All Creation Waits -- Gift Edition: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings (an Illustrated Advent Devotional with 25 Woodcut Animal Portraits) - Hardcover

by Gayle Boss (Author), David G. Klein (Illustrator)

A special gift edition of the bestselling book for Advent that reveals the wisdom and wonder of animals in the natural world

In twenty-five portraits depicting how wild animals of the northern hemisphere ingeniously adapt when darkness and cold descend, we see and hear as if for the first time the ancient wisdom of Advent: The dark is not an end but the way a new beginning comes. Short, daily reflections capture in vivid detail the intricate and astonishing ways that familiar animals, from the honeybee to the porcupine, prepare for winter. Each day's reading is paired with a charming original woodcut illustration. Anyone who feels tired of the consumer hype of "the holiday season" will be refreshed and awakened to the eternal truth the natural world reveals.

This special gift edition:

• Includes a new introduction, with suggestions for how the book can be used during Advent

• Features inspirational thoughts from men and women through the ages - scientists, poets, and philosophers - who have found God through the beauty of creation

• Includes an Afterword, bringing readers up to date on what has happened since All Creation Waits was first published

• Invites quiet reflection during an often-chaotic holiday season

• Prompts meaningful conversations between children and adults, church groups, book clubs, creation care classes, and much more

Written with quiet passion and backed by extensive research, All Creation Waits has captured the minds and hearts of thousands of readers of all ages, from children to adults. Gayle Boss invites us to realize that God can be known in all creatures, and that paying attention to these creatures makes us more fully human, more fully ourselves.

"The practice of Advent has always been about helping us to grasp the mystery of a new beginning out of what looks like death. Other-than-human creatures--sprung, like us, from the Source of Life--manifest this mystery without question or doubt. The more I'm with animals and the more I learn about them, the more I know they can be more than our companions on this planet. They can be our guides. They can be to us 'a book about God...a word of God, ' the God who comes, even in the darkest season, to bring us a new beginning." --from All Creation Waits

Author Biography

Gayle Boss writes in Michigan, where she was born and raised. Her life-long love of animals and her immersion in spiritual texts and practices have melded in poems and essays that explore how relationships with animals specifically, and an attentive presence in the natural world generally, restore us to our deepest selves. The mother of two grown sons, she lives in Grand Rapids with her husband.

David G. Klein is an award-winning graphic artist with illustrations for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Random House, Tor Books, DC Comics, and Marvel. He is a graphic novelist, printmaker, engraving artist, and co-founder of Brooklyn-based Point Made Animation.