gather: A barnyard Lukismas
Painting & pushing up hay
Give honour unto Luke Evangelist;
For he it was (the aged legends say)
Who first taught Art to fold her hands and pray…Dante Gabriel Rossetti, excerpt from “St. Luke the Painter”(1849)
Welcome, friends. I’m Kristin: a Pacific Northwest artist, mom, & farmer offering support for seasonal, local, liturgical living. Together, we’ll explore the agrarian heritage of the Church calendar and ideas of sacred time & sacred place.
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For the past few years, I’ve hosted a Liturgical Life group. We’re a diverse gathering - of all ages, from a variety of denominations, learning alongside each other and working to graft the traditions of the liturgical calendar into our own varied circumstances.
The Feast of St. Luke was a new celebration for me; being so enamored of Hallowtide, my tendency is to look straight ahead to October 31st year after year. In pondering October feasts for our liturgical group, though, I was inspired to pause and re-consider the denouement of this very full month. With weekly harvest festivals and daily u-pick pumpkin patch life being folded into our existing CSA1 rhythms on the farm, arriving at Halloween can easily feel like all we can muster.
I’m committed, though, to the idea that the liturgical calendar is a spiritual scaffold in all seasons of life. Over the years, it’s been all too easy to brush it aside when life’s seasons get challenging or busy. I’ve had to give up on an illusory belief I’d held; one that tended to morph the calendar into a restraint, rather than allowing it to be an encouraging pattern.
I used to expect myself to need to show up to calendar benchmarks with the same consistent energy & verve…or not show up at all. And though I know we can’t (and shouldn’t) aim to “do it all,” my all-or-nothing mindset put a lot of pressure on my energy levels and boxed me into a corner…where I prevented myself from leaning on one of my greatest support systems for busy or trying times. The very thing that felt like “too much” at times was, in fact, the crucial habit I needed to help guide my days during seasons of overwhelm.
In reality, the Church year exists as a gentle support, not a demanding burden. So, even though part of me thought that October would just be too full to plan a “new” feast, leaning into that learning process and the spiritual boon of that community gathering was exactly what we all needed.
The calendar gives us the pattern of Christ’s life & the echoes of his life through his church & tradition; and it also offers the flexibility to receive us differently every year.
So, here’s how we showed up for Lukismas in community!