and thought-provoking meditations designed to show you the raw, powerfully sacred story of Christmas in a new light.
Has the joy of the holiday season become painfully dissonant with the hard edges of life? Do you feel weary from the way Christmas has become a polished, predictable brand? You aren't alone. For too many of us, Christmas has lost its wonder. What if we stopped treating the Christmas story as something that happened a long time ago and started believing that it's a story that's still happening today?
From celebrated artist and storyteller Scott Erickson comes Honest Advent, 25 days of illustrations and meditations that will help you rekindle the wonder of this season. Honest Advent creates a space for you to encounter the Incarnate Christ in unexpected places: like a pregnancy announcement in an era of political unrest and empirical bloodshed, the morning sickness of a Middle Eastern teenager, and the shocking biology of birth that goes far beyond the sanitized brand of Christmas as we know it today.
Within the pages of Honest Advent, Erickson teaches us the valuable lessons he's learned about:
Finding hope and light in the darkest winters
What it means to embrace the unexpected
How God uses everyday vulnerability to help us understand ourselves, and our faith, better
Through powerful benedictions, prayers, and questions for honest reflection, you'll discover how the wonder of God-with-Us is still happening today: in your unexpected change of plans, your unaccomplished dreams, your overcrowded lodging, and your humble stories of new beginnings.
Praise for Honest Advent:
"Scott Erickson's beautifully crafted book helped me see God-with-Us with fresh eyes. Honest Advent is no shallow seasonal gift book; it's an invitation to explore the divine flourishes of everyday human vulnerabilities. A transformative read, regardless of the time of year."
--Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch
"Beautiful. Evocative. A wake-up call to the mystery of life."
--John Mark Comer, author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry
About the Author :
Scott Erickson is a touring painter, performance storyteller, and creative curate who mixes autobiography, biblical narrative, and visual aesthetics that speak to our deepest experiences. He is currently touring his multimedia storytelling piece "Say Yes: A Liturgy of Not Giving Up on Yourself" and is the author of Honest Advent: Awakening to the Wonder of God-With-Us Then, Here, and Now. Scott is most loved by his wife, Holly, and their three children in Austin, Texas.
Popular Instagram poet and artist Morgan Harper Nichols has created her life's work around the stories of others. Morgan's popular Instagram feed (@morganharpernichols) has garnered a loyal online following, and each poem she shares is created in response to the personal stories submitted by her friends and followers. Known for its lyrical tone and vibrant imagery, Morgan's work is an organic expression of the grace and hope we've been given in this world. In addition to her burgeoning career as a poet and illustrator, Morgan has also successfully established her reputation as a musician, with her song "Storyteller" amassing more than one million Spotify plays thus far. She has performed as a vocalist on several GRAMMY-nominated projects and written for various artists, including a Billboard #1 single performed by her sister, Jamie-Grace. Morgan is often on the road creating, teaching, and performing, in hopes of spreading her unique inspirational message and inviting others into her creative process. Morgan currently resides in Los Angeles, California, with her husband, Patrick Kekoa.
Review :
'Beautiful. Evocative. A wake-up call to the mystery of life.'
'I'm no Scrooge, but the last thing I want to read is another book on the Christmas story. Luckily, that's not what this book is about. Scott Erickson's beautifully crafted book helped me see God-with-Us with fresh eyes. Honest Advent is no shallow seasonal gift book; it's an invitation to explore the divine flourishes of everyday human vulnerabilities. A transformative read, regardless of the time of year.'
'Scott Erickson does a perfect job of removing the current taste of stale commercialization and male centeredness from Advent. He then brings back in the beauty, mystery, and wonder that this season is meant to inspire. If you want an Advent made for our moment of social and racial awakening, and one that doesn't oversimplify, this is it!'
'The primary job of an artist is to see. And while a great deal of the excitement around Scott Erickson has had to do with his talent for (and with) imagery, what has made his work vital and unique has always been his vision--a vision for God in the world, for people in the shadow of God, and for people in relationship with one another. This beautiful book is the fullest expression of the kind of vision that makes Scott a gift. Good artists have a knack for clearly and engrossingly letting us in on how they see their world. Great artists change the way we see ours. Scott is becoming a great artist.'
'There are so many things I love about Scott Erickson, and this Advent book brings them all together. I sense that he is always doing his own work, learning how to live in the body and mind he's been given, making sense of the world through all of the means--psychology, sociology, art, science, spirituality, and wonder--so that when he turns his lens toward something, anything, out come these well-formed, beautifully connected scenes. This lens, turned toward Mary, Jesus, and incarnation, helps me break through the incredibly solidified narratives of Christmas into something that moves me again and helps me connect with the real earth, the blood, sweat, and tears--this happened here, on this earth, in our way, through human birth.'
'There is something so enticingly refreshing about the perspective and conversation of Advent through the feminine lens. Scott Erickson's reflection of the Advent season through the connection of the misrepresented women in the Savior story not only is healing and restorative but also brings us back into the story, where the feminine and the divine have always been.'
'This beautifully crafted piece of art explores immaculately the invasion of the best that Christmas means: Presence in our Present.'
'We know of few other voices that so powerfully bring back the luster to tarnished, sacred things. Scott Erickson's Advent meditations will be an evergreen gift for the weary soul, calling out fresh and upending wonder at the incarnation, what it meant then, and how we are to be now.'
'When I was an evangelical, I thought Christmas took too much emphasis away from Easter. When I was an atheist, I thought Christmas reinforced an absurd fairy tale. Me and Christmas, well, it's complicated. That's why I love Honest Advent. As a meditation on the vulnerability of God through the strange mystery of Christ's incarnation, Scott invites us not to master that mystery, but to experience it.'
'With the specific audacity and humility of an artist, Scott Erickson's captivating words and images flip, spin, and reconsider the reality of God-with-Us and the transformative notion of that presence in, with, and through our humanity. He invites us to look afresh and find newness and wonder in the Advent story through the female body--not through its typical maligning but as a way God chose to be with us.'
