After our chat, a link to its recording will be posted below!

Hosting a monthly liturgical life group over the past several years has been one of the most lifegiving practices we’ve adopted, helping me to root deeper into our landscape, our people, and the life of Christ as told in the Church year. It’s a pattern I’m so incredibly grateful for throughout all of life’s ups and downs!

Last week, I shared some practical ideas to help you think about hosting a liturgical life group in your neck of the woods…

And this week, I’m hopping onto a live video chat with you so that we can all brainstorm together! Bring your questions, frustrations, ideas, experiences, and more. Let’s think creatively about what liturgical living looks like in your own community.

Here are all the details…

Google Meet Details & Invitation
» Wednesday, April 29 at 5 pm PST

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A delicate fabric of bird song
Floats in the air,
The smell of wet wild earth
Is everywhere.
Red small leaves of the maple
Are clenched like a hand,
Like girls at their first communion
The pear trees stand.
Oh I must pass nothing by
Without loving it much,
The raindrop try with my lips,
The grass with my touch;
For how can I be sure
I shall see again
The world on the first of May
Shining after the rain?

Sara Teasdale, “May Day” from Flame and Shadow (1920)

As you wander…

• explore more posts for the month of May

• send me a note!

May poles are one of the sweetest traditions of this beautiful growing season, and this miniature woodland May pole has been one of my favorite paper scenes to create…for both the young and the young-at-heart, ‘playing’ our way through the calendar can be so enlivening.

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I designed this May Day scene to be placed on top of a turntable, ideally - so the liturgical critters can ‘dance’ around the May pole - but I’m sure you can all find a million creative ways to bring this to life.

Removable flower crowns can adorn each animal, and they can also tote a pannier filled with May wine (and some extra Sweet Woodruff and Strawberries).

I tried to think of every detail to bring this to life…all of the animal cut-outs are double-sided, so they can still have continuity as the scene rotates. A patch of dandelions hides the base of the May pole, and a garland of wild roses tops it.

This whimsical May Day scene is available for you in the Scriptorium - just add ribbons and a May pole, and you’re ready!

Scriptorium

A link to the recording of our conversation and our text chat is posted below!

With all the energy of spring cleaning (both inwardly & outwardly) that bubbles up this time of year, having ’s new book as a companion has added both depth and whimsy for me…

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I hope you’re enjoying it too, and finding new ways to think about yourself as a placemaker. Let’s get together with Christie on Saturday to chat more about the theology of place, incarnational faith, and more!

Here are all the login details…

GOOGLE MEET DETAILS
» Saturday, April 25 at 10 am Pacific Time

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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.

For more photos from our events and details about how we celebrate, visit my archive:

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Invitations

There are a million ways to invite friends and neighbors into your liturgical living gathering, so find whatever works best for you and your people…if it’s helpful, though, here’s what works for me (it’s nothing fancy, and I am by no means some sort of expert hostess!):

1. Invitation email: A few weeks (ideally, a month…) before the event, I send out the first invitation. Sometimes, life gets crazy and I don’t manage to give much notice at all, but late is better than never! I keep an email list of interested folks in a Google Sheet, then cc all of them when I send the invitation.

2. Looking back: I always like to thank friends, and include some shout-outs to folks who contributed in extra ways, from our previous month’s gathering. I also attach a handful of photos…bits of memories for that month’s guests to hold onto, and also a peek into the event for those who couldn’t attend in-person.

3. Intro to this month’s feast: I just type up a quick paragraph introducing the saint/event we’re commemorating in the upcoming event, usually with a tie-in to what our activity / connection to the land will be.

4. Nitty Gritty: I always have a few bullet points to help guide the shape of the event…

   1. When/Where: We always host on the farm, but the location on the farm often changes. I always provide the address as a reminder, as well as details on where to meet before (if) we are heading out somewhere further. I also provide a roundabout time when folks can start arriving, but generally, that means there’s about a half-hour cushion of arrival time…so I plan for some time-margin, especially if we’ll be heading somewhere and need to go together.

   2. Meal Theme: I like to provide some sort of potluck theme to help prompt us all…i.e., food traditionally associated with a particular feast, food from regions associated with that saint, etc. But here’s the crucial part: I tell folks to bring what they want, in or out of the theme, and only bring it if they can. The theme is provided to help spark ideas and excitement, to help us all learn…but it’s not meant to be legalistic or be a burden. (For St. Catherine’s Day, our theme was “circular” food - and I was delighted that a friend brought Cheerios. Brilliant!) Sometimes, we just don’t have the bandwidth to do anything but bring ourselves to a gathering, and that’s okay.1 I also usually have a Pinterest board to point friends to…just a place to peek around and get ideas.

   3. Bring: I always include a note about what to bring…sometimes, donation items. Often, this includes weather/terrain related items (i.e., bring your rain boots, bring a swimsuit and a beach towel, etc.)

5. RSVP: I ask friends to let me know if they’ll be joining us, and if so, how many guests will be coming. This is super malleable and often changes on the day-of, but it helps to give me an idea of who to look out for - especially if we’ll be taking the hay wagon somewhere, or won’t be celebrating in an obvious location. If I’m preparing any sort of hands-on work, it helps me make sure I have enough for everyone.

6. Reminder: My email box tends to overflow quickly, so I really don’t want to fill up anyone else’s inbox. I just send a quick reminder out a day before the event.

Hosting Essentials

When we host our monthly liturgical gathering, the location often changes - sometimes, it’s in our house…other times, at the river’s edge, in the meadow, up on the hill…there’s a lot of variation.

To make my life easier, I keep all the pot-luck hosting essentials handy in a couple of plastic tubs. That way, wherever we are, I have some grab-&-go tubs that are stocked with everything I need.

Even if we’re just hosting inside our house, I love being able to pull everything I need from one hosting bin.

Here are the basics that stay in my bins:

• Compostable plates, bowls, cups, and cutlery

• A bin for all the cutlery

• Napkins

• Bottle opener/wine key

• Tray for placing alcoholic beverages (to differentiate them)

• Sharpies (for writing names on cups)

• Wipes

• Extra trash bags

• First aid kit

• Bluetooth speaker

• A couple of neutral tablecloths

• Placecard holders & index cards (in case folks want to write any allergen notes by their dishes)

…and here are some other additions that require a bit more tinkering on the day of the potluck. I have a crate that I tend to stuff all of these “day-of” things into so that I can easily transport them:

• Seasonal tablecloths (I have a pile of vintage tablecloths that I rotate & use as festive layers over the more neutral base)

• Vases for flowers (I like to use a whimsical assortment of vintage milk glass vases, canning jars, old silver-plated pitchers, etc).

• Scissors/clippers (for flowers)

• Supplies for an activity (if what we’re doing requires supplies)

• Water pitcher

• Cases of sparkling water

• Cooler (if we’re outside and it’s hot, I have a rolling cooler to help keep bevs cold)

• Pop-up tent (totally not necessary, but this comes in handy since we do so much outdoors. Whether it’s sunny or sprinkling, it’s handy to have a space to shelter the spread of food and drinks)

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Where can you host?

We’re in an incredibly fortunate situation here on the farm: we have lots of space outside, and it allows us to practice liturgical living through an agrarian lens in a very hands-on way. (A good chunk of the year is rainy here, though, which means we find ourselves indoors).

But there are ways to weave liturgical traditions into your own life and landscape. If we lived somewhere else, our expression of liturgical living would look different…which is part of the loveliness all of this.

If we lived in a city, seasonal living would have its own unique challenges - and uniquely beautiful expressions. I grew up in the suburbs, moved to the downtown of a bigger city, then came to the farm around 2011 (my husband grew up here).

I’ve experienced a few different flavors of place, and looking back, I can see how seasonality appeared distinctively in each location…from looking forward to certain weeds that would grow in city parking lots (I made bouquets with them), to flowers that appeared in a nursery, to annual book sales at the library that became tethered to springtime for me.

We have to start with curiosity and practice the art of attentiveness, though: how does my unique place intersect with theology? What do I notice right here, right now?

It can also be challenging to host if our space is small or parking is so-so. Rest assured, though: we have lots of outdoor space here, but our house easily overflows. People find places to perch to eat dinner, and more than one person in the kitchen makes it crowded. We’re incredibly lucky to be in our home, but it’s not the space that would get featured in any sort of hosting magazine - it’s just not built for that, and that’s okay!

Because of that idyllic vision in my head, I used to be reluctant and self-conscious about hosting: our dog is too big, our couch is too dirty, our entryway is like a game of Tetris.

Leaning into the reality of hosting in this unique place, though, has deepened my gratitude for it.

That being said, sometimes hosting at our own home just isn’t possible. Maybe we struggle with anxiety (hi! It’s me!), roommates, nervous pets, or are caretakers. There are a plethora of reasons.

If that’s the case, we can still find a ‘third place’ to host a liturgical living gathering, though: and truly, it’s worth the work to make it happen.

Places for hosting:

• Church

• Library

• Park

• Senior Center

• Cafe

What venue suggestions do you have?

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Tell me: what are your unique obstacles in hosting a liturgical living group?

Hit me with with your challenges, and let’s see if we can wonder about it together.

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Poll:

I sometimes wonder if it would be helpful to have regional lists of folks who are also interested connecting about liturgical living or who are willing to host…just general connections (with hosts later doing the contacting of interested attendees) to make it easier to find that common ground.

I’ll keep an eye on this, and if there’s a need, I’ll see where the breadcrumb trail goes. :)

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

P.S. Don’t forget, I have a free ebook for all subscribers to help you get started with liturgical living groups!

“This most beautiful ‘flower of the root of Jesse,’ which had blossomed in the incarnation and withered in the passion, thus blossomed again in the resurrection so as to become the beauty of all.”

St. Bonaventure, Lignum Vitae (Tree of Life) (ca. 1260 AD)

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If keeping all twelve days of Christmastide can feel challenging in our modern context, keeping all fifty days of Eastertide bends our creativity even further. As a Recovering Nostalgist™, it’s easy for me to pine for some idyllic daydream of ‘the good ol’ days,’ imagining Easter celebrations saturating every meal, every gathering throughout the season…supporting and continuing the Eastertide liturgies.

And while we have indeed lost so many of this season’s cultural traditions, I think there’s an invitation in the dissonance we feel: Eastertide, in so many ways, is a joyful defiance.

Easter is an ongoing, active choice to cling to joy in all its dimensions…even though. Even though the diagnoses roll in. Even though violence rages, abuse persists, fear pervades.

Over the years of joys and losses, I’ve found that ‘keeping Eastertide’ is the ongoing challenge (and inexplicable reward) of my days. Practicing the Eastertide posture, rehearsing in part the fullness that we anticipate, is the habit to which I’ve clung & aspired throughout deaths, trauma, suffocating anxiety.

So, I find myself filled with surprising gratitude to meet the challenge of celebrating Easter as a season…here at a time when our cultural rhythms don’t support that liturgical way of timekeeping as they once did.

True to the compassion of our incarnational spirituality, we get to take our faith’s daily posture - cleaving to the truth and joy of Eastertide - and apply it to a cultural moment that has forgotten its practice. We get to take the core mystery of our theology and imprint it into timekeeping, even though our cultural calendars have moved on. As students of the even though of Jesus, we’re uniquely equipped to give this a whirl.

It’s a joyful rebellion on many fronts - and not a joy based on circumstance, but a joy borne from everlasting, tearful, whole hope.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion – put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

Wendell Berry, excerpt from Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front

Printable resources for savoring Eastertide:

BOOK OF HOURS: COVER PAGE

Friends, it’s been a DELIGHT getting to reflect on all the flora & fauna of Eastertide to tell this season’s story through a handful of their images. Your printable will include little snippets on why I chose each element for this arch, but I wanted to take a moment to highlight one in particular: the European Goldfinch, a multilayered emblem of salvation.

As the story goes, a fluttering springtime Goldfinch saw the suffering Christ…and wanting to relieve his pain, she flew to his brow, attempting to remove the thorns from his crown. In her attempt, she was stained red with his blood.

Part of this symbolism comes from the Goldfinch’s vibrant red cheeks, but there’s more: she loves a thistle snack, deftly pulling the seeds out from this prickly plant. She also carefully removes thistledown to pad her own nest…taking the spiky thistle plant - reminiscent of the crown of thorns - and transforming it into the new life she’s bringing forth in her nest.

Especially in Medieval and Renaissance art, you’ll find the European Goldfinch near the Christ child, emblematic of the salvation he bears and the redemption we receive. (In Crivelli’s painting, the infant Jesus is holding the Goldfinch in his hands. Also near this bird, you’ll often find the Fly: symbolic of sin and death, which the rest of the visual language shows to be conquered).

Without further ado, here’s a bit more on your new Book of Hours addition for this glorious season:

Inspired by Medieval books of hours, these cover pages feature pollinators and plant life emblematic of the liturgical seasons. (They also complement the printables for all of the feast days that you may have already collected!) The design itself is an homage to gothic stained glass windows, their arch reminding us of the soul’s journey toward God.

Alongside the Eastertide cover page is a quick guide to the symbolism embedded in all of the natural elements featured in this arch…a starting-off point for your own reflection and research, if your curiosity gets piqued!

I hope that these pollinators and their plants will remind us of our work as co-creators with Christ.

These Easter printables - as well as more resources for the holidays historically within Easter - are available in the Scriptorium:

Scriptorium

Here’s a behind-the-scenes photo of my process (not pictured: days and days of research and reflection, sketching and erasing).

Things are real homespun and handmade around here, ya’ll! ;)

If you print this out, I’d love to see how you use it:

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

The ancient market-place has heard
For half a thousand years,
The summons of the mighty horn,
Time-honoured Lancaster’s.
The Tuttimen have trimmed the poles
With blossoms fresh and gay,
And kissed the merry, bashful maids,
On Hock Day holiday.

Hungerford Hocktide carol

As you wander…

• find this month’s schedule of events in the Village Green

• peruse the April 2026 Almanac

• explore more posts for the month of April

• send me a note!

HOCKTIDE PRINTABLES

A Book of Hours helps us to graft liturgical traditions into our own sacred days - and each month, I offer some additions intended to spark curiosity as we re-discover these seasonal patterns together.

This month, you’ll find:

• a cover page (with original art, featuring boxing hares and watercress - emblems to remind us of Hocktide)

• a summary (with artwork) of history, traditions, flora, & fauna that give shape to the holiday

• a whimsical art print (featuring a swan-Tuttiman! More on these chaps below…)

Paid members can find Hocktide art & resources (as well as my whole archive of printables) in the Scriptorium:

Scriptorium

Eastertide’s edge

Thus they pass through the market-place,
Highly-fam’d for Hocktide games…

From the counterfeit “second part” of Hudibras, Samuel Butler (17th c.)

After the great Lenten anticipation of Easter, I like to recite the often-forgotten reality that ‘Easter is a season.’ A whole fifty days of Eastertide celebration await us.

Can I be honest with you, though? The reality is that my heart & body haven’t grasped Eastertide’s liturgical pattern. Even as I find Eastertide in the liturgy & the lectionary, I simply don’t have a cultural memory of wisdom for Easter-ing through the whole Great Fifty Days in the context of my home and community.

We’ve retained that great preparatory time for Easter, but we’ve lost sight of the patterns of tradition that sustain this highest of Church holidays. We come to it through our worship, through the Eucharist, but we’ve forgotten so many of the traditions that tether our Sundays to the rest of our lives.

So, how does that Sunday Eastertide worship overflow into our home? Our neighborhood, our landscape?

Thankfully, the cloud of witnesses offers up a host of traditions to help us embrace this season wholly and sacramentally - reminding us of Easter’s extension into our everyday reality.

So here, flourishing right on the edge of Easter’s lifegiving waters, we find echoes of an ancient and once high-holiday: Hocktide.

Hocktide’s etymology and history are both mysterious.

We find Hocktide’s earliest mentions in the early 12th century, and its placement in the year - tethered to the Monday & Tuesday of the second week of Easter - was significant in many ways: it moved the parish from the Octave of Easter to the rest of this glorious season; and, more practically, it was seen as being the summer counterpart to winter’s Michaelmas (back in the days of two-season reckoning)…also, like Michaelmas, Hocktide was a quarter day for rent and debt collection. Crucially, it was a time for re-establishing fishing, hunting, and grazing rights in many regions as well.

By the 15th century, records show us that Hocktide was entrenched in the English calendar, with mentions often chastising how raucous celebrations had become…while also noting the immense amount of contributions raised for church funds during these days. Hocktide festivities came and went during the English reformation, with most revivals ultimately waning over the centuries until it became an all-but-forgotten memory in all but a few places.

Scholars aren’t really even sure what ‘Hocktide’ means - etymology linking it to older terms for indebtedness (“in hock”) tend to be anachronistic, and other attempts at linking it to terms for “binding” (often related to England’s freedom from Danish rule in the 11th c.) are also uncertain.

Through the haze of a thousand years worth of folklore, lost footnotes, and best-guesses, though, I think I see Eastertide glimmering in this enigmatic holiday.

Easter shows us the ultimate fulfillment of indebtedness through Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection (indeed, a practical reminder for parish debts to be re-balanced).

And, in Easter, we greet the ushering-in of the new era of God’s topsy-turvy economy: here, after tipping over the edge of Easter Sunday, we find that crucifixion is triumph, death is life, the meek shall inherit the earth, and the ‘usual order’ of what we’ve grown to expect has been turned inside-out.

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Hocktide is here to help us cement that mystery into our bodies.

Most of the Hocktide festivities are concentrated on the Tuesday of the second week of Easter, with celebrations stretching back toward Monday (almost as if it were a vigil, with the revelry extending earlier & earlier in the day).

This placement sounds like a word scramble, but it’s a beautiful invitation for us: Eastertide begins with an Octave…an eight-day period of extended solemnity. This Octave ends on “Low Sunday”: the Sunday after Easter day. Hocktide, then, bridges that sustained height of solemnity & celebration with the patterns of life held by the remaining days of Eastertide.

And, just as Easter Sunday rattles our expectations and shakes us into a new way of thinking, Hocktide gives us a time to practice that resurrection-strangeness in a tangible, lively way.

These two days (often extending further beyond just Monday & Tuesday, too) were a time of misrule, when the social order was upset through parish-wide games.

On Monday, women would chase men, sometimes barring the road with a rope or binding them.1 When each man contributed a payment to the parish, he would be released to continue on in the day’s games. Over time, payment was accompanied by or replaced with a kiss. On Tuesday, the roles were reversed, with men collecting funds from women.

Churchwarden accounts show that the women brought in the lion’s share of money during these peculiar days:

“…in the London parish of St. Mary at Hill, the women regularly raised between two and three times as much money as the men, and in some years men failed to bring in any money at all.”2

Katherine L. French, The Good Women of the Parish: Gender and Religion After the Black Death

The significant funds raised from Hocktide games benefitted the parish in so many ways, with the women’s collection providing lasting support to countless churches: many sanctuaries received Hocktide funds toward the maintenance of the “damelight” (a light dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary). Furnishings were funded, and later, new windows were purchased. We see the altar at Westminster’s newly-built (1509) St. Margaret Church receiving a new banner with women’s Hocktide money, and fresh satin altar cloths and curtains abounded elsewhere.

At a time when women had few ‘official’ capacities within parish infrastructure, Hocktide interrupted social habits within the context of Church tradition (another example of the ongoing dialogue between popular piety, folk tradition, and Church hierarchy).

How very Eastertide-ish!

Hocktide festivities were overseen by “Tuttimen” bearing fragrant staffs:

“…two tithing men [parade] the town on Hock Tuesday, each carrying a staff ornamented with flowers, surmounted by an orange, and decked with blue ribbon. These are called ‘tuttimen,’ from a West Country word ‘tutty’ - a flower or nosegay, and they are entitled to demand a penny a head for every person in the town, for services rendered during the pats year…”

George Charles Williamson, Curious Survivals: Habits and Customs of the Past that Still Live in the Present (1923)

These Tuttimen were accompanied by the Orange Scrambler,3 who carried a bag of oranges to give to each person who gave a penny or a kiss, replenishing the orange that topped each staff. Tutti Women additionally carried baskets of oranges and sweet treats to toss to the crowd.

In some parishes, the custom of “lifting” was also part of the chasing and binding: the captured person would be lifted three times in a flower-bedecked chair - reminiscent of the raising-up of Christ on the cross.

Lifters in some regions additionally brought with them a posy and a bowl of water, using the flowers to sprinkle water onto the feet of the captured person in the chair (Maundy Thursday comes to mind), singing the hymn Jesus Christ is risen again.4

Throughout all of this, the elected Hocktide Court would hold its proceedings: in this town council, the maintenance of fishing & grazing rights were maintained by “commoners” - literally, the villagers who had rights to graze their animals, collect firewood, forage for cress, etc. on common-held lands.

In a way, it was a way of refreshing the local memory and customs that revolved around crucial aspects of village life - and what better season that Eastertide and the turning of a new agricultural year to reestablish the shared use of community resources?

PASS OUR DAYS ON LOVE AND WATER-CRESSES

“Will you marry me and mistress be, fair lady, of all these?
And we’ll pass our days on love and Water-cresses.”

Harry Clifton, Water-Cresses (1863)

While other strange customs abounded (like the election of Hocktide Courts and the “Shoeing the Colt”5), Hocktide’s antics of course led to celebratory meals: in particular, the Watercress Supper.

Watercress (also known as St. Patrick’s Cabbage) is a bright, fresh, peppery herb that grows alongside running water, just on the edge of the streambed.

This season’s Founder’s Box included some watercress seed for you to plant!

Because it flourished near pure, running water - and also owing to its cross-shaped flowers - Watercress gained a reputation as a symbol of protection, its use especially prevalent during Eastertide. It may have also been one of the bitter herbs used during Passover, alongside a handful of other greens.

And, as a semi-aquatic herb that grows alongside running water, Watercress is also a tangible reminder of the incarnational mystery of Jesus that we see come to fulfillment in Easter -a time when we celebrate the resurrection of the son of God who was (and is), mysteriously, both fully man and fully God.

This staple green was a fitting herald during Hocktide’s proceedings - both for its Eastertide connections and as a representative of the re-assertion of rights to common land here after Easter Sunday:

“This is the sort of thing we English have gone to war to protect,” said Andrew Sawyer, the local vicar, as he surveyed the horse-shoe shodding process proprietorially. “This and the right to gather water-cress from the marsh.”

Jim White, Independent article (1993)

These Hocktide festivities, strange though they may seem, underscored the importance of both Eastertide’s ongoing celebration as well as land use rights by leaning on this popular foraged herb: a Watercress Supper would be held, featuring macaroni, Welsh rarebit (toast topped with a creamy cheese sauce), watercress salad, and punch.

A celebration of the water’s edge, that place where two worlds meet.

BENEDICTION

I bind my heart this tide
to the Galilean’s side,
to the wounds of Calvary,
to the Christ who died for me.

I bind my soul this day
to the neighbor far away,
and the stranger near at hand,
in this town, and in this land.

I bind my heart in thrall
to the God, the Lord of all,
to the Christ, the poor one’s friend,
and the Spirit he did send.

I bind myself to peace,
to make strife and envy cease.
God! Knit secure the cord
of my thralldom to my Lord!
Amen.

Lauchlan MacLean Watt, “I bind my heart this tide” (1907)

Our liturgical living group will be celebrating Hocktide later in the month (I’m never a stickler about timing with these things) - I’ll keep you posted on how it goes!

How is your Eastertide? Do you also struggle to find ways to incorporate this beautiful season into your daily routine?

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Pax et bonum,
Kristin

“…12th calends of April [21 March], the day which we celebrate in honour of the holy man Benedict because of his great virtues. Indeed, the earth also shows by the shoots which are then quickened again that this is the time which should most rightly be the year’s beginning, when the earth was created.”

Ælfric, excerpt from his homily for New Year’s Day, translated by Dr. Eleanor Parker (10th c.)

Today’s look back at our Lenten experience of St. Benedict’s Day is a quick photo album featuring one of my favorite places on the farm: the woods on the western hillside, filled with old-growth cedar and the astounding undergrowth that the Pacific Northwest offers…an ever-changing array of plants, all springing up one after another this time of year.

Our little patch of woodland houses a small shrine - fitted with a Benedict medal, nestled in drooping ostrich ferns. As we encountered St. Benedict this Lent, we celebrated his witness by making a pilgrimage to the shrine, spending some time in the woods as we imagined his three years of forested hermitage.

The kids, of course, found themselves in a fairy tale among all the tiny forest treasures!

Join me for a little jaunt to the woods with our liturgical life group…

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When I dream up these seasonal Founders Boxes, I like to imagine that each one feels a bit as if the season is overflowing & taking shape in all the wares that go into the package…and this spring box was chock-full of bright vernal delights that I hope will help you to embody the season wherever you are.

Last week, despite a spring flood (!), I shipped off all of the Spring boxes for Founding Members - and I had enough goodies leftover to make an additional six Spring boxes.

So, if you’d like to grab one of these remaining 6 Spring boxes to begin a year-long Founding Membership, I’ll be sending these out on a first-come, first-serve basis:

Subscribe now

(Substack has a helpful article that shares more about upgrading).

I’m keeping the Spring box contents a secret for now (surprises are more fun, after all), but later on, I’ll share more about all of the artisans and creations that went into it.

If you’re a current Founding Member, your box should be arriving shortly (if not already)!

Also, if you’re a current Founder, you should have received an email to coordinate shipments…please reach out if you haven’t found that email. :)

Feel free to send questions my way if you’d like to learn more about how this seasonal subscription works (or if you have any other questions or thoughts!)

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I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it. Its inscape is full of strength and grace.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, journal entry (May 18, 1870)

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Founder Box announcements

• Your Spring Founder Boxes have shipped out and should be arriving any day now! I’d love to hear more about how you’re using and delighting in the goodies in this season’s box…would you like to share any pictures or ideas over in our Chat?
  

Online gatherings

• APRIL 18 | Saturday at noon Pacific Time | Substack Live Q&A with and myself about our pilgrimage invitation
  » For all subscribers: Dixie & I will be hopping onto Substack Live to gush about all the things we’re excited to experience in our upcoming pilgrimage, as well as answer your questions!
  

• APRIL 25 | Saturday at 10 am Pacific Time | Spring Book Club discussion with author !
  » For paid subscribers: Join Christie and I to discuss her beautiful new book, A House To Call Home!
  

• APRIL 29 | Wednesday at 5 pm Pacific Time | Q&A chat about hosting liturgical living gatherings!

  » For paid subscribers: Bring your questions, ideas, experiences…and let’s wrestle through the ins & outs of hosting a liturgical life group in your own neck of the woods.

Fresh Posts & Previous Archives

• FIRST HALF OF APRIL: Festal focus reflections, art, & resources shared
  

• APRIL 23 | Thursday | St. George’s Day
  » Printables: Book of Hours pages & dandelion soda recipe

• APRIL 25 | Saturday | St. Mark’s Day
  » Printables: Ebooklet with nettle risotto recipe & sage shoe spray instructions
  

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+ April 2026 Calendar & Coloring

The April Almanac includes:

• April calendar page with a selection of holy days, dip-pen illustrations, and links to connect you with more HF resources

• Coloring page featuring my hand-drawn illustrations of April feast emblems

• Print out these goodies (I recommend card-stock for the calendar and regular paper for the coloring page), and see how you can integrate the featured holidays into your existing plans!

+ Vase of Days

This ‘vase of days’ is designed to help us see April as a bouquet. Each image (hand-painted in gouache) is a prompt: an invitation to look at the holy wonder of these days & how they meet us in our own lives and landscapes.

Head to the Scriptorium to find your April printables:

Scriptorium

OUR LADY’S NIGHTCAP (aka, English Bluebell)
Hyacinthoides non-scripta

Refer a friend

Symbolism:

• Legend has it that the Blessed Virgin Mary used to tuck her hair into a nightcap of the same color and shape as the Bluebell

• Humility (because of its downward-facing posture - reminiscent of a prayer posture - Our Lady’s Nightcap is a reminder of faithful humility)

• Resilience (since they’re so hardy, surviving so many weather hardships, Bluebells came to represent a robust faithfulness in adversity)

• St. George (traditionally worn on St. George’s Day and used to decorate churches for his fesat)

Head to the Scriptorium to find your April Herbarium print:

Scriptorium

To help us all settle into Eastertide - a season whose shape and traditions have been somewhat obscured over the centuries - let’s look to a Medieval English celebration: Hocktide, the Monday & Tuesday in the second week of Easter (this year, April 13 & 14).

The more we re-discover - and re-imagine these feasts within our modern context - the better we can see the nuance and form in the ongoing celebrations of Eastertide. It’s SO easy, outside of the liturgy, to forget the length of this glorious season.

• Reflections, history, folk traditions, art, and more will be available in the first couple weeks of April

• Paid members will receive a printable cover page and booklet for their liturgical year binders, as well as a peek into how our liturgical living group celebrates this holiday

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Pax et bonum,
Kristin

Because of some technical difficulties with my laptop (boo!), we weren’t able to record our lovely welcome discussion - I’m so sorry for those who were hoping to watch the recording!

Rethinking “home” as we wind our way through spring and the remaining days of Lent has been such a refreshing practice for me - ’s new book, A House to Call Home, is convicting me to remember our shared calling as placemakers, wherever we may be.

Let’s hop onto a live video on Saturday to chat about this delightful book together!

And remember to save the date for April 25, when the author will be joining us to chat!

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» Here are all the details for the first of two live chats for our Spring Book Club…

Google Meet Details
» Saturday, March 28 at 11 am Pacific Time

Time Zone Converter

Read more

As the wind is on St Benedict’s day,
so it will stay for three months.

English proverb

» Printable Resources

Book of Hours Pages

Keeping a liturgical Book of Hours binder helps me to distill all of the inspiration I find, so I can easily look to the elements that have been most nurturing for our family & community.

• Cover page featuring a Raven & St. Benedict’s Herb

• Five pages of folk tradition, agrarian context, traditional meal ideas, prompts, history, poetry, Scripture, & hymns (with photos) to help you learn about this feast and reflect on how it intersects with your own life and landscape.

Mouse’s ora et labora

I’ve had a lot of fun playing around with a dip pen lately, and this little mouse appeared on my paper - harvesting primrose petals, of course.

It made me think about how the nature of our work really changes when we re-imagine it in terms of St. Benedict’s ora et labora - work and prayer. Sometimes, if I’m depleted, work feels like a drag…other times, I remember that I am, in some sense, gathering primrose petals. Every bit of work can be a reminder of God, if I pay attention. (Those moments are more rare than I’d like to admit, but nunc coepi - always, I begin again).

So, I made a whimsical ora et labora print for you. And you could just as easily cut it out and make it into a paper doll for playful hands!

Paid members can find these goodies (as well as my whole archive of printables) in the Scriptorium!

Scriptorium

YOU SEE THE RAVEN THAT SERVES HIM

Today we celebrate the joyful day of the great leader
who brings gifts of new light.

Grace is given to the devout soul: let what is expressed in words
resound in the ardent heart.

[…]

You see the raven that serves him;
in him, you recognize Elijah hidden
in the small cave.

Excerpt from Laeta Dies Magni Ducis (The Joyful Day of the Great Leader), Benedictine sequence (in Gregorian chant) (15th c.)

We’ve arrived at the Spring Equinox: the astronomical event that, with our next full moon, guides the dating of Easter and Lent…a time when our theology so poetically intersects natural cycles.

And, here at this equinox crossroads, we also find a herald: St. Benedict, come to greet our tired Lenten souls and guide us through to Easter. Though his feast was moved to July in 1969, the traditional date of March 21 (the date of his transitus) gives us a comforting companion whose Rule is an ongoing inspiration for our own Lenten boundaries.

Born around 480 AD in Nursia, Italy, St. Benedict began his studies in Rome. Feeling that a depth in both teaching and morality was lacking, he left (at the tender age of 14) and pursued a life of solitude in the mountainous wilderness of Subiaco, just east of Rome

En route, he encountered St. Romanus of Subiaco: a monk and hermit who was so struck by the youth’s devotion that he gave Benedict the monk’s habit and helped to support the years of ascetic life that would follow.

St. Benedict spent three years living in a cave (the sacro speco), receiving almost all of his food from a basket lowered by St. Romanus, who served as his patron and mentor.

“Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil.”

Matthew 4:1 (NABRE)

Throughout both Scripture and Tradition, the wilderness is a cradle of spiritual growth: it’s a place where distractions are stripped away and the soul encounters and responds to trials and temptation, being cleaved to God throughout the process. St. Benedict’s cave was, in so many ways, a furnace of refinement.

When Jesus faces his desert trials, each temptation is met with his consistent devotion to God - and, when he has fulfilled that process of responsiveness, angels displace the tempter.

“Then the devil left him and, behold, angels came and ministered to him.”

Matthew 4:11 (NABRE)

Jesus practices his devotion in a time and place of solitude, and the culmination of that period of consistently choosing God returns the ministrations of angels to him.

For St. Benedict, trials kept interrupting his hermit years, and the tales we receive are legendary. Over time, his cave had been found - local shepherds at first thought he was a wild animal, since he was clad in wild skins - and the encroachment of temptations began in earnest.

Inevitably, inspired by his devotion, followers sought him out. This raised the jealous ire of a local priest, who made several attempts to kill St. Benedict…at one point, leaving a loaf of poisoned bread for him to find.

Benedict, though, had honed his spiritual vision and grown adept at recognizing and banishing temptations & evils. He saw the bread for what it truly was and enlisted the help of a Raven: the wilderness companion with whom St. Benedict often shared his supper.

St. Benedict told the raven to take the bread and carry it far away, to an isolated place where it wouldn’t be consumed by anyone. Though a bit resistant to the idea (I can’t quite blame the raven), the bird complied, ferried the loaf off, and returned in three days to share a meal with his cave-dwelling friend.

The wilderness isn’t where these journeys of refinement end, though: it’s a seed, just waiting in darkness to germinate.

For St. Benedict, his solitary life turned out, paradoxically, to be an incubator for community transformation. In removing himself from cultural chaos and distraction, he focused on discernment and practiced his responsiveness to God and resistance of temptation. There, he found the solitary call to reform that would reinvigorate community in new ways.

Eventually, as he was so consistently sought after by disciples (and, alongside these disciples, was also constantly threatened by jealous or resentful leaders), St. Benedict left his cave, bringing the gift of reformed community and founding several smaller monastic communities in the area.

Eventually, he would travel to Monte Cassino - where he built an oratory in honor of wilderness-dwelling kindred St. John the Baptist. And there, at that mountain top, is where he established his foundational Abbey.

The Abbey of Monte Cassino was the space that would host the composition of St. Benedict’s famous Regula, or Rule - a set of community living guidelines, a “school for the Lord's service,”1 that shaped daily life in community through the interwoven practices of prayer and manual labor.

In modern English, our word “Rule” tends to lose a bit of the flexibility suggested in the both the title and content of Benedict’s Regula: literally, this was a ‘measure’ or a ‘pattern’ - a standard that serves to guide, a measure that flourishes in varied life circumstances rather than being hindered by variability. The measure expresses itself differently in the context of changing seasons, places, and people…while still maintaining its Gospel-driven measure.

I’m reminded of the adaptable standard of generosity we see in the poor widow:

“When [Jesus] looked up he saw some wealthy people putting their offerings into the treasury and he noticed a poor widow putting in two small coins. He said, ‘I tell you truly, this poor widow put in more than all the rest; for those others have all made offerings from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has offered her whole livelihood.’”

Luke 21:1-4 (NABRE)

Ultimately, the brilliant adaptability of St. Benedict’s Rule spread its wisdom for community living across both time and space - it became the foundational standard for Western Monasticism, and both ordained and lay people alike, here in the modern world, still find it to be a pattern for living. Its intertwining of the grafted practice of prayer + work, applied to Monastic agriculture, revolutionized food security in Medieval Europe - and, whatever our own vocation may be, ora et labora continues to be a method by which our own varied lives are revolutionized and inclined further toward Christ.

St. Benedict’s temporary solitude was the fertile ground from which transformed, Christ-centered community grew - and still grows, well over a thousand years later.

His call to faithful living, tested through a time of intentional solitude, wasn’t limiting or unresponsive: St. Benedict’s responsiveness to community needs continues to transform the way we live and apply the Gospel to our own lives, nourishing that ever-present place where the Christ’s way intersects our daily “mundane” duties, conflicts, and more.

It seems almost unsurprising that St. Benedict is said to have died in prayer, on March 31 - every task in his life was imbued with prayer, after all.

IF THE WIND IS IN THE EAST

“If the wind is in the east at noon on St. Benedict’s Day (March 21st), it will neither chop nor change till the end of May.”

From the Folk-Lore Society’s Collectanea of Folklore: A Quarterly Review of Myth, Tradition, Institution, & Custom, Volume 20 (1909)

There’s such a remarkable continuity in the arc of St. Benedict’s life: the way his solitude was not an end, but a means. The way an era of his life would expand in such surprising ways, deepening his own life and the lives of others.

And so St. Benedict - our Vernal Equinox saint, our Lenten guide - is tied to the weather.

Spring has always been a time of weather anxiety for farmers - and as I write this, looking out the window to see the spring floodwater just barely receding, I feel that anxiety keenly. The feast of St. Benedict was used as a marker to guess at the long-term spring weather: a windy St. Benedict’s Day was thought to represent the an equally windy spring, itself a symptom of more turbulent weather.

In so many ways, St. Benedict’s sacro speco - his holy cave, his three years of wilderness hermitage - was, like the Equinox wind, a marker of things to come. His devotion to Christ, his responsiveness to both God and to the struggles and needs of the wider community, were a gentle spring wind that anticipated a whole season of fair wind.

Not ‘fair wind’ in terms of ease, of course - but rather the flourishing of a singular devotion to Jesus throughout every aspect of life. With that, no matter what storms come, we have a holy fragrance carried on a fair wind.

And, as a Lenten saint, I can’t help but see that same continuity: St. Benedict’s cave is our Lent, our time of preparation. His Equinox wind sets the tone for the coming season, and, in many ways, our Lent colors our Eastertide.

“…12th calends of April [21 March], the day which we celebrate in honour of the holy man Benedict because of his great virtues. Indeed, the earth also shows by the shoots which are then quickened again that this is the time which should most rightly be the year’s beginning, when the earth was created.”

Ælfric, excerpt from his homily for New Year’s Day, translated by Dr. Eleanor Parker (10th c.)

Ælfric, the 10th century Anglo-Saxon monk & Abbot of Eynsham, was himself a Benedictine - and he so beautifully expressed this germinative nature of St. Benedict’s life and Rule.

In his New Year’s Day homily, as he contends that the New Year should be tied to March 212, Ælfric shows us the image of spring seedlings - “quickened” again after a long winter - alongside St. Benedict.

Both the new spring growth and St. Benedict are, after all, an overflow of fertility: nurtured in an isolated cave to finally flourish and bloom in lifegiving, miraculous ways.

It makes me wonder what dark caves in my own life might actually be places of gestation…places that, retrospectively, will prove to be not just a collection of trials, but a series of redemptive moments that will carry their influence in my life further and deeper than I might imagine.

Here on the farm, a wood extends beyond the flood plain, just up the hillside. Wandering through it, I see St. Benedict’s cave appearing in so many of these old, gnarled trees…moss-covered caverns within beautiful old trunks.

A few years ago, my husband surprised me with a birthday gift that feels a bit like my own touchpoint of sacro speco - a woodland shrine, just off the dirt road. It’s a space to sit, to listen. On my walk up to it, I may have a thousand fears and tasks whirling in my head, but when I stop at the shrine and pay attention, I find a different cacophony…a chorus that varies by season, but now, at the Equinox, is a mixture of bird chatter, falling branches, rustling squirrels, rain.

I won’t pretend to hold a candle to St. Benedict’s three years in a cave, of course - but sometimes, I think we can find echoes of those moments of spiritual camaraderie in the cloud of witnesses.

In our little shrine, I change out the flowers every so often…the kids stack stones, rearrange twigs and lichen.

An iron Celtic Cross hangs in the shrine, sheltered in a cave-like darkness; below the cross, pointing toward it, is a St. Benedict medal nestled into a pile of moss.

And I sit and listen, and think about caves that become Abbeys of devotion that never cease.

READ ON

BENEDICTION

O costly gem in God’s celestial crown,
Benedict! the faithful guide of monk and saint,
On us, thy children, fondly deign look down,
And guard our hearts from earth’s corrupting taint.

[...]

A like glad triumph was for thee anon,-
Life’s struggles o’er, to God thy spirit fled;
Around thy cell the stars serenely shone,
And o’er thy path their flaming mantles spread.

To the Father, and the the Son, in majesty
And power the same, be praise and glory given;
And to the Holy Ghost, who, with them both,
Diffuses life and love through earth and heaven.

Gemma Caelestis, Excerpt / by St. Peter Damian, O.S.B. (11th c) - translation (1861) by Catholic Publishing & Bookselling Company, London

If you’d like to read a beautiful translation of St. Benedict’s Rule, please be sure to check out my lovely friend , who provided such a helpful walk through the Rule.

Are there any wayside shrines near you? Any roadside chapels? I love the surprising, whimsical delight of stumbling upon these spaces.

Leave a comment

Wishing you and yours a happy St. Benedict’s Day - he is alongside us this Lent, and always, pointing us back toward Christ!

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

The link to a recording of our chat is posted below!

In sharing my journey through the liturgical calendar here, I’m inherently sharing something both deeply personal and deeply communal: like all of you, I experience these seasons and holy days at the intersection of the universal and the particular…it’s that unique crossroads where my own life circumstances and landscape graft into Church heritage & tradition.

And, here in the Pacific Northwest, I find myself in a hemisphere of natural seasons that rhyme with those experienced by the historical Church - as her traditions grew and developed over the centuries, they naturally found their language in the local landscape and weather of the Northern Hemisphere.

So, when we talk of the theology woven into the liturgical and natural seasons, we’re almost always biased toward this Northern perspective: the way midwinter & its darkness exhibits the theology of the light born at Christmas, the way the promise of new life at the Annunciation is underscored by springtime growth.

And though these are meaningful and mysterious breakthroughs of the Word in time & landscape, God won’t be placed in a box: as the Church spread globally, and now as we have the ability to talk instantly on a global scale, we need to think more about how our theology is expressed in other places and climates.

If you’ve been here for awhile, you’ve likely gathered that I’m passionate about local liturgical living: I’m not advocating for a wistful focus on other places, distracting us from our own landscape or life…rather, I’d love to hone a greater sensitivity to the simultaneously universal and local expression of our shared faith.

The liturgical living experience of half of the globe is underserved in our online discussions, but it’s an incredible fount of wisdom. I’d like to see our brothers & sisters in the Southern Hemisphere find more resources available to them, and, in turn, their other seasonal experiences can help us all to shake loose our habitual ways of seeing time wherever we live, too.

All that to say: Friday’s live conversation is a long time coming, and I’m delighted to share in this with you!

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We’ll be joined by - an Australian writer who beautifully reflects on “how the Southern Hemisphere gives theological insight to each liturgical season.”

Bella’s wise reflections have helped to stretch my own experience of the liturgical year here in the Northern Hemisphere, and they’ve also given me a deeper connection to my friends across the globe.

lives in Australia with her husband Daniel and three little boys. Last year, she moved from Sydney to a smaller town in regional New South Wales.

In her online ministry Over the Teacups, she writes about seasonal living in the Southern Hemisphere - the seasons of nature, of the liturgical year and of life - and the divine lessons we can learn from it

In her spare time, Bella loves reading historical fiction, drinking strong cups of tea and discovering new church calendar traditions.

Please join us for a chat about liturgical living in the Southern Hemisphere! Here are all the details…

Google Meet Details & Invitation
» Friday, March 20 at 3 pm US Pacific Time / Saturday, March 21 at 10 am Australia

Time Zone Converter

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“Places are not static. They are more like people, more like trees, and they have a life of their own that must be tended so that they in turn can take care of us.”

Christie Purifoy, A House to Call Home

Woven throughout all my work in researching & reflecting on the liturgical year is a devotion to incarnational theology - a focus on the intersection of God with matter…in Christ most perfectly, and whispered throughout all of creation.

The art of placemaking - discovering and nourishing the unique beauty & challenges of our time and place - is a natural extension of that devotion. It’s an ongoing curiosity about the way God shows up where we are….and the way we can participate in that beauty.

Over the years, I’ve found to be one of the clearest voices on the topic of placemaking…and, just recently, her newest book - A House to Call Home - has come into the world. It’s a beautiful intersection of artistic vision and theology, of place and of people…as we’re all journeying through Lent and our own variations of ‘spring cleaning’, I thought this would be the perfect book to explore together…

…plus, we’ll get to explore it with Christie herself!

Christie’s new book is a sweet combination of practical tips (which I always love…they help me refresh my eyes for my landscape), as well as beautiful reflections. Especially as we’ve been weaving At-Home Days into our routine, the ways of grafting a spirit of hospitality into our approach to our given place are particularly helpful to me these days. A House to Call Home continues deepening and broadening hospitality (I’m constantly surprised by how many of my preconceived notions exist in really rigid boxes!), and I find myself returning to Christie’s reflections regularly.

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So, this spring, let’s explore placemaking with Christie!

is a writer, gardener, and photographer who loves to grow flowers and community.

Christie earned a PhD in English Literature from the University of Chicago but eventually traded the classroom for an old Pennsylvania farmhouse called Maplehurst.

web site

GATHERINGS

Everyone is invited to read along with Book Club! All subscribers can share their questions and thoughts in the HF Chat and in the comments thread here.

Additionally, paid members can join for live online gatherings - including a discussion with the author herself!

Subscribe now

Spring Book Club Gatherings:

LIVE DISCUSSIONS

For paid members.
Details and a Google Meet link will be sent the week of each discussion, and a reminder (with link) will be posted in Chat. If you can’t make it to these gatherings live, no worries; they’ll be recorded and posted for you to watch on the re-play.

• Saturday, March 28 at 11 am Pacific Time
  Just an informal welcome gathering & time for chatting!
  

• Saturday, April 25 at 10 am Pacific Time - WITH THE AUTHOR!!
  Author will be joining us for our discussion of her book…I’ve loved Christie’s work for years, so this is an absolute treat!

SUBSTACK CHAT

For all subscribers.
As you read, feel free to hop into our Chat space to discuss with other subscribers!

• Substack Chat

Christie introduces her book, and offers some suggested retailers, here:

• A House to Call Home via Christie’s web site

Will you be joining us for book club? Christie is an artist through & through - in every aspect of life - and I’m so excited to learn from her this spring.

Leave a comment

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

READ ON

As you probably know, one of my biggest goals as I write, create, and host in this space is to help equip us all to take these ideas into our own lives + landscapes. I want these explorations of history & theology to reinvigorate the way we approach sacred time in our varied places, with all our different life circumstances.

So, I’m absolutely thrilled to further embody this mission as I join forces with and Select International Tours to co-host a pilgrimage! As pilgrims, we’ll all be coming together to take our conversation off the screen and into our gathering - and then take those shared pilgrimage experiences and refreshed perspectives back to our diverse homes!

The special beauty in this invitation is that it so perfectly encapsulates our pilgrimage through both sacred space (as we walk our way through some of the most glorious settings of Old Europe) and through sacred time (as Adventide companions, we’ll be journeying toward Christmas together!)

Dixie, my incredible co-host, has been a longtime friend via Substack - and, as we chat about pilgrimage details on the phone, I can tell you that we’re both quite giddy about the locations we’ll be visiting together. (Friends, we will likely need help pulling us out of those stacks of books in these enormous libraries!)

If you’re able, we’d be delighted to have you join us for this remarkable pilgrimage experience in December 2026. Here’s a glimpse of what we’ll be up to, as well as all the links you need for more details…

Our Advent Journey

(an abridged itinerary)

December 5 - 13, 2026

• DAY 1 (Saturday, December 5): DEPART NEWARK, USA TO MUNICH, GERMANY
  

• DAY 2 (Sunday, December 6): MUNICH
  We’ll head to our hotel in the city center, surrounded by Christmas markets. Let’s walk to the Christkindlmarkt at Marienplatz - a market dating back to the 14th century, and possibly the original Christmas market! We’ll close with dinner and overnight in Munich.
  

• DAY 3 (Monday, December 7): MUNICH - CHRISTMAS MARKETS

  After breakfast, we’ll enjoy a 2-hour guided tour of the city center, visit the National Law Library, and then depart for the Christmas Village in the Kaiserhof of the Residenz (inside the city palace!) We’ll have a free afternoon of exploration (maybe head to the Munich Reader, an English used-bookstore), with dinner at leisure.
  

• DAY 4 (Tuesday, December 8): MUNICH - NEUSCHWANSTEIN - ETTAL BREWERY
  We’ll wake up and head to Neuschwanstein-Castle (the inspiration for Disney World’s Cinderella castle) and its local village, then go to the incredible Ettal Monastery and brewery. After lunch, we’re off to the woodcarvers’ village of Oberammergau, then Salzburg for dinner.
  

• DAY 5 (Wednesday, December 9): SALZBURG
  After breakfast, we’ll have time to explore the city at our own pace. Salzburg is the birthplace of Mozart, as well as the location where The Sound of Music was filmed…and it’s filled with incredible sights at Christmastime! In the evening, we’ll enjoy a classical music concert.

  

• DAY 6 (Thursday, December 10): SALZBURG - STIFT ADMONT LIBRARY

  We’re off to Admont, where we’ll visit the Stift Admont Library: the world’s largest monastic library hall, a Baroque beauty covered in frescoes and holding over 200,000 books. We’ll enjoy a guided tour of the library, as well as a visit to the art museum in the monastery and lunch in the Abbey restaurant.

  

• DAY 7 (Friday, December 11): MELK - VIENNA
  After an overnight in Salzburg, we’ll head to Melk in the morning - a small town along the Danube. We’ll visit the Melk Abbey (setting of Umberto Eco’s novel The Name of the Rose) and view treasured art dated to the 9th through 15th centuries. Later in the afternoon, we’ll arrive in Vienna at our hotel (and maybe visit some more Christmas markets?)
  

• DAY 8 (Saturday, December 12): VIENNA - CITY CENTER
  We’ll tour the Ringstrasse area of Vienna, stroll over to St. Stephen Cathedral, and enjoy a tour of the city center (Donners’ Fountain, Belvedere Palace Gardens, and Hofburg Palace). We’ll also head to the Austrian State National Library, and that night, we’ll dine in Grinzing - famous for its vineyards - and enjoy a wine tasting.
  

• DAY 9 (Sunday, December 13): VIENNA - USA
  After an incredible pilgrimage, we’ll go to the airport and get ready to take our experiences back home with us.

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More Details & Registration

For a full itinerary and all of the nitty-gritty details, as well as links for registration:

Pilgrimage Details & Pricing

Download the Brochure

…and please feel free to send your questions my way!

Leave a comment

Email Kristin

It would be an absolute joy to begin a new liturgical year (literally) alongside you!

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.

We have short time to stay, as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay,
As you, or anything.
We die
As your hours do, and dry
Away,
Like to the summer’s rain;
Or as the pearls of morning’s dew,
Ne’er to be found again.

Robert Herrick, “To Daffodils” (17th c.)

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But first, some music while you read…

Founder Box announcements

• Your Spring Founder Box will begin shipping mid-March - this is a truly delightful collection built around nourishment
  

Online gatherings

• MARCH 20 | Friday at 3 pm Pacific Time | Liturgical living in the Southern Hemisphere with of Over the Teacups
  » For paid subscribers: Join Bella and I as we chat about her experience of liturgical living in the Southern Hemisphere
  

• MARCH 28 | Saturday at 11 am Pacific Time | Spring Book Club welcome gathering

  » For paid subscribers: Just an informal gathering of readers, as we open up our time in our spring selection together!

Fresh Posts & Previous Archives

• MARCH 3 | Tuesday | 2026 Pilgrimage Announced
  

• MARCH 6 | Friday | Spring Book Club Announced
  

• SECOND HALF OF MARCH: Festal focus reflections, art, & resources shared
  

• MARCH 12 | Thursday | St. Gregory the Great’s Day
  » Printables: Book of Hours pages
  » Videos: Recorded discussion with Dr. Eleanor Parker about St. Gregory the Great & the Anglo-Saxons

• MARCH 25 | Wednesday | Solemnity of the Annunciation
  » Printables: Book of Hours pages, fill-in worksheet, & prayer
  

Give a gift subscription

+ March 2026 Calendar & Coloring

The March Almanac includes:

• March calendar page with a selection of holy days & prompts, dip-pen illustrations, and links to connect you with more HF resources

• Coloring page featuring my hand-drawn illustrations of March feast emblems

• Print out these goodies (I recommend card-stock for the calendar and regular paper for the coloring page), and see how you can integrate the featured holidays into your existing plans!

+ Illuminated Festal Calendar

Inspired by Medieval books of hours, this illuminated calendar page leaves space for you to write in the feasts that are especially important to you (a blank version is provided as well, so you can fill it out just as you need!)

+ Garland

This sweet March garland is available for you to print and enjoy throughout the month - another way of marking time, with your garland growing longer as the days pass. More details, as well as info on the symbolism of each element, are included in the printable.

Head to the Scriptorium to find your March printables:

Scriptorium

I LOVE antique botanical prints - they’re filled with both information and beauty.

Inspired by those lovely old naturalists’ prints, I’m crafting a faith-inspired herbarium to share with you - I’ll be featuring a different plant each month, each one briefly told through the story of its symbolism in Christian tradition and art.

These cards could make lovely additions to your Book of Hours, planner, journal…

MARY’S STAR (aka, Daffodil)
Narcissus spp.

Symbolism:

• Resurrection (some of the first flowers of spring, daffodils accompany many images of the risen Christ - or his crucifixion, as heralds of the Resurrection).

• Marian (most every part of the daffodil, from its humble posture, to its scent, to its crown-like head, have been tied to the Blessed Virgin Mary)

• Annunciation (in some iconography, daffodils are present at the Annunciation)

• Triumph of divine love (as an emblem of rebirth and renewal, the daffodil is in some scenes of Paradise)

Refer a friend

Head to the Scriptorium to find the first of these new Herbarium prints:

Scriptorium

St. Benedict’s feast traditionally lands on March 21 - and celebrating the father of the Benedictine Rule of Life feels like the perfect dovetail to our Lenten practices.

• Reflections, history, folk traditions, art, and more will be available mid-March

• Paid members will receive a printable cover page and booklet for their liturgical year binders, as well as a peek into how our liturgical living group celebrates this holiday

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Pax et bonum,
Kristin

“Please, please St. Matthias, grant us abundant fruit, wherever my voice may be heard in the garden.”

Matthias carol from Czech Republic

The blurry photos in today’s post really capture how deliciously wild our St. Matthias feast was.

So often, it’s easy for me to domesticate God. And sure, seeing Christ in the context of our home and in ‘mundane’ routine is a glorious thing - but if I’m not mindful, I start to personify God. I start placing him into a box built of my own expectations or needs, rather than paying careful attention to his true character and authentic ways.

Being reminded of God’s ‘wildness’ is a helpful antidote for me. And it’s not a wildness of violence or chaos: wildness is a way of thinking about God’s vastness & sovereignty, his divine steadiness beyond of our human attempts of control.

“‘The glory of God is the living man, but the life of man is the vision of God’, says St. Irenaeus, getting to the heart of what happens when man meets God on the mountain in the wilderness. Ultimately, it is the very life of man, man himself as living righteously, that is the true worship of God, but life only becomes real life when it receives its form from looking toward God.”

Pope Benedict XVI, The Spirit of the Liturgy

And, as we find ourselves in Lent - such a vast wilderness - this reminder is especially poignant. It’s only here, in the wilderness, where I become viscerally aware of how many idols I’ve made…and how much personification I’ve done, applying my human ways to God (rather than perceiving his nature as communicated in Scripture, Tradition, and - most completely - in Christ). What a refreshment it is to knock down all those walls I’d built around God, all the domesticating I’d tried to do!

Chasing after a herd of kids who were singing & dancing their way through the farm - waving streamers, ringing bells, climbing trees - was just the shake-up I needed this Lent, and St. Matthias was the perfect companion for that.

Here’s a peek into our St. Matthias’ Day celebration…

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St. Mathee shut up the bee
St. Mattho, take thy hopper and sow
St. Matthy all the year goes by
St. Matthie sends sap into the tree

English proverb

» Printable Resources

Book of Hours Pages

Keeping a liturgical Book of Hours binder helps me to distill all of the inspiration I find, so I can easily look to the elements that have been most nurturing for our family & community.

• Cover page featuring a Fox and Royal Fern (both associated with St. Matthias - more details about their symbolism are in the printable!)

• Five pages of folk tradition, agrarian context, traditional meal ideas, prompts, history, poetry, Scripture, & hymns (with photos) to help you learn about this feast and reflect on how it intersects with your own life and landscape.

• Two versions of this printable are available: one for the years when St. Matthias’ Day falls in Lent, and another for the years when it falls in Ordinary Time I.

Paid members can find these goodies (as well as my whole archive of printables) in the Scriptorium!

Scriptorium

GOD’S GIFT SHOOK HIM AWAKE

Matthias, chosen as a saint -
a warrior through victory -
yet not before the Lamb’s bloodshed
was he chosen,
but late to conscience came,
as starts the man who did not keep
the watch full wakefully.

God’s gift shook him awake, and then
for joy he leapt,
a giant in his strength,
for God foresaw this man
just like that Man whom once from mud
he formed when first the angel fell
who God denied.

Excerpt from Mathias Sanctus by St. Hildegard von Bingen (12th c.); trans. Nathaniel M. Campbell

Spring, ever-persistent, is breaking through the lingering cold weather here: bulbs are pushing through the cold dirt, and primroses have been shaking off a nightly frost. The frogs tend to be a bit slow and lethargic in the morning before they warm up, but, little by little, that inevitable springtime energy is upon us.

That being said, I’m arriving in this Lenten springtime without my own cache of energy to match the season: but, mercifully, the Church has given us a companion for this transitional time.

Even though we may find ourselves already depleted as we begin Lent, St. Matthias - popularly thought of as the “13th Apostle” - is here alongside us, reimagining and reinvigorating our whole Lenten journey.

We know almost nothing with certainty about St. Matthias: he was born sometime in the 1st century AD and was likely martyred around 80 AD. Scripture only mentions him in one story, when the fledgling church - after the Ascension of Jesus - receives St. Matthias into the Apostleship role previously held by Judas Iscariot.

St. Peter guides this process:

“For it is written in the Book of Psalms:
‘Let his encampment become desolate,
and may no one dwell in it.’

“And:
‘May another take his office.’

“‘Therefore, it is necessary that one of the men who accompanied us the whole time the Lord Jesus came and went among us, beginning from the baptism of John until the day on which he was taken up from us, become with us a witness to his resurrection.’ So they proposed two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also known as Justus, and Matthias. Then they prayed, ‘You, Lord, who know the hearts of all, show which one of these two you have chosen to take the place in this apostolic ministry from which Judas turned away to go to his own place.’ Then they gave lots to them, and the lot fell upon Matthias, and he was counted with the eleven apostles.”

Acts 1:20-26 (NABRE)

Most everything we learn about St. Matthias comes from this brief passage, and even then, his story is one of inference: because of the conditions described by St. Peter, we know that Matthias must have been a disciple throughout all of Jesus’ ministry, a witness to both his resurrection and ascension.

Of all the Apostles, St. Matthias was the only one not chosen directly by Jesus…and though he had accompanied Jesus throughout his entire ministry, through the whole arc of Jesus’ salvific work, Matthias was received into the college of Apostles after the resurrected Christ had ascended.

Scripture nonetheless emphasizes God’s movement in his election: Matthias was chosen by lot…a practice we find in the Old Testament, and a way of removing bias from the process of election. To our modern eyes, it may read as randomness; to the ancient audience, though, the emphasis on God’s direction in the building of his Church would have saturated this moment.1

“Luminous already, and like the sun shining in the exercise of beneficence, he speeds by righteous knowledge through the love of God to the sacred abode, like as the apostles. Not that they became apostles through being chosen for some distinguished peculiarity of nature, since also Judas was chosen along with them. But they were capable of becoming apostles on being chosen by Him who foresees even ultimate issues. Matthias, accordingly, who was not chosen along with them, on showing himself worthy of becoming an apostle, is substituted for Judas.”

Clement of Alexandria, excerpt from The Stromata (Miscellanies) (VI.13), 2nd c. AD

Woven into this briefest record of early Church events is a lavishly kind, startlingly redemptive story: the very same office vacated in deception & despair is not cast aside…it’s redeemed. Not left empty, but, by God’s grace, filled & flourishing.

After his entry into the office previously held by Judas, St. Matthias recedes into mystery. Legendary accounts of his life & missionary work didn’t take hold until the Middle Ages, and they’re full of conflicting timelines and geography. Some stories maintain that he was martyred in Jerusalem, while others tell us that he brought the gospel to Aethiopia - not the modern country of Ethiopia, but rather the region east of the Black Sea.2 There, in ancient Colchis (modern Georgia), he is thought to have been martyred.

For over a thousand years3, St. Matthias’ feast has been celebrated in late February4, marking the date of his martyrdom…situating him in the ascent toward the Spring Equinox, and, many years, in the deepening of Lent. Although his feast was transferred to May in 1969 (part of an effort to remove feast days from Lent & emphasize the penitential nature of this season), its historic placement in the growing intensity of both Spring & Lent tells the story of an otherwise lesser-known Apostle.

And it’s here, in his seasonal context, where we can sense the shape of St. Matthias more clearly.

CALLING TO THE TREES

I call, I call St. Matthias,
wherever my voice goes,
may there be plenty of fruit
everywhere.

Zdechovice (Czech Republic) Matthias carol

As his popularity spread & grew during the Middle Ages, St. Matthias was adopted by farmers as the awakener of their new growing season: he was the breaker of ice, the emissary of flowing sap in the tree, the sower of grass, the shelter of bees.

Especially in Eastern Europe, his intercession was seen as accompanying the planting season and the coming harvest. “Matthias carols” were sung throughout the orchards…children were bedecked in garlands woven from last year’s dried orchard leaves, and they ran through the trees shaking & knocking at trees to ‘wake’ them up from their wintry slumber.

Afterward, they were rewarded with a gift from the orchard: dried fruit, preserved from last season’s harvest.

Through these lively traditions, people linked themselves with St. Matthias in banishing winter. In him, they found a ritual way to fill the vacancy of wintry privation - just as St. Matthias’ reception in the early Church returned a wholeness to the Apostolic college.

St. Matthias, after all, occupied a barren place. His Apostolic mission bloomed in an office that had previously been held by the most tragic of betrayers, and the folk traditions from centuries of worship grasp this dynamic so tangibly…inviting us to accompany St. Matthias in filling our wintry landscape with growth.

I can’t help but think of the landscapes of our own hearts here in Lent, whether we’re shaking up trees to wake them or shaking up our habits to shiver back to abundant life.

It’s easy to look at those barren places in our lives as if they’re forever defined by pain, neglect, or sorrow, after all. Sometimes, we stop trying to cultivate the damaged places in our history, sequestering them off as hopeless. Trying to approach them and imagine anything fruitful in them feels impossible at times.

St. Matthias, though, comes alongside us with the reminder that God breathes into even those barren places. Not even the office held by the betrayer of Jesus Christ was left fallow & empty.

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And so, in that deeply painful void left by Judas, God placed St. Matthias’ apostolic mission…placed seeds of evangelization & miracles that would transcend cultural boundaries and spread the Gospel further and deeper.

We may not know the details of St. Matthias’ life, but honestly…it doesn’t really matter: in him, we see the Apostles’ faithful attention to desolation, as well as God’s redemptive, flowering, generative character made present and carried forth through places that seemed infertile.

So, here from my somewhat depleted vantage at the start of Lent, I’m reminded by St. Matthias that God can make the sap run in any tired, wintered tree.

READ ON

BENEDICTION

O Blessed Matthias! thou, O spiritual Eden, didst flow like a full river, from the divine fountain; thou didst water the earth with thy mystic rivulets, and make it fruitful. Do thou, therefore, beseech the Lord that He grant peace and much mercy to our souls.

Matthia beate, Eden spiritualis - excerpt from the Greek Menæa, as quoted by Dom Prosper Guéranger, O.S.B.

This past weekend, we celebrated St. Matthias’ Day in community…kids & adults alike running through the farm with flashlights, bells, and streamers to wake up the land. Incredibly…my tired soul felt a bit woken up, too.

Is there a place in your life that feels barren? Through St. Matthias, let’s try inviting God into that space…every day, we start again.

Pax et bonum,
Kristin

After our chat, a link to its recording will be posted below!

Friends, here’s a Lenten admission for you: I find something to be consistently uncanny about the Church calendar’s seasons of preparation…I almost always skid into them feeling extra un-prepared.

I try different approaches, focus on letting go of my own internal expectations, and I generally aim to soften my landing in these preparatory seasons of Advent & Lent.

…but it turns out that I’m quite adept at finding new and creative ways of making the season of Lent into an idol when I focus too much on my vision of it rather than listening to God’s voice in it.

“I have often found that, similar to Advent, Lent is a season that we enter with high hopes for slowing down. We tell ourselves that this year is going to be different. We tell ourselves that this year is going to be different. We are going to stick to our sacrifices, pray more, and not do so many extra things that distract us from the true spirit of it all. Then Lent begins, and in the midst of our spiritual training, our imperfections are highlighted and we quickly learn our frailty. With slightly dashed hopes for our Lenten efforts, we come to see the real lesson of the season, which is that we desperately need and are utterly dependent upon God.”

Steffani Aquila, Festive Faith

It’s easy to turn the liturgical year into a list of checkboxes…and in so many ways, guidelines can indeed be helpful reminders. The devotional practice embodied by this season, though, is a call toward a much greater depth of freedom; and even though I’ve been steeped in it for years, I find myself annually in need of re-orientation in my very approach toward this season of re-orienting! (Sometimes, the more familiar we become with the Church calendar, the easier it is to reduce or box-in the mystery it describes).

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That’s one of the many reasons I’m so grateful to be companioned in this ‘liturgical living’ journey by kindred spirits like Steffani Aquila: as we’ve known each other online for years, her friendship has continually been a refreshment and reminder of the vast approachability of the liturgical year. She reminds us all that the calendar offers a pattern for spiritual formation at any age or stage of life.

“As I began speaking and working with Catholic adults across the country to help them establish a liturgical life through growing a festive Catholic culture in homes, parishes, and neighborhoods, I quickly saw that many people were indeed being left out of the current groundswell of efforts to reclaim Catholic festivity rooted in our liturgical year and calendar.”

Steffani Aquila, Festive Faith

Stef’s approach is particularly resonant for me: I personally didn’t encounter liturgical living until adulthood, and the Church calendar has turned out to be one of the greatest tools of catechesis in my own faith journey…its exposure even helped to bring me to faith, since I had finally found the sacramental language I’d been craving. Because of that, I’m passionate about reclaiming the breadth and depth of liturgical living: not as an idol or an end unto itself, but as an ongoing rehearsal of our faith in the attributes of God and salvific work of Christ. I believe that these rich traditions, spanning cultures and eras, can be profound devotional practices…whether we’re crafty or not, whether we like to bake or not…whether we’re with or without spouses or kids, in a city or in the country, young or old.

The celebration tips that Stef shares are informed by an immense depth of theological study, and they invite us to re-examine the biases we have toward liturgical living - she helps to free this catechetical tool from the box in which we tend to place it.

As an extension of all her work online (and her local parish efforts), Stef wrote Festive Faith: a gorgeous and practical book that helps us to graft liturgical living into our own lives in doable, meaningful ways. Whether you’re Catholic or not, this is a wonderful resource full of rich traditions and thoughtful reflections that can support you wherever you are.

So, I’m thrilled to have Stef joining us for a live conversation about liturgical living! And, as an added delight: I’ll be giving away one autographed copy of her book to an attendee.

Steffani Aquila is a Catholic wife and the founder of His Girl Sunday, an online space inspiring Catholic culture and liturgical living for people in all seasons of life. She is the author of Festive Faith and a national Catholic speaker. Aquila has 18 years of experience working in Catholic institutions holding titles such as Director of liturgical life at the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart and Director of Communications for the University of St. Thomas. She also has experience working with Catholic high schools as a dean and honors-level theology teacher. Aquila earned a master of arts in theology from the University of St. Thomas.

Join Steffani & I for a live discussion on Friday, February 20 at 9 am Pacific Time - AND we’ll be giving away one autographed copy of Steffani’s book, Festive Faith, to an attendee at the gathering!!

Here are all the details…

Google Meet Details & Invitation
» Friday, February 20 at 9 am Pacific Time

• All attendees will be eligible to be entered in a drawing to win an autographed copy of Festive Faith!

Time Zone Converter

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After our chat, a link to its recording will be posted below!

One of my favorite aspects of the Church calendar is how embodied it is.

In his immense kindness, Jesus used staples of bread and wine to communicate himself…and, through the in-breaking of sacred time in the Eucharist, continues that shared supper.

The traditions of our calendar, in so many ways, feel a bit like echoes of this pattern: through our senses, through the simple blessings of food and drink (or, on the flip side, the wisdom in fasting from indulgence!), we get to taste our way through the life of Christ and his Saints.

What an incredibly humane gift all these traditions are!

In all honesty, I had found much of Scripture to be opaque until I began to embody it through celebration or memorial, through friends and flavors, through a connection of the Story I was encountering to the land and the community in which I find myself here and now.

I can’t pretend to grasp the mysteries or plumb the depth of Scripture, but, by tasting its story, I find a familiar and immersive liveliness. Just as the word “Christmas” evokes the fragrance of cinnamon or a turkey cooking in the oven, other holidays I celebrate now have tastes and scents to them: St. Bartholomew was a name on a page for me until I encountered him through watermelon and honey, and blackberry crumble & apple cider now call to mind St. Michael.

In exploring the annual calendar cycle this way, a pair of incredibly witty books have been stand-by companions to me: Dining with the Saints and Drinking with the Saints by Dr. Michael Foley (Dining also by Fr. Leo E. Patalinghug).

These books are both wise and funny, filled with approachable recipes, contextual history, hagiographies, and more. Dr. Foley has a brilliant way of distilling (oh! A pun!) the myriad traditions of our calendar into an accessible form…so, after years of enjoying these books, I’m thrilled to have Dr. Foley joining us for a live discussion!

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I’m especially delighted that we’ll be having this discussion right at the start of Lent, however paradoxical that may seem - Dr. Foley’s books help to tease out the nuance of fasting, reminding us that “the Great Fast, as Lent is still called in the East, is the mother of so many foods”…and calling us to explore the diverse tastes of Lent, seeing how the boundaries placed around food and strong drink have produced some truly exceptional and creative flavors.

What better time to re-examine the foods & drinks traditional to the Church year?

Dr. Michael P. Foley is a Professor of Patristics in the Great Texts Program at Baylor University, a Catholic theologian, a mixologist, and the author or editor of over a dozen books and around 400 articles on topics including sacred liturgy, St. Augustine of Hippo, and contemporary film and culture.

» Here are all the details for our live chat…

Google Meet Details & Invitation
» Thursday, February 19 at 8 am Pacific Time

Time Zone Converter

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“Do you wish your prayer to fly toward God? Give it two wings – fasting and almsgiving.”

St. Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos (Expositions on the Psalms) (4th/5th c. AD)

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Between the nightly frog chorus we’ve been hearing, the return of birdsong in the daytime, and all the bulbs that have been pushing up through the soil, signs of spring are breaking through these still-gray, still-chilly days.

At first glance, it may feel a bit dissonant to have our celebration of spring’s arrival met with the penitential season of Lent (from the Anglo-Saxon lencten, ‘lengthen’…a reference to the lengthening daylight): the forty-day period1 of preparation for Easter.

There is, though, a deep wisdom in this union of natural and liturgical seasons. In the agricultural rhythms that rely on growth patterns in the natural seasons, this is a time of pruning. In these late winter/early spring weeks, most plants (as well as insects) are dormant, making the pruning process less damaging.

Though pruning is inherently stressful to plants, it’s also a discipline that helps them flourish: by removing diseased or over-crowded branches, growth in the core parts of the plant is stimulated. Instead of pouring energy into its damaged or shaded branches, the plant’s energy flows into abundant spring growth and overall health.

And here’s where we recognize that springtime, Lenten familiarity in our own journeys. Where is my flourishing life in God overcrowded by my own skewed habits? What parts of that life are being shaded by misuse or neglect? Into what damaged or diseased parts am I pouring too much energy?

Pruning taps into springtime’s inherent growth energy, and Lent helps to reveal that process in our own lives. In anticipation of the central mystery of our faith - the Resurrection of Christ celebrated in Eastertide - we’re offered pruning tools…fasting, prayer, almsgiving…to help us cut back our languishing parts and spur new growth.

Really, it’s just an opportunity for us to receive the gift already laid before us…but I know that I’m a creature always, always in need of the reminder.

So, as we all enter Lent alongside each other, here are a few printable resources that draw from this intersection of the liturgical and natural aspects of this preparatory season…

Printable resources for your Lent:

» BOOK OF HOURS: COVER PAGE

Inspired by Medieval books of hours, these cover pages feature pollinators and plant life emblematic of the liturgical seasons. (They also complement the printables for all of the feast days that you may have already collected!) The design itself is an homage to gothic stained glass windows, their arch reminding us of the journey toward God.

Alongside the Lent cover page is a quick guide to the symbolism embedded in all of the natural elements featured in this arch…a starting-off point for your own reflection and research, if your curiosity gets piqued!

I hope that these pollinators and their plants will remind us of our work as co-creators with Christ.

» 2026 LENT BOTANICAL COLORING CALENDAR

I created this Lenten botanical coloring calendar to help us better see the contours within Lent – looking at traditions that are kept by a variety of denominations today, as well as exploring some historic elements that have mostly fallen by the wayside but nonetheless offer so much beauty.

Though flowers aren’t traditionally used in churches throughout Lent, they’re nonetheless nature’s way of telling the Lenten story. I’ve chosen flowers for their connections with liturgical tradition, color, bloom time, and other important associations in Scripture.

I like to explore different shades of blue and purple, different hues of green, and different media (colored pencils, crayon, pastels, etc!) as I color may way through the season. By the time Easter comes, I have a Lenten bouquet!

These Lent printables - as well as more resources for the holidays historically within Lent - are available in the Scriptorium:

Scriptorium

How are you feeling as Lent peeks around the corner? The Church used to encourage a time of focus in a pre-Lent period (called Septuagesima and beginning three weeks before Ash Wednesday) - and honestly, in each of my annual journeys through Lent, I better see the incredible wisdom in carving out that time of preparation.

Shrovetide, of course, encompasses another (shorter) tradition of propelling us into our Lenten desert journey…and, if you’ve saved the Christmastide holly that you took down on Plough Monday, this is our week to use it (as we heat our Shrove Tuesday pancake griddle with a fire from that Christmastide holly…ya’ll, the continuity in the calendar is a beautiful thing).

As always, feel free to hop over into the Substack Chat room to find some encouragement and solidarity as you step into Lent!

Pax et bonum,
Kristin