Jigsaw puzzles are like meditation for me, in a way. They invite a focus on this present image, this present portion of an image. They are about process more than product: the making of the image, its gradual unfolding, small details clarifying as the larger piece takes shape.

Jigsaw puzzles slow me down. Slow my breathing. Slow my thinking, even stop it all together as I let perceiving, feeling, intuition take over from cognition and its words, words, words. I rely in the whole of my life on perceiving, feeling, and intuition quite a lot, and I find it important for these muscles to have time to play. Jigsaw puzzles are joy.

A month or so before Advent began, my sister presented me with a parcel. I happened to be at her house when it was delivered, and she told me I might as well open it, as it was an early Christmas present for me. ‘No use to you if you get it on Christmas Day,’ she said.

Pulling back the packaging, I discovered a box of 24 boxes, each containing a jigsaw puzzle. What a brilliant Advent calendar for a lover of jigsaw puzzles! Every morning of December, I am delighting to open a new box, and put together a new image of Christmas.

Sure, they’re winter Christmas images, and it does not snow in Australia at Christmas. Perhaps one day someone will make one of these with images of Christmas from around the world, including the Southern Hemisphere and tropical regions’ experiences of Christmas in warmer weather. But I did celebrate two Christmases in winter while I lived in Scotland, so that these images now take me back to a home I knew, an experience of Christmas I felt. And it is lovely.

I do appreciate about these puzzles that all of them so far have included non-human characters – and especially day two’s West Highland Terrier, my favourite dog! I would love for a box like this to contain images of non-white human characters, too.

Less than ten minutes each morning, a little parcel of joy to unwrap, a small picture of warmth to construct. A moment of feeling, before the days of thinking unfold. This may be the best gift she’s ever given me.

I included a Daily Office in the re-launched Pray the Story this year. I have long wanted to enhance a posture of contemplation in my own living, a posture we see in the lives of religious – monks, nuns, brothers, sisters. There is no religious order like this in my tradition, the Uniting Church in Australia, and I have not the capacity at present to start one, though I might consider joining one if it existed.

I have reservations about it, however. I’m not great with strict structure, or more, the expectation of strict adherence to structure. I appreciate structure as a scaffold around which to improvise. I mentioned above that I lean on perceiving, feeling, intuition as my ways to engage in the world.

The daily offices of many religious orders are strict times when the community stop, gather, and pray together. I like the idea of moments of pause through the day. But I like to feel when I am ready to pause, especially when I am engaged in creative pursuits of rehearsal or writing that need not to be interrupted.

So I have included a Daily Office in Pray the Story for my own benefit. Four prayers for four moments in the day: dawn, noon, dusk, night. Whenever the day dawns for me, whenever I stop for lunch. Sometime after I have stopped working for the day, before I go to sleep.

I will confess that I am still building my rhythm of praying these daily offices. I’ve prayed dawn and noon a bit, and found my own voice calling me into the ‘opportunity’ of the new day a gift ahead of an Important Meeting recently. But even when I do not pray the prayers I have composed, specifically, I am aware of a greater attentiveness to the smaller moments of pause I take. I am aware of a general posture of contemplation expanding through my every day. So perhaps the Pray the Story daily offices with their gentleness of approach are supporting me as I had hoped.

I wonder, those of you who have joined Pray the Story with a ‘Go Deeper’ subscription, how are the Daily Offices supporting you?