gather: Catternday
Spinning wool and lighting up the darkness
Catt’n and Clement comes year by year,
Some of your apples and some of your beer;
Some for Peter, some for Paul,
Some for Him who made us all.
Peter was a good old man,
For his sake give us some:
Some of the best, and none of the worst,
And God will send your souls to roost.
Up with the ladder and down with the can,
Give me red apples and I’ll begone.Traditional Worcestershire rhyme, recorded 1840
Welcome, friends. I’m Kristin: a Pacific Northwest artist, mom, & farmer offering support for seasonal, local, liturgical living. Together, we’ll explore the agrarian heritage of the Church calendar and ideas of sacred time & sacred place.
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For the past few years, I’ve hosted a Liturgical Life group. We’re a diverse gathering - of all ages, from a variety of denominations, learning alongside each other and working to graft the traditions of the liturgical calendar into our own varied circumstances.
Somehow, when I think back to our summertime festivities (like watermelon-eating contests for Bartlemas!), it seems as if they were ages ago…and as if they just happened yesterday. The passage of time never feels steady: so often, it ebbs and flows.
Amidst that sensation of ebbing and flowing, I’m grateful for the way the Church year helps to scaffold time & memory for us. I find myself thinking back on the year in terms of liturgical traditions and the people who shared in them with us: “July’s rushbearing was on SUCH a hot day, but there were so many kids running around in the sprinklers having a blast… We had a lot of heavy rain around St. Mark’s day, but everyone did a muddy field blessing anyway (and saw a rainbow, to boot!)…”
I’m reminded of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, a collection of Old English annals that often measures events by their relation to liturgical feasts & fasts:
“A.D. 913. This year, about Martinmas, King Edward had the northern fortress built at Hertford, betwixt the Memer, and the Benwic, and the Lea. After this, in the summer, betwixt gang- days and midsummer, went King Edward with some of his force into Essex, to Maldon…”
From the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, first compiled during Alfred the Great’s reign
In our modern world, immersed in technology and insulated from the demands of local seasonality, it’s so easy to feel strangely un-moored; being able to attach our memories and moments to community gatherings, though, has been so anchoring for me.
More than ever, I find this rhythm to be a balm during the winter. Just months after our outdoors summer activities, we find ourselves again in the colder months: gathering inside by the fire with a warm meal.
Catternday marked our return to indoor gatherings - and it was a wonderfully cozy, comforting evening, enjoying wheel-shaped food (a nod to St. Catherine of Alexandria!), lighting candles in the darkness, and learning how to spin yarn from wool.
Here’s a peek into our Catterntide!…