“Like a great waterwheel, the liturgical year goes on relentlessly irrigating our souls, softening the ground of our hearts, nourishing the soil of our lives until the seed of the Word of God itself begins to grow in us, comes to fruit in us, ripens in us the spiritual journey of a lifetime. So goes the liturgical year through all the days of our lives.”
Sr. Joan Chittister, The Liturgical Year
Welcome to the second in a series of posts to help us to build a liturgical year binder - our own Book of Hours - with each other! We started with the basics last month, and now, we’ll look at different ways of organizing our resources.
This long stretch of Ordinary Time gives us the perfect opportunity to explore different ways of distilling all of the wisdom and resources that help us live into the Church calendar. You know…the things that actually work for our life and place, not the things that we think ‘should’ work.
In June, we started by remembering our purpose in this project, and we began gathering up summertime materials as well as binder supplies:
Now that we have a pile of inspiration (as well as some fun new office supplies), let’s explore different ways of building a scaffolding that will support all the great summertime things we want to hold onto in our liturgical celebrations!
» PRINTABLES
Paid members: to help as you begin organizing your binder, I painted some fresh cover pages for you! Inspired by Medieval books of hours, these feature pollinators and plant life emblematic of the liturgical season, natural season, and months that we’re focusing on as we begin to set up our binders together. They also complement the printables for feast days that you may have already collected.
I hope that these pollinators and their plants will remind us of our work as co-creators with Christ!
The main cover page - for Ordinary Time II - includes a few options with other names for this season, to help accommodate your tradition. It’s inspired by Medieval gothic stained glass windows, with the arch shape reminding us of the journey toward God.1
STEP 3: FOCUS ON ONE HOLIDAY FOR EACH SUMMER MONTH
Over the past month, you’ve been collecting all sorts of summertime ephemera that inspires you: pictures your kids drew, poetry, recipes, books, church bulletins, liturgical goodies that you’ve been meaning to print out…
Now, let’s pick ONE holiday in each summer month, and then sort through all our summertime goodness and see how the pieces we’ve collected might be helpful resources for these holidays.
Since we’re nearing the end of July, some of our sorting will be in anticipation of upcoming holidays…but much of this process will be retrospective. That’s incredibly helpful, though, since our summer experiences will be fresh on our minds and close to our fingertips.
» SUMMER HOLIDAY PROMPTS:
Remember, ‘summer’ is malleable: in our family’s particular region and culture, the months of June, July, & August feel most like our summertime. Some folks will begin summer with May, though, or feel like it ends in August.
Do what works for you with these prompts: maybe just focus on one month, or pick the months that feel most like ‘summer’ where you live.
Make one sticky note for each holiday, and on each one, jot down some bullet points of the elements that stand out to you: particular symbols, Scripture, meals, plants, hymns… try not to get mired in the details (I’m talking to myself here- ha), and just do a flyover of the feast. Also, make a sticky note that says “Other.”
Place each sticky note on your table or floor, with plenty of space in between.
Take your pile of summertime materials that you collected last month and sort those pieces under each sticky-note-holiday. More than likely, the summer goodies that you’ve collected won’t be explicitly tied to each holiday, but that’s what makes this part of the process so impactful: you’re starting with your actual surroundings, the specific context of your time and place, and then looking at it in a liturgical context.
e.g. One of the summertime pieces that I collected last month was a pebble from a beach. When reading about St. James, I find that shells are tied to his feast: my pebble, a reminder of time spent by the river, would be a great ebenezer to place in my pile of St. James goodies. (Tip: I hole-punch plain manila envelopes so that I can store more unwieldy bits & bobs in my binder).
Some of your summertime materials won’t seem to ‘fit’ into any of these holidays, and that’s okay: put them in the “Other” category, and save them for next year when you explore other summer feasts.
Now, let’s step back and look at our sticky notes and their sorted piles: what do you notice? Do you see any patterns in what you’ve collected? Maybe you’ll notice that you tend to gravitate toward meals (each pile has some clipped-out recipes), or that you love words (lots of written material in each pile). The piles won’t be consistent or even, and that’s fine!
STEP 4: BUILD A FRAMEWORK FOR THOSE SUMMER HOLIDAYS
Over the years, I’ve organized my liturgical year resources in almost every way imaginable. I’ve tried using one binder for everything, organized by liturgical season; 3x5 notecards, keeping everything in cart catalogs; file bins, one for each liturgical season2; one binder for every season…and currently, one binder for each month (with a binder dedicated to movable feasts).3
My point here is not to overwhelm you with the variety of ways to organize all this material, but rather to say…it’s okay if you change things up as you go. As you continue to walk through liturgical time, and as you continue honing your attentiveness to each holiday in your life and landscape, you can shift the way you organize things.
It’s best to start simple, so let’s begin with one binder and imagine different ways of organizing our resources.
We don’t want to live in service to the strict organization of all these things: but having a framework for the resources and inspiration we’ve collected can help us more easily graft these traditions into our lives each year.
And remember, we’re starting with one piece of the pie: we’re just looking at summer holidays, and we’re not going to get wrapped up in building out our binder to Christmas.
Here are a few different ways of organizing your summertime collections:
SORT BY NATURAL SEASON
Within your binder, make a cover page for Summer(I like to use tabbed sheet protector dividers for cover pages - find a list of my recommended binder resources here). All of your summertime resources can live within this section. The cover pages for feast days can get popped into sheet protectors, to help further sort all your material.
SORT BY LITURGICAL SEASON
In your binder, make a cover page for Ordinary Time II (aka Season After Pentecost, aka Trinitytide…it has many names in various traditions). Within that section, add sheet protectors with cover pages for the sticky-note feasts we’ve been focusing on as we organize. Because of other movable seasons (like Advent), some holidays will dip in and out of Ordinary Time II depending on the year: and that’s ok!
SORT BY MONTH Make tabbed cover pages for each summer month: for us, that would be June, July, and August. Within each month, add sheet protectors with cover pages for the summer feasts listed above. No need to worry about movable feasts yet - we’re just focusing on a few months right now!
MIX AND MATCH
These sorting methods aren’t mutually exclusive! Your binder could be layered: maybe have a cover page for Ordinary Time II that serves almost as a ‘bookmark,’ shifting it each year to reflect the start of Ordinary Time (this is another great way to help us practice attentiveness to the season). In looking at just these few summer holidays, here’s one way you might mix all of these different ways of measuring time together:
Ordinary Time II (From the Monday after Pentecost up to the first Sunday of Advent)
Summer
Month
Feast
Maybe you don’t want to have the natural season (Summer, in this case) as part of your organizing system - no problem, just leave it out of your binder!
The great thing about these binders is that we’re not cementing anything: it’s easy to take things out and rearrange as we go. So, find the system that makes the most ‘sense’ to you…and change it as you go.
TILL NEXT TIME…
I’m an overthinker, so I have to really practice the art of stepping back and not over-worrying the process. If you struggle with this, too, just remember: we want to collect the things that actually work for our family as we commemorate the life of Christ through the Church year.
I’ll be back in August with the last few summertime prompts for your Book of Hours! Would a live walk-through video be helpful, where we spend some time setting up our binders together? Let me know!
In the meantime, lean on the community (both here and in your own home parish): share your questions, uncertainties, photos, wins, and more in our subscriber chat.
This is really beautiful Kristin! Though not Christian myself, I can see the peace and joy this would bring. Thank you for bringing this into the world and for sharing!
This is really beautiful Kristin! Though not Christian myself, I can see the peace and joy this would bring. Thank you for bringing this into the world and for sharing!
I would love a walk-through video or group session, as I am also an overthinker and likely to get bogged down in the organizational minutiae.