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.
As a follower of Jesus who has spent the majority of my
professional life (thirty years) working alongside my
Jesus-following, Jewish wife within very dark, hostile Islamic
regimes, we have celebrated many Christmas/Hanukkah seasons hidden
away with curtains drawn and doors locked, lighting candles and
reading the Scriptures. If Honest Advent had been available then, I
would have handed out the book to the Muslim community and walked
through the season with them. What a beautiful, timely work of
art!
*Jamie and Donna Winship, cofounders, Identity Exchange,
Inc.*
As an often flustered mom in the throes of raising four young kids,
I connected so deeply with Honest Advent because it reveals the
nearness of God through a painful but beautiful mess I am very
familiar with--pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. Though 2020 will
be remembered for a lot of hardship and trauma, this book helped
draw me closer to Immanuel--what a gift!
*Susie Gamez, speaker, writer, and an okay mom*
As someone who has been in the work of shedding the layered baggage
of my religious past, I've also been looking for opportunities to
reclaim what is good and beautiful and true. This book is a
reminder of everything good and beautiful and true about Advent.
Not necessarily easy or pretty, but good and true--and our world
certainly needs more good and true these days. I am grateful for
the reclamation that this work will bring to so many people for
Advent and beyond.
*Brit Barron, author of Worth It*
Beautiful. Evocative. A wake-up call to the mystery of life.
*John Mark Comer, author of The Ruthless Elimination of
Hurry*
Honest Advent unearths the beauty and power of life's deepest
truths woven into the ancient Christmas stories. Through his
gorgeously provocative illustrations and authentically insightful
teachings, Scott Erickson rescues us from the commercialization of
Christmas by breathing much-needed new life into Advent's themes
and ideas. The most wonderful time of the year now has the most
wonderful piece of art to go with it.
*Colby Martin, author of The Shift and cohost of The Kate and
Colby Show*
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.
*Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch
and contributing writer to The Atlantic*
In this personal and deeply felt collection, Scott Erickson offers
a thoughtful, contemplative exploration of the wonder hidden just
beyond the popular portrayal of the Christmas narrative. Through
twenty-five images and essays, Erickson illuminates a deep and
personal appreciation of the central story in the Christian
tradition and approaches it, not as a creed to be accepted or even
a question to be answered, but rather as a mystery to be explored
and embraced.
*Nate Staniforth, author of Here Is Real Magic*
Readers on a quest for information can sometimes find themselves
devouring books too quickly without taking time to chew, not fully
tasting the words and their meanings. Scott Erickson's drawings
force us to slow down and open up to truth in a new way. Advent is
a season for slow contemplative reflection, and this book will be a
tasty treat to savor and to help us reflect on the greatest wonder
of all--God becoming one of us.
*Peri and Brian Zahnd, authors of Every Scene by Heart and
Postcards from Babylon*
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!
*Propaganda and Dr. Alma Zaragoza-Petty, The Red Couch
Podcast*
Scott Erickson's iconographic works serve as portals to the
'kingdom of heaven within us.' In this collection of art and
reflection, we're reminded what makes our hearts that heaven--the
God who comes nearer than we are to ourselves. I'll be opening
these doors with wonder and gratitude. Thanks, Scott, you're such a
good doorman!
*Brad Jersak, author of IN: Incarnation & Inclusion, Abba &
Lamb*
Scott Erickson's work is both a blaring anthem and a gentle
whisper. He takes the untouchable and makes it familiar. Scott's
modern artistic interpretation of the heard-it-a-million-times
Christmas story invites both the skeptic and the Christ-follower
into transformative vulnerability. This is a book not just for the
holiday season but for everyday awakening to the sacred unknowns we
each carry.
*Joy Prouty, photographic artist*
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.
*Justin McRoberts, author of It Is What You Make of It*
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.
*Sara Groves, recording artist, advocate*
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.
*Arielle Estoria, poet, author, speaker*
This beautifully crafted piece of art explores immaculately the
invasion of the best that Christmas means: Presence in our
Present.
*Paul Young, The Shack*
Through striking visuals and conversational prose, Scott Erickson
has created a doorway between the foreign and the familiar, the
simple and the complex, holiday and the everyday. On any day of the
year, but especially through the time of Advent, land on any page
in this book to find a prayer, a bridge, an invitation into what is
coming and out of the boxes we put around God.
*Hillary McBride, PhD, RCC, therapist, researcher, and
author*
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.
*Jay and Katherine Wolf, authors of Hope Heals and Suffer
Strong*
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.
*Mike McHargue, author of You’re a Miracle (and a Pain in the
Ass) and host of Ask Science Mike podcast*
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.
*Marlita Hill, author of Defying Discord*
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