REPOST from 11/22/2023
Valerie -Welcome to the Bookworthy Podcast. I'm children's author Valerie Fentress, and we are here to talk about Kid-lit that's good for your kids' hearts and souls. Kid-lit ranges from birth to teens, so there is a lot of shelf space to cover. Today we are talking with Gayle Boss, the author of All Creation Waits, which explores the deep mystery and the abiding truth at the heart of the Christ story. This enchanting Advent book is now available in a children's edition. Gayle, it's a joy to have you with us this morning.
Gayle -Oh, thank you, Valerie. It's such a pleasure.
Valerie -Wonderful. Well, with Thanksgiving being tomorrow, what is the dish that must be on your Thanksgiving table?
Gayle -Well, I'm vegan, so it isn't turkey, and it isn't anything that involves a product from an animal. But we go to my brother's house, and there they are not vegans or vegetarians even. But they generously accommodate me and even indulge me with this wonderful lentil rice bake that's cooked very slowly so that the flavors get really rich and nutty and deep.
Valerie -Oh, that sounds delicious. Oh, I'm so glad that you're able to find something to fill your convictions and fill your stomach too. But now comes the tricky question. Well, here comes the tricky question, Gail. Is your Christmas tree up yet?
Gayle -Well, the answer to that is a story that I tell in the introduction to All Creation Waits, the original edition. Early in our marriage, I learned the history of Advent. And I learned that in the tradition, in the Northern Hemisphere, the church acknowledged that it's a dark season, physically dark, the shortest days of the year, but also that physical darkness often brings a spiritual gloom to our souls. So what the church taking creation into account said was, you know, to meet this darkness folks, it's best to keep an eye to the creation and do what creation does, which is to pare down to the essentials. And then we will acknowledge the dark, we will wait in the dark with the hope that the promised light will come to us and will be even more prepared for the light. So the early church advised treating these four weeks before Christmas as a sort of Lent, fasting, praying, and giving things away and waiting in the dark for the light. So I had suffered from a seasonal depression all my life in December especially.
And I thought this might be the key to my own healing. So I convinced my husband. That we were going to keep an ancient advent. And so we kept all the decorations in the boxes, including the tree, no tree. We didn't sing any Christmas carols. We didn't hold any parties. We waited in the dark with hope for the coming light. We had now, we had some rituals that made that waiting in the dark very rich. We had an advent wreath where we would sing around it in the dark, oh come, oh come, Emmanuel. We had a Jesse tree where we told the stories of God's people waiting for a savior. And we also had an advent calendar that had pictures of animals behind each of the doors. And I'll talk about why in a few minutes. But I found that then when Christmas came and we pulled out the tree and had a big party to celebrate the light coming, and all of the decorations and the Christmas carols, I found that my seasonal depression, once we began celebrating Advent that way, vanished because I had acknowledged what was going on in my body as a result of what was going on in the creation around us. So we have celebrated that way ever since, since 1986, right through, yes, the raising of our children. And the tree does not go up until
Gayle -Christmas Eve. So no, it's not up. Yeah, no, no.
Valerie -That is beautiful. Not up yet. But yeah, that is a beautiful story. And I love how it just, you know, you look at like old movies and ways that Christmas is depicted. And usually, I've always been curious of why some people always put it up their Christmas tree just before Christmas Eve. They go out on Christmas Eve, get their tree and put it up. And I was like, that is amazing. I didn't know that about Advent's history. I love how your book encourages that waiting, that hoping, that rest. Cause I think that's something that's often lost in our culture is that understanding our need for a season of rest. Now, I'm guessing this is most of your inspiration for all creation waits, but what else kind of led you to this original story that you had made for more adults and older children?
Gayle -Yeah, thanks for asking that. Well, I had, as I mentioned, this advent calendar. And the reason I had an advent calendar with animals behind each of the little doors was that when we started to have children in 1991, I knew that I wanted to add an advent calendar to our plan rituals and our practices. And I knew it wanted, I wanted the Advent calendar to embody the sense of waiting in the dark. But when I went to look for an Advent calendar, all the commercial ones had pictures of reindeer or candy canes or gift packages, or they had pictures
of the cast of the Nativity. So in other words, they were Christmas calendars, not Advent waiting-in-the-dark calendars. So that, well, I have no choice. I've got to make my own. I was thinking, what will I put behind the little doors of the advent calendar? And in a stroke of divine providence, my best friend sent me just as I began to make that advent calendar, her reflection on the painted turtles in the pond where she lives, and she said, you know, the turtles have it right when a soul feels itself in a dark time, a soul goes deep and buries itself and wait. And I thought that's it. For my advent calendar to embody waiting in the cold and dark, I'll put animals, and we'll start with turtle. And then the animals just started lining up to be on my advent calendar. There was a muskrat and a doe and a crow and a goose, all of them symbols for how a healthy soul might respond when it feels under the pressure of dark and cold. And children love pictures of animals. So my children were getting just, oh, today it's a bear. And then we would talk about why in the world do we have a bear on our advent calendar. And we would talk about natural
history, what a bear, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, does during the cold and dark, and why she can be a teacher to us in the cold and dark. So that was the advent calendar that I made for my little ones. And it wasn't until 17 years after I made the advent calendar for my children. So all my kids, except one, was launched, was out of the house. And I thought, gee, this might make a nice book of reflections for adults. I think it might have happened because we would invite adults over during Advent and then they'd have to walk through our rituals including the Advent calendar. And a few people might say, that's strange but cool. And I think I thought, well, maybe it would be an interesting book of reflections for adults, much expanded and elaborated and with a different kind of language than the little booklet I had to go along with the Advent calendar for my boys.
Valerie -So fun. I love all the different animals that you've chosen in just these times of reflection. Some do hibernate like the bear and even some like the porcupine that stays awake and climbs out chews on some bark and then goes back to bed. And I think you've done an amazing job of giving, you know, I know in the adult vision version, more of a reflection on how our souls need that deep space, but for children to kind of sit and explore these unique
creatures. I mean, I think you have some common things like, you know, the deer and the raccoon, but then some very unique characters like the wood frog and the firefly. I was really surprised to find a firefly in there and just to be how, oh yeah, they do. They lay their eggs in the dirt and they wait and grow and wait for just the right opportunity to come out. So I love that for children, because what is it? Animals just do an amazing job of communicating God's greatness and goodness to us, even in our busyness. So what did you discover, or when did you discover your love for nature?
Gayle -Oh, wow, that's lifelong. I grew up in northern Michigan. You know, Michigan is shaped like this, and I grew up here. In the lower peninsula up here. My father owned 300 acres of wild land and my grandparents owned land too. And so Sunday afternoons would often find us tromping through the woods and my father could identify wildflowers and mushrooms and animal tracks. And I was captivated by that. Like many children though, I went to college in the city, and then I moved with my husband to Washington DC for work and it lay dormant. That love lay dormant for a long time until I started having children. And their natural love, I really think it's innate, it's inherent in children. Their inherent love of the natural world woke up mine. And
I let myself return. To that love of the natural world. It also helped that once my oldest son was four, we moved back to Michigan and we bought a house right on the edge of an ecosystem preserve. And so in a five-minute walk, we could be within this ecosystem preserve. So there is natural love of the world and creatures, we could feed that and my love that was waking back up again every day with a five-minute walk to the preserve. So all things work together to enliven or to wake up out of dormancy, that love of the natural world that I'd had since I was a very small child.
Valerie -Oh, that is an amazing story. And I love that, you know, like you just kind of bringing these whole themes of dormancy of in your own life and just reawakening your interests and your own, you know, both spiritual and natural love for the world around you. Now, I guess with a love of nature and exploring the nature preserve near your home with your kids, how other than just walking and exploring all the creatures you must have found? How did you implement this patience and waiting in your own home with your children?
Gayle -Hmm. I think it's something they catch. It's a contagion. I had been thinking and learning practices of quiet and contemplation for many years before I had my children. I didn't have my first child until I was 34. And so I'd had a long time to begin that practice. Not that I was in any way accomplished or proficient at meditation, contemplation, and prayer by the time I started having children. And even if I had, you know, the flurry of child raising will test it
sorely anyway. But I did, I was so persuaded that practice was life-giving and restored my soul, as the psalmist says, the prayer of quiet, a life of quiet, even when I was in the throes of raising young children. And I think my kids caught it. I think it's a contagion. They are not going to practice anything we impose on them if we're not practicing it ourselves. So we had times of prayer, we had times of quiet reading, we had times of walking out in the natural world and splashing in the pools and marveling at whatever we found. And so whatever they got, they caught organically.
Valerie -I love how that modeling, even just the ability to wait and to sit, is, as you said, things are more caught than they are taught. And it is that if we want to instill, whether a love of the Bible, a love of books, a love of nature, whatever that love that we have, and we want that in our kids, they have to see us doing those things, practicing those things, having value in those things. And I love that you have done that for your kids because I know I live in the city. And so it is a challenge to be able to sit out and, uh, walk in nature. Plus being in Texas, you know, it's usually hot most of the time, but you know, it's one of those, we planted a garden in our backyard when my kids were little and they just loved putting their hands in the dirt and exploring, gotten some unique bug bites and just explored just how God created so many bizarre things. And you know, was it, why did God create ants? Well, let's take a walk and we'll
find out. And so I love that even, you know, this book really builds in a love of nature. And even when you're, you know, you have 25 days and 24 animals, and then Jesus surrounded by animals. And I love that each page in this children's edition does a great job of just opening up the opportunity for more questions, more questions about that animal, or the animals that might be hiding in the trees behind. Even in your wording, you've kept it like talking about how the deer mate and stuff, but it's really simple and not too natural, I guess, but it opens the door for more conversation.
Gayle -Yeah, nicely said.
Valerie -Thank you. Well, I guess with all creation weights you wanted to, for adults you wanted to create this calm and still. Is the goal the same for children or is it a little different?
Gayle -Yes, both, I would say. It's the same and it's different. It's the same in that they'll understand that's what the animals are doing. They are in each in their way waiting. Even the fox squirrel that is just as busy in winter as he is in summer is waiting in the sense that he has many fewer hours to scurry about. It's a diurnal animal. He's only busy during the day and the days in Michigan are pretty short. So he has much more time to rock up there in the trees and wait for daylight. So even the busiest animals are waiting. It's a little different in that I want what I want children to absorb first and foremost is this sense of amazingness of the animals and this utter awe at the amazing ways they have been created. And I think then once they revere them and respect them and love them, then they're ready to learn from them. And
what each child learns may be different from what I've learned. The book Both the adult version and the children's version opens with an epigraph from the 13th-century mystic Meister Eckhart. Every creature is full of God and is a book about God. I want children to want to go to animals and read that book for themselves. And I hope that's what the children's book does. They say, oh, mama, we got to see a muskrat. Where can we see a muskrat?
Valerie -Very neat. Yeah, it kind of reminds me of Romans 1:20, you know, kind of since the creation of the world, God's invisible qualities have been seen and understood by what he had made. And I love that. I mean, God speaks to me massively through nature and just being able to sit and be still. And I love that you want to awaken this love of nature in children by teaching them just to sit and explore. Because I think we can get really busy in our lives. I know, what is it here? My kids have been in a really busy season with school starting and all their activities, but there are these few days of our week that are just still and you can kind of just see them. All the weight of the world lifts and they're just able to enjoy each other. I think we forget to do that sometimes.
Gayle -The children are hungry for it. And we don't want them to grow up into the anxious adults that most of us have become. Yeah.
Valerie -Very true. Now, did you always want to be an author, Gayle?
Gayle -I wouldn't have said that, but as I was rewriting my website, I remembered that I wrote my first story. I remember the first, writing my first story in fourth grade, and it was about a small rabbit in a big wood. And Mrs. Hartnell, my fourth-grade teacher, gently suggested some ways that the story might be improved. And I burst into tears I think I've gotten better at receiving critique since then, but what that points out to me is that even then, in fourth grade at the age of what would I have been, 10, 9, or 10, writing mattered to me. I don't think I would have burst into tears if she corrected my math paper. But something that I had written and something about, and already I was writing about small rabbits in big woods. I think the seed was there long ago and it took me well into adulthood to acknowledge it.
Valerie -It's neat how, what is it? There are a lot of writers that I've gotten to talk to that fourth-grade year is kind of this turning point and sometimes, you know, the teacher either embraces that creativity and encourages that creativity or awakens or makes you aware of your interest and passion for writing. And I love that teachers do that and just the power that teachers have on little hearts and minds.
Valerie -Now, what is your favorite book?
Gayle -Of all time?
Valerie -Of all time, yes, other than the Bible. That one gets the number one spot.
Gayle -Oh, yeah, it does in my heart too. I mean, the Bible I read daily. Yeah, I think, because you asked me to think about this. And it was tough. But I think as I look back over my life, it would be the Chronicles of Narnia. They not only shaped my worldview, but they persuaded me of the power of stories to persuade us that there is a world so much bigger and more mysterious and awesome and it's just beyond the wardrobe door. It is so very close and we can realize it in our own life. Stories can do that and they can awaken us to that world. So I would say that just by the way it shaped my worldview, those books, which I first read, not until early high school years, and then I reread them, and of course I read them to my children, I think those were really, really powerful for me.
Valerie -I knew we were going to be good friends, Gayle, because me too, Chronicles of Narnia, is just that book that just awakens your mind to there's a world beyond our world, within our world. And so it's just, it definitely for kids to awaken them to see beyond the room that they're in, that there is such magic in our world, whether that's more natural magic than actual like Harry Potter magic, but you know, I don't know that's semantics, I guess. Well, what was your favorite children's book to read to your kiddos?
Gayle - Well, Chronicles of Narnia, although it's not a children's book, I guess, a picture book. I would be hard-pressed. We had a lovely picture book of the telling of the stories of Camelot that both of my boys really, especially my older son, really clung to and wanted to read over and over again. The magic that is the mystery, the power that is beyond our world but within our world. That was powerful for them. I don't really, to tell you the truth,
remember any picture books. From my own childhood, I began remembering books once I was reading the Marguerite Henry books about the horses of Chincoteague and then the Chronicles.
Valerie-Well, even Misty of Chincoteague, those books, those are like, made me jump, but those are some of my favorites too. So, yeah, again, showing us another side of a world that we live in and just helping us explore the world we're in, which is what the power of books is. Well, Gayle, what can we expect next from you?
Gayle -Yeah, I loved those books. Oh, I wish I knew Valerie. That's a really tough question. I wrote All Creation Waits in 2016, and then in 2020, I wrote Wild Hope, a book of animal stories
about endangered animals for Lent. And then the gift edition of All Creation came out, and I had to do some writing for that, and then the children's book and I did some writing for that. But ever since 2020, I've been trying to write a book that is not succeeding, and I know it's not working. And I keep coming at it from different approaches, hoping that one day I'll make my way in. It's about captive animals. Animals, we hold captive for our purposes. Everything from animals in the entertainment industry to the food industry. And what we're losing for our souls by relegating them to machines, to being machines.
Valerie -That sounds very interesting, and it sounds like a challenging book to write for certain. Could there possibly be a... Oh, go ahead.
Gayle -I was going to say I don't want to write an excoriation. I'm not interested in making people defensive or angry. I want to somehow coax us all into this sense of awe, the same awe that we might have for a Red Fox or orangutan for a cow or a chicken or a turkey, the one that's on your table. I want to coax us into that same awe. I remember having a turkey sit on my lap and purr like a cat. And I thought, oh, if we only knew I didn't know until I held that turkey. Yeah, so that's what I'm trying to do. And I'm just not succeeding very well. But so far, I'm not dissuaded. I'm not discouraged. That in itself is a miracle. But because I think I just don't know enough yet. I think God is just waiting until I'm ready, but wants me to keep trying. So that's, I just think I don't know enough yet. I mean, internally, my heart doesn't know enough yet.
Valerie -Thank you. Yeah, that sounds very interesting, right? Yeah. God's still teaching you along the way. This is one of the things about waiting that we don't always understand is that God is working in the waiting and that waiting is not an empty time. It's time we're being taught something in time that we are resting and preparing for the next season, just as our hibernating friends in your book are. And so I love that you're continuing to wait and work in the waiting too. Is there possibly a chance for, was it Hidden Hope to have a children's edition?
Gayle -Wild Hope is the name of the book. I don't know. That's a hard book. I mean, it's a book for Lent. So it's a book of lament at what we're losing as all of these species go extinct. Pericleet has not proposed that yet. And so I think it's unlikely. You have to be, in fact, even as an adult, you have to be a pretty spiritually mature adult, I think, to be able to get to the end of it and believe that there is, even in all of this destruction, some seed of resurrection. The refrain in all creation waits that a child will hear each day of Advent is the dark is not an end. It's a door. It's the way a new beginning comes. That's the gospel in two lines, and it's just as true for Wild Hope. The dark, as dark as this extinction crisis is, is not an end. It's a door. It's the way a new beginning comes. But the beginning is up to us also in partnership with God.
Valerie -Very true. I think, well, we might need to nudge Paraclete a little bit, but... Okay, okay, okay. You let me know when. Well, Gayle, where can people find out more about you?
Gayle -Wait, I'm not sure I want to write the children's edition, so let's not nudge yet. Thanks. My website has a nice survey of the books and some beautiful pictures of foxes and other creatures too. And a little bit more of the backstory about how I wrote each one. So just go to gayleboss.com.
Valerie -Wonderful. I look forward to following you and finding out more about whatever you come up with next. I love that you're just a reflective soul, not just in yourself, but in your words as well. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Gayle -Yeah, an utter pleasure. Thank you, Valerie.
Valerie -And thank you for joining Gayle and me on this episode of the Bookworthy Podcast. And Happy Thanksgiving! Be sure to check out the show notes for any books or links that we discussed. Let us know in the comments if your Christmas tree goes up before or after Thanksgiving. Then hit that like and subscribe button to help us discover more great books together.
Happy reading!
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